It was, admittedly, an unusual place for a group of rabbis to spend the first day of a new decade. Home to the New York Giants and New York Jets, the 90,000 seat MetLife stadium in New Jersey is the epitome of American sports culture. And we weren’t just present in the stadium. We were seated on the hallowed turf that will host the World Cup Final in a few years’ time. There are evidently some perks to a rabbinic life beyond one of the coveted reserved parking spots at Bushey Cemetery.
The ceremony we were present for, however, the completion of the seven-and-a-half-year long cycle of Talmud study known as the Daf Yomi, was far longer than an average game of football. In Jewish terms, it started with mincha and ended with maariv —in other words, it lasted from early afternoon until evening.
Sitting outdoors on a windswept East Coast football field for four hours in the middle of winter was never going to be anything other than cold. And it wasn’t just cold. It was bone-chilling cold. So cold that the organisers had thoughtfully distributed toe warmers to all participants — the resultant mass removal of shoes forming a hilarious prelude to the main event.
That event itself, however, was worth every minute of the cold. To sing and dance with 90,000 other Jews, joined together in celebration of our precious heritage, was transformative.
To hear speaker after speaker describe how the one positive factor which unites all Jews, of any description, is a love for learning, epitomised by the worldwide programme of Talmud study, had a profound effect on us. And to listen to the prayer on the completion of the Talmud recited by Rabbi Shmuel Kamenetsky, a leading American Rosh Yeshivah, from a volume of Talmud printed in a displaced persons camp after the war, was incredibly moving.
And yet, for me, there was one stand-out ten-minute segment of the proceedings. Without question, it would absolutely have been worth travelling to America for this part alone. Since shortly after the war, every completion of the Daf Yomi cycle, which began in 1923, has been dedicated l’zichron kedoshei ha shoah — in memory of the victims of the Holocaust.
As a rabbi, I have been to many moving events commemorating the Holocaust. As an educator, I have led numerous groups to Poland, emotionally recounting the story of the darkest days in the history of our people. But I have never attended a ceremony which moved me in the way this one did.
The survivors present openly wept as the world-renowned chazan Yitzchak Meir Helfgott led the memorial prayer. And as the cameras focused on their faces, I found myself reflecting on what might have been going through their minds during those moments.
These were people who had witnessed the destruction of European Jewry, which to them was the only Jewish world they knew. They had seen their families, communities, shuls and study halls go up in flames.
Many had arrived on the shores of a foreign land as teenagers or young adults, speaking only Yiddish, broken and alone, left to somehow rebuild the fragments of their lives. Yet here they were, seated in a stadium with nearly 100,000 other Jews celebrating the renewal of their faith and tradition in a manner that would have seemed completely unthinkable to them all those years ago.
Over the past few weeks, during worldwide commemorations marking 75 years since the liberation of Auschwitz, the world’s attention has rightly remained resolutely focused on the survivors. They have braved the freezing cold of Poland to give their emotional testimony over to the next generation.
With incredible self-sacrifice and complete disregard for their own physical infirmities, they have spoken at hundreds of schools up and down this country and attended innumerable Holocaust Memorial Day events. And they have implored world leaders at Yad Vashem not to tolerate the prejudices that plague and threaten our world once again today.
But that cold January day in New Jersey taught me that our precious and inspirational survivors, role models in so many ways, are a living testament, not only to the fact that the world must never forget, but to the fact that the Jewish people must live again, despite everything they have suffered.
They witnessed destruction on an unimaginable scale. And they were present that day to witness the incredible rebirth of a young, vibrant Jewish people, dedicated to the values of their tradition and committed to keeping it alive for generations to come.
Yoni Birnbaum is the rabbi of Hadley Wood Synagogue
