As I looked at my calendar the other day, I realized to my great regret that I had failed to mention International Holocaust Day, each day commemorated on the fourth day of May.  If one is not a Jew (and I am not), although we can--and should--weep over the unmitigated horrors of the Holocaust, we in no way can genuinely relate.  How does one identify with the loss of over six million of his brethren?  How does one connect with a person who lost the sum of his lineage in a concentration camp?  How can we possibly grasp being the object of such virulent hatred and racism?
     The thought of either of these is horrifying; the reality that at one point in history all three occurred at once is overwhelming.  And that's the point many Holocaust scholars make:  the Holocaust is an event that surpasses the widest and deepest boundaries of our ken and imagination.  It's beyond intelligibility.
     Yet it happened.  Writing to me nearly three decades ago, an American then living in Jerusalem and who had made clear to me that he did not believe in God, allowed that the Holocaust caused even him to acknowledge the reality of the metaphysical.  Why, he reasoned, would anyone with a hatred other than one rooted in the tenebrosity of a twisted notion of the metaphysical engage in such horror?  And why, he suggested, would a God other than one committed to the sanctity of human choice allow such a thing to happen?  Finally, he asked, why, unless Jesus really is humanity's savior, would God ever run away from such pain?
     Weep for our Jewish brothers and sisters, and pray for those who persecute them. And believe:  at all costs, believe in the ultimacy of God.