Are we sitting ducks just because our generation didn’t experience that level of suffering?

“Who will stand before the world, knowing what to say, when the very last survivor… fades away?”

Like all of Abie’s lyrics, the words are perfect in their simplicity, plaintive and honest.

Sometimes, a levayah works out — meaning every single maspid speaks beautifully, appropriately, fittingly. The essence of the niftar is reflected in everything that is said. This was the case at a levayah I attended last week.

A pasuk was mentioned more than once: Vayamas Yosef v’chol echav v’chol hador hahu. We were taking leave of a Holocaust survivor, a Yid with numbers on his arm, and along with him, an entire generation.

On a sunny Thursday three weeks before Rosh Hashanah, a few hundred people contemplated the image of a 15-year-old boy from Grosswardein, all alone in the world, faced with the loss of his parents, grandparents, siblings, and friends, and the choices he made, on his own.

This is a whole generation that made a decision in 1945 or soon after. (Would I do that? Would I have the strength? we wonder, then banish the thought because it’s too uncomfortable.) From that first visa, to Palestine or Peru, the United States, Australia, or Canada, until a levayah 50 or 60 or 70 years later, complete with weeping children and grandchildren and a dark-bearded rav speaking about our inability to comprehend what these people endured, the story is similar. So many Zeidies and Babbies, Omas and Opas, Sabas and Savtas.

And now that generation is largely gone, reunited with the parents they last saw in their teens.

At last week’s levayah, the niftar’s son said something I found disconcerting. As long as these Yidden were among us, around in shul and the store and at simchahs, we had a certain protection, a Divine shemirah. They had suffered for all of us, and we were being spared. Now, he speculated, we see the incredible spike in hatred toward us; the way that, in a matter of a few short years, blatant sinas Yisrael has gone from being rejected to accepted to admired. And we have to connect the dots. We’ve lost our protective wall, the lager Yidden.

I found the thought troubling, because… what does that mean? There is no expiration date on the pasuk of Ki lo yitosh Hashem amo, and the subscription to His boundless compassion does not run out.

I happened to meet a wise rav just after the levayah, and I shared my issues with him. Dor holech v’dor ba. Are we sitting ducks just because our generation didn’t experience that level of suffering?

He suggested a pshat.

Eisav sonei l’Yaakov. Chazal termed it a halachah, meaning it is a law — not the legal type, but like “the law” of gravity, it’s part of the universal design and serves a purpose.

As long as Yidden with numbers on their arms circulated among us, we didn’t forget and we couldn’t forget. They were living, breathing evidence of the intensity and infiniteness of that hatred.

As they fade away, it becomes easier to forget, and if we forget, then the hate goes up by a few notches — because it’s a halachah, a reality designed to protect our distinction as an am kadosh.

This sort of remembering has nothing to do with conferences, think tanks, or data on the alarming rise of anti-Semitic incidents. It means that, before we walk into the DMV or Target or the airport, we need to reiterate, to ourselves, that we are Yidden.

Now, this doesn’t mean we should make them notice us and hate us more. (Side he’arah: We are a people who cherishes life. We fight doctors who are too quick to pull the plug, and we boast some of the most sophisticated medical referral organizations on earth. Yet the sad reality is that if someone cuts you off at high speed or makes an illegal right turn from the center lane, the odds are high that they also have heimishe bumper stickers. If we love life so much, why do we drive like 17-year-old bochurim on the first day of bein hazmanim? I don’t think that sinas Yisrael can be cured, but we don’t have to make it so easy.)

While being courteous, respectful, and law-abiding is a basic obligation, the time invested in trying to be nosei chein, to show, with jokes or cultural references, how normal we are — just like them! — is wasted and works against us. It distracts us from the halachah.

Every decision a person makes to be more Yiddish is a decision to be less not-Yiddish — the purpose of the halachah. A friend of mine told me that he grew a beard not because he felt it spiritually elevating, but because he saw a picture of two Nazis forcibly shearing the beard off a Yid in the streets of Warsaw. The look of searing pain in the Yid’s eyes got to him, and also, the haughty triumph in the eyes of the Nazis.

In an instant, he decided to grow a beard — a tribute to that Yid and a revenge on the Nazi animals. It was the 2025 version of a nekamah on the yemach shemo with which we grew up.

The more we laugh at Eisav’s jokes, feel welcome in his haunts, and get his cultural references, the less we remember. (Not touching sports this time — not when the Yankees are doing well. Pick your battles according to the season.)

Remembering keeps us sheltered. Remembering keeps us safe.

It’s a tightrope, this survival in galus thing. Behave, but also, stand tall. Try to be a good neighbor, but stop trying to be the most popular guy in class.

Enjoy Bronx Zoo on Chol Hamoed: Don’t drop a pretzel bag on the floor, but also don’t apologize for making a minyan, even if people stare. Don’t apologize for having a double stroller because we believe in populating the world, even if people scowl, even if they spit and curse.

Who will stand before the world, knowing what to say, when the very last survivor fades away?

We will, Abie.

We will square our shoulders, remember that we’re far from home, but also that we’re surrounded by family, and together, off to the side of the main path so that people can pass but not so far that we are hidden from view, we will gather together ten Jews and declare, “Amen, Yehei Shemei Rabba…”

We remember.

(Originally featured in Mishpacha, Issue 1081)