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From page 113 of Joe Bobker's article "To Flee or to
Stay" that is available at
<a href="http://www.hakirah.org/vol%209%20bobker.pdf" eudora="autourl">
http://www.hakirah.org/vol%209%20bobker.pdf</a><br><br>
<font size=3>The very torture and murder of 6,000,000 Jews, including
the<br>
crème de la crème of Orthodox European society and a staggering<br>
Who’s Who of Torah giants, proved that rabbinic decisions in the<br>
midst of mayhem, murder, and immorality can never be perfect.75<br><br>
75 In the 1950s, a group of Orthodox Holocaust survivors in
Israel and<br>
New York formed “The Institute for Research of the Problems of
Ultra-<br>
Orthodox Jews.” Their aim was to publish a Hebrew-language memorial<br>
(<i>Eleh Ezkerah, </i>“These I Will Remember”) containing the
biographies<br>
of leading rabbis who were murdered in the Holocaust <i>al Kiddush<br>
Hashem</i>. The ambitious program stretched to seven volumes, with a
total<br>
of 368 biographies consisting of three pages each, describing the
life<br>
and death of a Torah martyr. But after the first edition the editors
soon<br>
ran into a problem. Instead of coming across as a testimony of
heroic<br>
spiritual resistance, the sheer volume and heart-breaking intricate
details<br>
were spiritually numbing and disorienting. The bestiality committed<br>
against the wisest of all Jews was especially confusing and
challenging<br>
to the faith of the young. The concern was apparent: flipping
through<br>
so many unbearable photos and gruesome facts of saintly Torah
pietists<br>
and their families humiliated, tortured, and cruelly murdered, might
be<br>
seen as an indictment of a failed <i>da’as Torah. </i>Instead of giving
<i>chizuk </i>to<br>
the emotionally bruised survivors and inspiration to future
generations,<br>
it had the opposite effect: it spiritually anesthetized readers who
were<br>
frightened and stunned by the consequences of the decisions of so<br>
many sages of Israel. No more editions were printed.</font></body>
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