Dear friends,
Over the last two weeks, ARK Centre has been hosting an incredible exhibition put on by Courage to Care that provides us a most profound and resolute message. We must remember the suffering of our people not in order to perpetuate trauma but to learn the evils of bigotry and what happens when good people stand by and allow it to happen. We must learn to be up-standers, not by-standers!
The exhibition contained a number of evocative pieces. The one that affected me most deeply was a piece by an incredibly inspiring, youthful, and optimistic, 89 Year old Sarah Saaroni. It is a sculpture of Dr Janusz Korczak, a paediatrician and head of an orphanage, who had an opportunity to save himself but decided to stay with the children as they were gassed to death. In the sculpture he is holding, embracing, and comforting a dozen children or so as they are standing in the gas chamber. The image really is heart wrenching and now, as a father of two beautiful children I love so dearly, it really is difficult to process.
But the sculpture is more than a statement about the unbelievable depravity of the Nazis who could do this to pure children. It is a tribute to the spiritual depth of the doctor who, in the midst of absolute darkness, was able to radiate a beam of holiness, of love. His facial expression left me, and I dare say anyone who sees it, with a sense of warmth and serenity.
And that is what the exhibition is all about. It is about all the inspiring stories of those who stood up for what was right even at the greatest potential cost to themselves and their families.
This virtue is illustrated also in the story of Harry Better, one of the survivors featured, who was saved by a Gestapo officer who risked losing his entire family were he to be discovered. As Harry says, it’s one thing to risk your own life, but the lives of your own children?! I don’t know what I would have done in such a situation.
Harry’s mother made the decision to save him and not herself or his sister. The way he feels he honours her sacrifice is by doing everything he can to make the world a better place. To teach everyone, and particularly kids, that we should always have the courage to care enough. To stand up to bullying at school or in the workplace. To stand up to violence against women. To stand up to racism and bigotry of all kinds. To always speak loudest for those who don’t have a voice.
This is a message that is so relevant and extremely positive. This is, in fact, what the Jewish tradition is all about. We are not the Chosen People of a superior race. Rather we are a people who have, unfortunately, experienced immense suffering as a result of bigotry and the absence of enough up-standers in our midst. This experience of being a stranger in a strange land endlessly persecuted compels us to be the preachers of light; to declare that all human beings are created in the image of God and, therefore, all equally deserve to be treated with compassion, dignity, and humanity.
To the whole team at Courage to Care, thank you for your vision and dedication to fulfil it.
With hope and prayer that we internalise this message and turn our horrible history into a reservoir of inspiration to become more sensitive and caring human beings especially to those who are very different to us.
Shabbat Shalom,
Rabbi Shneur
ARK Centre acknowledges the Australian Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples of this nation. We acknowledge the traditional custodians of the lands on which our organisation is located and where we conduct our activities. We pay our respects to ancestors and Elders, past, present and emerging. ARK Centre is committed to honouring Australian Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples’ unique cultural and spiritual relationships to the land, waters and seas and their rich contribution to society.