יד ושם

Walking through Yad Vashem, reminds me of of the words of Psalm 23, "Though I walk through the valley of death, I fear no evil for you are with me."  When you look at the pictures shown at Yad Vashem, read the words of those that survived, those that died, and those that perpetrated the acts, you realize just how much evil there is in the world.  Many people lost their way because of the Holocaust, and as someone who only knows what happened because of pictures, testimonies, and seeing the remnants of the camps, judgement is not possible.  Today, my wife and I went to Yad Vashem, and it made me realize how far short of my potential I am.  There was a video of a camp survivor who while talking about life in the Ghetto, talked about how much Torah they would learn each day, thinking that it might be his last.  That is they way to be a Torah Jew, to learn like each day is your last!  Here I sit, living like I will live forever!  Afterwards my wife and I went to the Kotel, where we prayed and poured our hearts out to Hashem.  Psalm 92 talks about G-d's kindness during the day and his faithfulness at night.  What is the difference?  in the daytime, ie when there is light, we can easily see all the chessed of Hashem, all the good that He does for us.  But in the nighttime, the dark periods in our life and in the history of the Jewish people, it is hard to see how everything is a chessed, in those periods like the holocaust, like the inquisition, like a lot of things, we can only talk about his faithfulness, and strengthen ourselves with knowing that day follows night.  After all the Torah says "there was evening and there was morning."