Hope and Faith

Yesterday we visited the Holocaust Museum and the Museum of Israel. While the Israel Museum was filled with countless artifacts and provided glimpses into ancient peoples I could not get the images from the Yad Vashem Holocaust Museum out of my mind.

The first thing we did was walk through the children’s memorial. No pictures are allowed inside any of the exhibits and I think even if I had pictures they wouldn’t tell the story properly anyway. We walked into a dark room where the wall was lit up with some pictures of the 1.5 million children murdered in the Holocaust. A quiet female voice is reading off the names and ages and your heart drops and you lose your breath. Struggling to recover you walk into the next room and a single candle is lit—but with the use of mirrors that single candle is amplified into millions. I couldn’t have counted them all if I tried but there they were, a light for each child lost.

After that we entered the museum and began the one way journey. You weave through each room and onto the next. Photos, facts and texts are everywhere. The gravity of the Holocaust gets heavier and heavier every step you take. All around videos are playing interviews with survivors and their stories of terror are almost unbearable. About halfway through beneath the floor is a huge pit of shoes belonging to those who died. Adult and children there are shoes everywhere. For me, that pit was the most powerful and the most painful to see. Tossed aside as if they were toy shoes—but people once walked in those.

A shining light for me was the way in which the museum kept you moving in one direction—we kept moving forward. I cannot say, although I wish desperately I could, that oppression and violence like that is behind us-because it’s not. However, when we really try, and I mean rally together as a peoples, when we make human rights a real priority—we can keep moving forward.

At the end of the museum there were guest books that we could sign and write a note. I stood staring at the blank page struggling to find something positive to say after experiencing the pain of those rooms now behind me. When times are dark faith can be so hard to keep. In the last room there were images of the first Shabbat (Sabbath) held for the Jewish people since the start of the Holocaust. Thousands of people gathered to observe a sacred part of their faith. Through all that faith was still there. So with that in mind I wrote the following:

Amidst pain and sorrow

Surrounded by injustices

God is there.

I’ve no proof-just faith and hope.

Amen.

                Later last night we were provided the opportunity to observe Shabbat at a local synagogue here in Jerusalem. I’ve been to several services back in Louisville—but this was different. They sang with real joy and praise and as an outsider they helped me follow along and be able to sing and praise with joy, too. I didn’t understand any of the Hebrew and I have no idea what the sermon was about (although, I’m pretty sure I heard Starbucks in there somewhere)—I know that hope and faith exists there.

                It is hard to believe that this trip is almost over as we will arrive in the states on Tuesday; much of it has felt like a blur. Whether it be Israeli or Palestinian, Christian or Jew or Muslim, ancient or modern one thing I know for sure; hope and faith exists here.

Blessings and Peace,

Caitlin