This afternoon I’ll be Zooming into a lecture entitled, Rabbi Leo Baeck: Living a Religious Imperative in Troubled Times, by Dr. Michael Meyer, Professor Emeritus of History at Hebrew Union College. Rabbi Baeck lived through the Holocaust and continued his work in America as rabbi and scholar.

But in my column today I want to mention a portion of three quotes from the book which are most relevant in these days…

A. “Guilty are those who do evil, but guilty in particular before the bar of history are those, as well, who witness the crime or who know about it and remain silent. They are the ones who, without intending it, allow it to occur. Violence gets its way only when freedom is lacking, and no one is less free than the person who remains silent when he should be speaking, when he should be admonishing and warning.” (Spoken in 1933)

B. “Injustice and sin exist in every nation; they come and go, and the people lives on. But if the nation as such, as a whole, joins in the guilt through silence, through indulgence, through looking on, then the misdeed destroys the foundation upon (which) a nation exists; it collapses underneath it. Nations have perished only when they first remained silent, when people ceased to resist sin and to speak out for justice.” (Spoken in 1933)

C. (Baeck came to this country in 1948 at the invitation of the late Rabbi Maurice Eisendrath, then president of the Union of American Hebrew Congregations, now URJ) As reported by Rabbi Eisendrath, “He was deeply impressed that a disputed election could be followed by an honest working together. (Baeck observed) ‘Here it is not a matter of form that the losing candidate is the first to congratulate the victor; the opponent remains a fellow citizen.’”