Looking Through Google Glass at Jewish Education

How will Google Glass affect Jewish education? This is the blog post I recently published on The Jewish Week's "Jewish Techs" blog on that subject:

In 1982 when I was in first grade at Hillel Day School, a Jewish day school in Metropolitan Detroit, my father brought in our family’s Apple II computer for show-and-tell. There were no computers in the school at that time so it was a seminal technological moment for the school. I’m sure my father figured he would blow my classmates minds by showing them how to type a few lines of the LOGO programming language and get the turtle cursor to turn and move across the screen. However, my peers didn’t have any mind-blowing experiences that day -- it was only the beginning of what our generation would come to expect from computers and technology.

Fast forward to 2013 when, earlier this week, I was a guest speaker in my son’s third grade classroom at the same Jewish day school. Speaking on the subject of technology and Jewish education, I became nostalgic and told the students how when I was their age we would save one word processing document on a floppy disc. I then took a USB flash drive out of my pocket to explain Moore’s Law -- the observation that, over the history of computing hardware, the number of transistors on integrated circuits doubles approximately every two years. They weren’t impressed. These young people have become accustomed to better, smaller, faster technology being rolled out every few months. They see their parents turning in their smartphones for better ones and downloading new versions of operating systems. They know that the graphics on the next generation of video game consoles in their basements will be more realistic than the ones before.

Jewish History Through Baseball

I was recently asked to review Irwin Cohen's new book, Jewish History in the Time of Baseball’s Jews: Life On Both Sides of the Ocean, for the Michigan Jewish Historical Society's upcoming annual journal. Cohen, who writes for the Jewish Press, is a baseball maven and a history buff who has chronicled Detroit's Jewish history and also worked for a time in the front office of the Detroit Tigers organization. I immediately agreed to write the review and an inscribed copy of the book arrived at my office a few days later.

Holocaust Memorial Center director Stephen Goldman addresses members of the Detroit Tigers organization

As I sat down to read Cohen's book, which focuses on both baseball history and modern Jewish history with a special emphasis on the Holocaust, I thought back to this past winter when members of the Detroit Tigers coaching staff and front office were invited to the Holocaust Memorial Center here in Detroit, the country's first free-standing Holocaust memorial museum. The HMC was included for a site visit on the Detroit Tigers Winter Caravan, a week-long publicity tour to get local fans in Michigan excited for the upcoming season. 

Detroit Tigers CEO Dave Dombrowski, Manager Jim Leyland and coaches present a jersey to the HMC

Some cynically said that the only reason the Tigers were visiting the Holocaust Memorial Center was as a good faith effort after former Detroit Tigers player Delmon Young's anti-Semitic slurs in New York City last season. That might have been part of the reason for the visit, but after reading Cohen's book it is evident that Major League Baseball has historically been a part of the narrative of Jews in America and what happened on the other side of the ocean during the Second World War will forever be part of baseball's history as well. Cohen accurately shows how understanding the history of Jewish baseball players leads to a better understanding of modern Jewish history and the lessons of the Holocaust. Below is my review of Irwin Cohen's new book, which I highly recommend.

Jewish History in the Time of Baseball’s Jews: Life On Both Sides of the Ocean
By Irwin J. Cohen
Reviewed by: Rabbi Jason Miller

Someone recently asked me in which year I spent my first summer as a camper at Camp Tamarack. I didn’t recall the exact year, but I was able to figure it out using baseball history. I remembered the Tigers were battling it out in the division with the Baltimore Orioles that summer and that the Orioles ultimately won the pennant. Ah, it must have been 1983, the year before the Tigers won the World Series.

It’s not uncommon for us to measure time and recall the events of our lives and in the world around us based on the American pastime of baseball. Local Detroit historian and baseball aficionado Irwin Cohen has developed that concept into a book. In “Jewish History in the Time of Baseball’s Jews” (2013: Boreal Press), Cohen puts baseball into a historical context while focusing on Jewish baseball players and the events since 1900 that have shaped our Jewish lives.

Concerned that young people today don’t know enough about Jewish history and the Holocaust in particular, Cohen brilliantly provides what could fairly be called a Jewish baseball almanac and a history textbook all rolled into one. Rather than simply recount the accomplishments and challenges of Jewish baseball players throughout time, Cohen informs the reader of what was happening in the Jewish world during the time these Jewish athletes played the game. In his chapter on the 1970s for example, Cohen informs the reader that “as Ken Holtzman was racking up a good season for the Chicago Cubs (17-11, 3.38 ERA) world attention was focused on Jordan. Yasser Arafat’s Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine hijacked four international airplanes.”

A strong advocate for Israel, Cohen wisely educates about Israel’s history and its struggle for acceptance while providing an interesting history of the effect baseball has had on Jewish life and Jewish culture. Getting young people to read a lackluster history book is challenging, but this book reads like a Who’s Who of the greatest Jewish baseball players while also providing an insightful summation of the pertinent historical events of the 20th and the beginning of the 21st century.

While several books tell the tale of Hank Greenberg’s visit to Detroit’s Congregation Shaarey Zedek on Rosh Hashanah in 1934 and his decision to sit out Yom Kippur that year, Cohen puts that story in historical context slipping in the fact that the spiritual head of world Jewry, the Chofetz Chaim, passed away that same year. Cohen segues into a complete analysis of the Greenberg Rosh Hashanah narrative from the Detroit Jewish Chronicle by reminding us that across the ocean the Jewish community was not focused on the September pennant race of the Detroit Tigers and their Jewish all-star player, but on more serious matters. “As American Jewish newspapers related information about the plight of Jews in Germany, Jewish baseball fans found escapism in Tigers slugger Hank Greenberg.”

Cohen flawlessly transitions from baseball history to world history, with special emphasis on Israel. Without Cohen’s weaving Major League Baseball’s milestones into the chronicle of the Jewish people, how many of us would know that the 1980 All Star Game occurred around the same time as an Arab terrorist’s grenade in Antwerp killed a Jewish youth and wounded 16. Cohen poetically moves from a paragraph about rocket attacks against Israel after the relocation of 9,000 settlers in Israel’s Gaza Strip in 2005 to Jewish baseball player Adam Greenberg feeling like he was hit by a rocket when the first and only pitch he ever saw in a Major League game hit him in the head and ended his career. (Postscript: Greenberg returned for one at-bat in September 2012.)

Author Irwin Cohen is an expert on the history of Jewish Detroit and on Jewish baseball players

Cohen doesn't shy away from discussing anti-Semitism and anti-Israel sentiment in baseball. He recalls how several Jewish baseball players in the early 20th century changed their last names to avoid antagonism. He also tells the story of when he was working for the Detroit Tigers organization in 1991 during the height of the Gulf War crisis and Bo Schembechler, then the President and COO of the Tigers, looked at Cohen and said, “You are going to get us into a war,” as if Cohen represented Jews or Israel. While it’s not a story that casts Schembechler in a good light, Cohen uses it as an example that anti-Israel remarks like that are anti-Jewish as well. Cohen’s agenda appears clear in this book. He seeks to educate the reader about Jewish history (both in America and on the other side of the ocean as he refers to Eastern Europe), the role that anti-Semitism has played in baseball – America’s pastime, and how baseball has inserted itself in important ways into not only Americana, but also into the life of Jewish Americans.

When it comes to putting Major League Baseball into a historical context and painting baseball history on the same canvas as Jewish history, there is simply no better historian, scholar or chronicler than Irwin Cohen. Had such a history book existed when we were all children – one in which baseball history is interwoven with general history – imagine how many more young people would have enjoyed their history lessons. Just when you think you're reading a book about the Holocaust or Israeli history for Hebrew School, a wonderful anecdote about a Jewish baseball player appears. That is the magic of Irwin Cohen’s masterful writing ability. Baseball is evidently part of Jewish history, and Jewish history has claimed more than just a footnote in the history of baseball.

Spelling Knaidel and Bravo's Princesses Reality TV Show

We Jews have arrived! That seemed to be the general sentiment on my Facebook news feed last night as word traveled around the social network that the winning word in the 2013 Scripps National Spelling Bee was "knaidel" - the Yiddish word for matzah ball. Most excited Facebook users chimed in on the variant transliterated spellings of the Yiddish word wondering how the organizers of the annual spelling bee could agree on just one accepted spelling.

Arvind Mahankali, the 2013 Scripps National Spelling Bee champ spelled Knaidel for the win (NBC)

No one else seemed to have even noticed that a few hours earlier in the competition, another contestant was asked to spell the word "hesped" - Hebrew for eulogy (which is what I should be writing right now instead of this blog post, but I digress). As my friend and fellow traveler to Ukraine (back when he was a student at the University of Michigan and I was working at Hillel) Adam Soclof pointed out, "knaidel" was not the first Jewish word of questionable transliterated spelling that had been asked of the Scripps National Spelling Bee contestants in the past. In 2006, the word "hechsher" caused some controversy when 14-year-old Saryn Hooks of North Carolina correctly spelled "hechsher" (I go with the "hekhsher" spelling), but the judges disqualified Saryn even though she spelled it correctly. The judges later admitted their mistake and reinstated the girl.

Arvind Mahankali wins! Correctly spells "knaidel" (small mass of leavened dough, from German-derived Yiddish) #spellingbee
— Vocabulary.com (@VocabularyCom) May 31, 2013

While some might think that the winning word of the Scripps National Spelling Bee being the familiar Yiddish word for what we Jews put in our chicken soup signaled the end of offensive Jewish stereotypes, think again. A new reality TV show is about to debut that will send us back several generations to a time when those shameful, disgusting Jewish American Princess (JAP) jokes were en vogue.

Bravo's Princesses: Long Island premiers on Sunday and based on the promo it's going to be shockingly offensive. This rapid fire assault of "Jewish princess" stereotypes will certainly offend most Jewish people. I am one who can certainly take a joke, but I was very uncomfortable with the way these Jewish women were characterized. Bravo might get the viewing audience it wants based on shock value, but I can't imagine this trashy show will have legs to survive past its first season.


Jersey Shore was offensive to Italian-Americans, but I get the sense that Princesses: Long Island will produce more overt, in-your-face stereotypes. The sneak preview seems to be a montage of every offensive stereotype there is of Jewish women. Vulgar language aside, these women are shown as obsessed with getting married, materialistic, kvetchy, and speed dial their mommy as soon as there's any crisis.
If you asked me a few years ago I would have said that the term "JAP" would be a term my young children would never know. Jewish women (and their male advocates) have been successful in eradicating that term from our lexicon and I haven't heard any Jewish American Princess jokes in several years, but a reality TV show like Princesses: Long Island unfortunately will undo much of that progress. There are acceptable ways to mock the stereotypes of a particular religion or ethnic group without being tasteless. This show is going to be trouble with a capital T.
In the meantime I'm going to hope that we see more Yiddish spelling words and less offensive reality shows. Nothing good will come from Bravo's Princesses: Long Island so I'm just going to pray it's cancelled as soon as possible.

Plastic Surgeon Michael Gray Reconstructs the Social Network

I jumped at the opportunity as soon as I received the press release from Jackie Headapohl, the editor of The Detroit Jewish News, asking me if I'd like to interview Dr. Michael Gray, the well-known plastic surgeon here in Michigan. The press release described a new social network called Pegged that Dr. Gray had created. It sounded as if this cosmetic surgeon was about to give Facebook a Face Lift. I spent an hour in Dr. Gray's office learning about Pegged and the entire time I kept thinking that people will both love and hate this controversial social networking site. Here's the front page article from this week's Detroit Jewish News:

Plastic Surgeon Reconstructs Social Media
Detroit Jewish News

Dr. Michael Gray, a popular and successful plastic surgeon, spends his days transforming the way people look on the outside. But one thing he can’t do is fix who they are on the inside. That doesn’t mean he isn’t interested in trying though.

Gray, who is from New York, heads the Michigan Cosmetic Surgery Center and Skin Deep Spa in West Bloomfield. He wondered whether he could at least learn more about people’s character on the inside and create a social platform that would force them to try and change themselves internally. “The world is broken. What if we had a resource to assess who we meet? Would we be able to make better decisions about what we do in life? Would people be self-reflective after they get a review? Would they change?”

Gray felt the social networking sites already in existence, like Facebook, were not helpful because the users were in control of their profiles and able to create the type of persona they wanted to portray. So Gray began to envision a social networking site that would promote greater self-awareness and help people become better. What he came up with will no doubt be met with mixed reactions.

A NEW SOCIAL NETWORK
Pegged (pegged.com) will be controversial. The networking site (a mobile app is in production and will be released soon) will be a painful reality for many people. All social networking sites currently allow users to create their own profile, but in an interesting twist on the idea of social network profile creation, Pegged allows someone else to create a person’s profile. If you don’t like the waitress at the restaurant you can “peg” her by creating an account and detailing why she missed the mark. If a former friend is spreading rumors about you, you’ll have the opportunity to publicly call them out on their transgression. On the other end, the site will be beneficial for those looking to hire or date someone with more accurate data available for background checks.

“When I hire staff for my practice every candidate looks great on their resume and in their initial interview,” Gray explained. “It usually takes about six months for their true colors to show. I just don’t have time for that so I want to be able to look someone up and immediately understand what type of person they really are.”

Gray believes the “opinion-built profile” through the assessment of others will be a tool that could allow Pegged to ultimately make humanity better. While the process won’t be without pain, he thinks it will be a path to insight. “The web and mobile app will be entertaining and fun, but at its core, the intention is to bring people into accountability for their interactions with others, and to offer them opportunities for self-reflection and growth.”

HOW IT WORKS
Through the comments and ratings made by others on a profile, Pegged follows people in their daily lives of social interaction and assigns them a “humanity score.” Over time, a graph will be produced showing the ups and downs (positives and negatives) of the quality of that person’s interactions chronologically in their lifetime. Gray believes this graph will provide users with valuable information about whether or not to date, hire, work for, or join a group with another person. Individuals will rate and review each other anonymously which will no doubt be one of the more controversial aspects of the site.

Concerned about bullying, Gray insists that there are many safe-guards built into the system so that no one is being rated based on religion, gender, race, age, or sexual orientation, and there is always the opportunity to respond to any comment. Gray won’t get into the way in which Pegged will prevent bullying, but says it will be similar to the measures Facebook implements to keep hate speech and abuse off their site. In an effort to resolve conflict between two parties, Gray is hoping to add a basis for mediation on the site.

The most controversial element of this platform is that even if a person chooses to live anonymously and social-media-free, unless one avoids people all together, someone will eventually join him or her to the website. “You can live like an ostrich with your head in the sand and pretend Pegged doesn’t exist, or you can participate and maintain some control through responding to posts about you,” Gray says. “Of course you will get people who lie, or who are haters, but in the long run, I believe that if you’re a good person, it’s going to pan out.”

Dr. Michael Gray is known for helping people improve their external image, but in this new endeavor he might have created the technology to help people do their own surgery on their character. Perhaps Pegged will be a tool to better help individuals prepare for the process of repentance on Yom Kippur.

Bidding on The World to Come on eBay

Those who read Milton Steinberg's masterpiece novel "As a Driven Leaf" will remember that eternal life is a reward given for the fulfillment of two mitzvot (commandments), namely the honoring of one's parents and the shooing of the mother bird from the nest before taking her eggs. However, yesterday those who wanted to taste eternal life could have simply logged into the preeminent online auction website eBay.com and offered a bid on heaven.

Ari Mandel of Teaneck, New Jersey, a self-proclaimed former Ultra-Orthodox Jew, listed his place in The World To Come on eBay for a mere 99 cents. Titled "My Portion in Olam Habaah (Heaven)", Mandel says he did it as a joke and didn't expect that bidders would bid it up to $100,000.

eBay user Ari Mandel auctioned off his portion of the World to Come on eBay

Since the auction "item" violated eBay's terms of service it was quickly taken down from the website. Mandel told the Jewish Daily Forward that "it was a joke that ran away from me... when it reached $100,000 I didn’t really expect to get that money. It was nice to fantasize, but I didn’t think it was going to happen.”

Mandel, 31, included several references to the Jewish concept of Olam Habah (the World to Come) and used common Yiddish phrases in his auction listing. He claims to have simply done this as a joke and tells those who took it seriously or were offended by his harmless prank to "chill out".

The Forward reports that Mandel was raised in an ultra-Orthodox community in upstate New York, but left the community about seven years ago. He is now a divorced father of one child and a student who works as a part-time translator. While eBay didn't allow his auction to last very long, he was able to get his joke spread pretty wide thanks to the speed of the Internet. For those who held out hope that they could really get a spot in heaven by a simple click of a computer mouse button and a six-figure payment, keep working on it. You'll have to go back to honoring your parents and shooing away mother birds.

This isn't the first time that eBay has been used to auction off an intangible Jewish concept. Back in 2006 on this blog I wrote about a man who used eBay to auction off his chametz (leavened products) before Passover (see below). It turned out to be a great way to raise money for the Ziv Tzedakah Fund, Danny Siegel's wonderful nonprofit organization.

Opening the Doors of Jewish Education

I've been thinking a lot about the term "Opening the Doors" and Jewish education lately. For the past several years I've been a committee member of the Jewish Federation of Metropolitan Detroit's "Opening the Doors Program" which advocates for students with diverse learning or behavioral challenges so they are able to participate in a quality Jewish educational environment with their peers.

Run locally in Michigan through the Federation's Alliance for Jewish Education, the Opening the Doors Program currently empowers nearly 1,000 students. I became involved with the program in 2008 as the director of ATID: Alliance for Teens in Detroit, the Metro Detroit area Conservative Movement's weekly Hebrew High School program. Working with the Opening the Doors director Ellen Maiseloff we were able to place a paraprofessional in our program to ensure that the teens with learning challenges were able to participate in the classes without too many problems.

Detroit's Opening the Doors Program celebrates 18 years of helping Jewish students with learning challenges

The Jewish Infatuation For Jewish Baseball Players

About a month ago, just before Opening Day of the 2013 Major League Baseball season, I received an email from a newspaper reporter who asked if I had time available to discuss Jewish baseball players. I had recently read a fascinating review of John Rosengren's new Hank Greenberg book in the Wall Street Journal and the relationship between baseball and Judaism was very much on my mind. So naturally I agreed to talk with the reporter.

In his email, Charley Honey (love that name!) of the Grand Rapids Press wrote:

I'm working on a column about Hank Greenberg, a boyhood hero of my late father, who grew up in Detroit. A new bio of Hank, by John Rosengren, deals a lot with the challenges he faced as the first Jewish baseball star in the Bigs. I would like to talk with you about your perspective on Greenberg's impact on sports and culture, and how baseball has served as an entree into American life for racial and religious minorities.

Always being on the lookout for tie-ins between the greatest game and the world of faith, I thought Opening Day and this new bio seemed like a good opportunity. I realize rabbis like you are very busy this Passover week, but if you could carve out half an hour or so to talk to me within the next few days I'd love the chance. My column is due Tuesday morning. Of course, I will not be available after 4 p.m. Monday. :)

Charley and I had a great conversation that lasted well over an hour. I explained that there is a certain fetish we Jews have with Jewish baseball players. As Joseph Epstein wrote in his WSJ review of Rosengren's book, it's difficult for most baseball fans to come up with a list of Methodist, Baptist or Catholic Major League ballplayers, but for some reason we can all create our lineup of the best Jewish ballplayers who ever played the game. There's a certain pride that we Jews feel for our heroes like Hank Greenberg and Sandy Koufax.

Prayers After the Boston Marathon Tragedy

Driving yesterday afternoon I heard on the radio that two bombs had gone off at the Boston Marathon and I immediately said a private prayer. Then my thoughts quickly turned to the people I knew who were running the race. I was on my way to the Jewish Community Center and as soon as I got there I sent a text to a mutual friend to make sure a friend who was running in the marathon was okay. I immediately got a response that she and her family were fine because she had finished the race so quickly (her personal best) and crossed the finish line 15 minutes before the bombs went off.

I then went on Facebook using my phone to check on another friend, Noam Neusner from Washington D.C., who runs the Boston Marathon each year. His Facebook page was already filling up with concerned friends asking if he was okay. Noam's wife Andrea, who waited over ten hours to hear from her husband in New York City on 9/11, then posted that he had finished the race several minutes before the explosions and was fine. Then his own posts began at about 4 PM to let people know he was fine: "Hi everyone I'm fine. Didn't hear explosion, but it's bad. Pls pray for the victims, this is bad."

An event like the attack at the Boston Marathon changes the narrative. How interesting that the marathon runners are now reporting their finish times as "20 minutes before the blasts," "15 minutes before the blast," and so on. And I'm sure there are runners who are thinking of how fortunate they are to have not been running faster as their slower pace kept them from being affected by the explosions.

Jewish Learning During the Omer

It is customary to study Jewish texts – mostly commonly Pirkei Avot – during the period of time between Passover and Shavuot. Many take the opportunity to occupy themselves with Torah study in the late Shabbat afternoons when the days are longer. The sages believed it was a worthwhile practice and would keep people focused on Sabbath observance.

Here are four opportunities for online study during this period:

TORAH DAILY
I launched the Torah Daily Facebook page after reading Jennifer Preston’s article in the New York Times about Jesus Daily. I was convinced that there was a need to provide spiritual and inspirational texts and quotes from Jewish wisdom. With the encouragement and assistance of the leadership of Clal's Rabbi Irwin Kula, Rabbi Brad Hirschfield and Rabbi Rebecca Sirbu, I created the Facebook page and invited friends and colleagues to follow it. It quickly gained a following and then one of my colleagues in Clal's Rabbi's Without Borders fellowship program Rabbi Juan Mejia worked with me to create the Spanish language version called Torá Diaria. Torah Daily has close to 1,000 followers on Facebook, which is nothing close to the 17.5 million fans Jesus Daily has but it’s become a dependable source for inspiration. Several rabbis and Jewish educators contribute meaningful lessons to inspire Torah Daily’s followers. The almost daily posting of quotes from Jewish wisdom can be shared with friends on Facebook and discussed using the Torah Daily Facebook page as a forum. I described the need for Torah Daily in a Huffington Post article.

HUFFPOST OMER LIVEBLOG
For the second year in a row Huffington Post’s Religion vertical associate editor Josh Fleet has put together a liveblog that offers daily inspiration and learning during Sefirat Ha-Omer, the 49 day period of the Omer. He writes in the liveblog’s introduction, “On Passover, perhaps Judaism's most widely observed holiday, secular and religious Jews alike recall the story of the Israelites' exodus from slavery in Egypt. On Shavuot, perhaps Judaism's most-important-least-observed festival, a smaller contingent of the Jewish people celebrates receiving the Torah. In between these joyous mile-markers of past desert wanderings, even fewer modern Jews observe the Counting of the Omer, a 49-day period of self-reflection and spiritual renewal. HuffPost Religion would like to change that. Here, throughout Sefirat HaOmer, as it's called in Hebrew, we offer the opportunity to ascend the 49 levels of renewal as part of a virtual Omer community. Each day, we will update this liveblog with spiritual intentions, prayers, Scripture, poems, art and reflections from our bloggers and readers related to that day's spiritual energy.” Those wishing to contribute their Omer inspirations can send an email to religion@huffingtonpost.com for possible inclusion.

TANAKH-CAST
Dan Mendelsohn Aviv, who launched TanakhCast, has a motto for his Torah study session podcast: “Give us something like 18 minutes, and we'll give you the WHOLE TANAKH! (But not all at once - obviously...).” With sound effects and a nice jazz tune, he offers an easy to understand lesson on a few chapters of the Bible. Funny at times, Mendelsohn Aviv makes the stories of the Torah interesting and fun. The short podcasts keep people’s attention and make them want to come back for the next podcast study session.

TWEET TORAH TO THE TOP
Jewish Twitter users are once again studying Torah and attempting to get the hashtag #Torah to top Twitter’s trending terms list (www.twitter.com/#torah). Originally launched in 2009 by Rabbi Shai Gluskin, Tweet #Torah to the Top is an effort to spread the teachings of the Torah and the discussions surrounding them to as many people as possible by organizing a collaborate effort to tweet on Erev Shavuot. Each year more Tweeps (Twitter people) seem to join the campaign by learning Torah and tweeting what they learn on the social networking site using the #Torah hashtag. As Rabbi Mark Hurvitz explained, “I think this is a great way to encourage awareness of Torah. I’m sure we each have many simple “Torah thoughts” that can be expressed in 133 characters (Hurvitz reminds participants to leave room in their tweets for the final space and #Torah). An example of a Torah-infused tweet is “Neither is #Torah beyond the sea, that you might say: Who shall go over the sea & bring it to us & make us hear it, that we may do it?” Hurvitz explained that the goal isn’t just to get #Torah to trend, but also to have this project serve as a global learning experience, to learn something, meet new people, and feel closer to the revelation at Sinai.

Cross-posted to the Jewish Techs blog at The Jewish Week (NY)

I Believe - The Most Meaningful Yom Hashoah Yet

Today is Yom Hashoah, the annual day of remembrance for victims of the Holocaust. While it is still morning it has already been the most meaningful Yom Hashoah experience for me.

I actually had a feeling that Yom Hashoah 2013 wouldn't be like past experiences. On Thursday, February 7 of this year the Shoah hit me like never before. I was freezing cold as I stood over the ravine at Babi Yar in Ukraine with two dozen of my rabbinic colleagues. Our shoes sunk into the snow as we stared out into the forest where 33,771 Jews were killed in a single operation between September 29–30, 1941.

The memorial at Babi Yar

This was not my first visit to Babi Yar. I had visited there eight years earlier, but this time was different. I have visited concentration camps and seen gas chambers, but this was different. Our brief memorial program consisted of lighting candles, throwing flowers into the ravine, reading poems, singing songs and reciting prayers in tribute to the memory of those who perished on that site. But it was the music that did it for me.