Parshat Devarim: Where was G-d in the Holocaust? - Rabbi Yaakov Asher Sinclair

[Music] in the early hours of July 23rd 1942 the first train transport of deportees left Malky near Poland the train was made up of 60 closed cars packed with Jews from the Warsaw Ghetto the car doors were locked from the outside and the air apertures were barred with barbed wire July 23 1942 was the day that the murders started in Treblinka July 23rd 1942 was the 9th of our tisha bomb the 9th of our has been a day of tragedy for the Jewish people ever since the Exodus and the sin of the spies in the desert in Auschwitz there was of all things a chapel the chapel had a priest whose job it was to minister to the camp staff day after day after day he watched as train after train after train discouraged it's desperate human cargo day after day after day his eyes lifted to the smoke wafting from the ovens all that was left of a million lives a million mummies and daddies goodnight kisses a million broken birthday toys a million pairs of bewildered frightened eyes staring lifeless into eternity day after day after day one day the priests walked into his Chapel and he went up to the cross he picked up the cross and slowly with his bare hands tore it piece by piece he smashed the cross into nothingness saying over again as he was doing this this is the people of God this is the people of God we usually think of a miracle as a crippled throwing away his calipers or a blind boy blind from birth suddenly saying I can see I can see but there are other kinds of miracles rabbi Yochanan Ben Zakai lived at the time of the destruction of the Second Temple there was an imaginable hunger in the Land of Israel one day he came upon a young girl picking out undigested barley from amongst the dung of an animal the only food she could find this girl was the daughter of nag daemon Ben Gurion one of the richest men in the world rabbi Yochanan started to cry and he said how happy are you Israel when you do the will of God no nation nor tongue can rule over you and when you forsake God's will you are delivered into the hands of the lowliest nation and not even into their hands but into the hands of their animals why the Jewish people should be happy that no nation rules over them is self-evident but why should we be happy why should we be happy sifting down to survive when natural disaster strikes when there's an earthquake or a flood or a building collapses without reason it means that God is punishing us without revealing himself he has used the natural world as his agent means he doesn't want to direct involvement with he has distanced himself from us but when something happens it's so totally unnatural something miraculous and even though the punishment is terrible beyond words nevertheless we recognize that our punishment is coming directly from a Shem and not through the hands of an agent even in that terrible time we know that we've not been abandoned by our Father in heaven [Music] you [Applause]