I grew up in a fairly religious home. When I was in elementary school and still living at home with my father and step mom I attended a yeshiva in Queens. It meant long skirts and long sleeves, praying every morning in class and half of my day was spent learning Hebrew and bible studies. As a kid you don't question religion that much. You just believe because everyone else in your family does and that is what your family practices.
As I got older I stopped going to yeshiva and started public school. When I moved down to Florida I continued in public school and for a while and I still took religious classes at night, I still lit candles every Friday night and went to temple with my family on holidays. I was also involved in USY, a Jewish youth program. I was surrounded by Judaism.
So, when I went off to Israel this was a trip of a lifetime. I was off to see the Holy Land. My classes were full of great information about Judaism and about other religions as well. We were taught about the beginnings of Christianity and Islam as well. It was really a great experience in a place with such incredible history.
As we were learning about Jewish history we spent time discussing the Holocaust. On one of our field trips we went to Yad Vashem, a museum that is a living memorial to the Holocaust and the people who lost their lives during that very sad time in history. It was by far the most moving and most haunting place we visited in Israel.
As I have mentioned before, I did not have the nicest of childhoods. I went through a lot of trauma before age 13 that I had buried for many, many years. When I was young and going through so much, I did wonder why God was letting this happen to me. What had I done to deserve a life like this? As I got older, I spent a lot of years trying to forget my past, knowing I was now in a better place where I was safe, happy and no longer afraid.
Now, here I stood at age 16 looking at pictures of what was found at the concentration camps like rooms full of shoes and rooms full of eyeglasses all taken from these innocent people. There were pictures of these people marching unknowingly to their deaths. There were pictures of the starvation that they had to endure before they were killed. There was so much to take in at this museum it was almost too much to bear.
Then I walked into a darkened room. In the center of the room was one candle. Surrounding the candle are panes of glass and mirrors that make this one candle shine in countless reflections and it was all you can see above you and below you. As you are looking at the lights which look like a million stars, the names and ages of the children who died in the Holocaust are heard in the background. I couldn’t help but sit down and cry.
As I sat there I wondered how anyone could believe in a God that could let something like this happen. I wondered how anyone could sit and pray on a daily basis to someone or something that let these atrocities happen, and yet they praise his name and live their lives in order to serve him. A lot of people leave a place like Yad Vashem and a country like Israel with a much deeper spiritual connection with their God and their religion. I, on the other hand, could only relate these children’s suffering to my own and I came back home not believing in a God at all.
I have grandparents that were survivors of the Holocaust and I really do give them credit for standing so strongly in their faith even after all that they went through. I look at my children and wonder how anyone could harm something so little and helpless. Human beings are not perfect; as a matter of fact there is a lot of “mean”ness that goes on in our world. But, I was taught that people had freewill but there was a God who was all knowing, everywhere and powerful. However, after standing in that room listening to the names of those children who had died I just kept wondering how any being of this world or the heavenly one could ever let something so terrible be done to all of those innocent children.
Oh life, it's bigger,
It's bigger than you
And you are not me.
The lengths that I will go to.
The distance in your eyes.
Oh no, I've said too much.
I set it up.
That's me in the corner.
That's me in the spotlight,
Losing my religion.
-R.E.M.
16 days and counting!