Dear LREI Community,
I hope that this note finds you warm and toasty in this week of surprisingly seasonal weather. The children have navigated the cold well, and have been good sports all week, though clearly are eager for warmer temps.
As I forwarded my brief email last week regarding Monday’s Martin Luther King Holiday, I was thinking about one moment in last Friday morning’s Lower School Gathering. The gathering was filled with thoughtful comments about Dr. King, mostly coming from the fourth graders hosting the assembly as well as any number of songs, familiar moments to all attending. I was particularly struck by the fourth grade MCs naming of other civil rights activists, some well known and some less so. For the most part, when we honor Dr. King we, rightly, focus on his life alone, though we then miss opportunities to speak of others who were inspired by his example and, in turn, themselves inspired others. So much of Dr. King’s work was his inspiring and energizing countless others to join his quest. Today we mostly interact with his legacy through the tools of this inspiration – speeches and, for example, the letter I shared with you. On the day set aside to commemorate Dr. King, we must remember to make room for the countless others who were inspired to do their part.
There are days, usually more solemn days, when we typically commemorate the impact on the multitudes, rather than teasing out the involvement, the leadership, and the heroism of the individual. Monday, January 27, 2025 is such a day. Monday is International Holocaust Remembrance Day, chosen due to the anniversary of the day that Auschwitz was liberated – January 27, 1945 – 80 years ago. The magnitude of the tragedy that was the Holocaust is hard to comprehend yet we more often than not talk about it in its enormity. This is important. So too is remembering that the sum total of lives lost in the genocide is made of millions of individual stories and experiences. The total can seem overwhelming, while the individual stories are personal and moving, and often easier to comprehend and relate to.
It is important to find ways to both imagine the vastness of suffering and the experience of the individual. We do this at LREI when the eighth graders visit the Holocaust Museum on their trip to Washington, DC and then read Night by Elie Wiesel. They also host a visit by a survivor. All are impactful exercises and inspiring calls to action. These sorts of experiences – museums, memoir, novels, first hand accounts – are ever more important as we move farther away from being able to have conversations with those who experienced the Holocaust first hand.
We need to admire the individuals who inspire us, wrap our arms around the multitudes impacted by injustice and search for the stories of each person who feels the impact of hatred. In the overwhelming sadness of unfathomable loss, in the despair that we feel from antisemitism and racism and injustice, we must find ways to connect with each other and to find inspiration and heroism in these relationships.