One well known religious personality in Israel asserted that after the Holocaust our Avodas Hashem can no longer be based on gratitude - הכרת הטוב, because how can we have gratitude after suffering so much? Instead our avoda should be based on the pasuk in Iyov - הן יקטלני לו אייחל - He will kill me and I will [nevertheless] hope to Him.
The person who said this was a huge talmid chochom and had many many hundreds if not thousands of talmidim. He was also a Holocaust survivor. So this is not a personal attack upon him and I am not one to judge Holocaust survivors. The story is told of the Satmar Rebbe who once told a chossid who complained when the Rebbe left the country that if the Rebbe left, who would give him brachos. The Rebbe responed that anyone who you see who rolls up his sleeve to put on tefillin and has numbers engraved on his arm is worthy of giving brachos..... We stand in awe of anyone who survived the camps and more so of those who remained observant.
But still. I find it extremely unsettling to say the least to disregard the millions and trillions of acts of kindness that Hashem does for us on a daily basis and has done for the world and the Jewish people from time immemorial and to refuse to thank Him [or to base our Avodah on thanks as suggested by the Chovos Halevavos] because of the Holocaust. And why only the Holocaust? Maybe we should have already stopped thanking Hashem after the Chelminitzky era in 1648-49 when a third of the Jewish people were wiped out? Or maybe before when a young baby died? Philosophically, the question of a young baby dying is in the same category as one and a half million children being murdered. How can a Loving G-d allow this to happen???
The answer [the best one I have heard or read yet] is that .... we don't know. What we do know is that there is a Loving G-d and we thank Him for EVERYTHING. We thank Him for our troubles, we thank him for our successes, we thank Him for our breath and our food and teeth and digestive system and eyes and ears and EVERYTHING EVERYTHING EVERYTHING!!! We start the day with the word מודה - THANKSSSSS!!! Thanks for another day of life. Even people in the camps thanked Hashem for another day of life. We thank Hashem when someone dies because we are grateful that they lived and know that the best thing was that they also die. That is why we say a bracha when we hear the news that someone died. We are Yehudim - from Judea and THANKERS!
Should we not say Modim every day we are angry with Hashem because things didn't go our way?? Should we cut the parsha of Korban TODA out of the Torah because we are dissatisfied with the fact that we live in a world where 38.5 percent of people will be diagnosed with cancer at some point in their lives??
I heard someone say that now that we have the State of Israel we can thank Hashem again. NOOOOOO!!! We don't need the State of Israel to thank Hashem. All we need is the ability to thank Him. In the repetition of Shmoneh Esrei [מודים דרבנן] we thank Hashem that we can thank Him. מודים אנחנו לך ... על שאנחנו מודים לך!
Of course we thank Hashem that we can live freely in Eretz Yisrael. But we don't need a State to have reasons to thank Him. We have TRLLIONS of reasons. Our State is one of them. [Some thank Hashem as they would for a tragedy but that is their - in my opinion errant - perspective].
I thank Hashem that we weren't the aggressors! Imagine what we would feel if our grandparents went around and systematically tortured and killed six million!! I am grateful that my great grandparents were holy martyrs who died al Kiddush Hashem and weren't brutal savage murderers. I thank Hashem that OUR PEOPLE spread morality to the world. I thank Hashem that we are a light unto the Gentiles. I thank Hashem that our lives are so filled with meaning and we don't just work to eat in order to work more to eat more so that we can work more and eat more.
So THANK YOU HASHEM FOR EVERYTHING!! For the fingers that are typing these words, for the magic of the computer and modern technology, for a sense of humor to help us through the rough times. for heroes like the Klausenberger Rebbe who went through the gehenom and came out even better people than when they came in and for sooooooo soooo sooooooo soooo much that
ולשוננו רינה כהמון גליו
ושפתותינו שבח כמרחבי רקיע
ועינינו מאירות כשמש וכירח
וידינו פרושות כנשרי שמיים
ורגלינו קלות כאיילות
אין אנחנו מספיקים להודות לפניך
ה' אלוקינו ואלוקי אבותינו
ולברך את שמך מלכנו
על אחת מאלף אלפי אלפים
וריבי רבבות פעמים הטובות
ניסים ונפלאות שעשית עם אבותינו ועמנו.
