Rabbi Joshua Lesser

One red tulip. Auschwitz.  A living kaddish. One year ago.  Auschwitz.  One red tulip, one year ago, bloomed in Auschwitz.  It was a solitary kaddish with ruby petals and glossy green leaves. One red tulip.  Planted in that liminal space of the dead and the living. Auschwitz. The bulb and roots deep in the soil of Jewish blood, its delicate momentary flower defiantly praising God's name.  Kaddish.  One red tulip. Marching.  In Auschwitz to Birkenau.  One red tulip. I wanted to pluck it and keep it, but this was not my flower any more than this was my tragedy.  This red tulip did not belong to me—it belonged to the world.  Its cry was that of our ancestors; its praise of the Source of Life was of the living.  One red tulip. A kaddish. A bridge.  Between praise and despair. Between life and death.  Between God and no God and back to God again.

A year ago, with the ADL, I spent the days around Yom HaShoah in Poland.  Krakow, Auschwitz, Birkenau, Wausau, Majdonic. Making our way from Auschwitz to Birkenau on the March of the Living was a solitary red tulip.   Others walked by without so much a glance, but there it was a growing question mark—a paradox.   Nothing so beautiful deserved to come out of this ground.  Nothing.  One red tulip: Vengeance.   My unknown family died in Poland, siblings my grandmother refuse to mouth. One red tulip. How does one learn the history of the holocaust and not encounter the seething, teeming redness of rage.   What unspeakable questions lie beneath the earth of the blooming rage?  One red tulip. A clenched fist, shaking at humanity and shaking at heaven. A clenched fist with every hate filled word I have ever heard about Jews.   One red tulip: A clenched fist with every fear of being able to hold a loved one's hand.  One red tulip.  A clenched fist filled with regret and restraint and so much curiosity of retaliation.  

But every tulip opens its petals.  Every tulip, this one included sings Ani Ma'amin.   I believe.  I believe with perfect faith that though the Messiah tarries, that I will wait.   I will open in belief.   One red tulip.  A heart that knows winter and loves anyway.  A heart that was stored in the wintry ground dark and frozen.   A heart that has faith in love even when it can't. One red tulip in Auschwitz testifies how good it is when humanity can dwell together even when it hasn't.   One red tulip. A hope for love that has yet to blossom. I believe. With perfect faith I believe. One red tulip.

When I question my faith

I seek Your Presence in

Rising of the Sun

And in his setting

In the moon’s glide across the night’s expanse

In all her shapes and sizes

Even when she disappears

Hiding beneath the canopy of stars

When I question my purpose

I seek your presence

In the pull of the tides

Courting the sandy shores

In the morning bird’s song

That sings even after the stormy eve

Continuing his flight and nest building

When I question my wisdom

I seek your Presence

Amongst the grove of trees

Whose timeless presence

Bears witness to change and all that is constant

In the lightening that strikes

With thunderous crash

And burns the forest

With unexplained loss and renewal

When I question my faith

My purpose

My wisdom

I seek your guidance

In knowing my place

In this vast universe

Teach me the rhythms of your cycles

Guide me to be a steward of this place

In which you roll out light upon dark

Day before night

Doubt before faith

Thought before action

And searching before knowledge

Blessed are you Who brings on the evening

Look to the world

She can teach you forgiveness

Beaten down by  violent storms

The earth copes

Rivers rise and fall

Limbs are strewn

The grasses, the flowers

Bow and touch low to the ground

As if to return to the roots from which they sprang

But slowly when there is sun

There is movement

Often painstakingly slow

They let go of the past

Stand back upright

And return to doing what they know best

Offering praise for their role

In the creation of it all.