The dry hot wind that blasted the faces of the multitude held not a hint of humidity. The blazing sun baked their faces with an unmerciful heat even at that early morning hour. Yet the thousands trudged on over parched and scarred ground that had once been furnished with lush green grass. Oddly, the heat was not remarkable. It had been bone dry for as long as anyone could remember. The weather forecast had not changed in three years.
The masses followed a contingent of four hundred priests – a relatively small contingent considering the crowd that dwarfed them. The cloud of dust announced their advancement long before they reached the top of the mountain. Once they had summited that barrier between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jezreel Valley, they found waiting for them one rather frightening man. He was a noticeably lean man, covered in hair, who wore an unfashionable garment of camel skin adorned by a leather belt around his middle. His eyes snapped with a holy fire that had not been seen for quite some time. Every soul in the crowd knew who this strange man was, although most, if not all, had never seen him. He was the most wanted criminal in Israel; in fact, he was the most wanted man in that area of the world. Not one bordering country had been spared the inquisition of King Ahab in his frenzied hunt for the prophet who had locked down the weather forecast.
Perhaps curiosity had brought this crowd. Perhaps fear. Perhaps boredom: there wasn’t much to do since it had stopped raining. In any case they were there to watch the showdown. The prophet Elijah lifted his voice so that it carried across that hillside. Every soul must hear his great question, because every soul must choose his side. “How long halt ye between two opinions? if the Lord be God, follow him: but if Baal, then follow him.”
“And the people answered him not a word” (I Kings 18:21).
In the millennia since the showdown between Elijah and the prophets of Baal, the human condition has changed little. We still suffer at the hands of the silent majority. It is this great segment of our society that believes they are the truly decent and noble. They are people of dignity and class who stand above “dirty politics.” Mud-slinging is for the deceitful members of society. No, these proud people are not judgmental. They view moral matters with dispassion. Passion should be reserved only for times when a pig skin is in play. They are the majority of America.
These people composed the majority of the world in 1936 when the Nuremberg laws were passed making it illegal for a Gentile to fall in love with a Jew. When Germany declared that a Jewish man could not work with white women who were under the age of forty due to his obviously unbridled lust, this majority was silent. It was a German affair. Let them handle it.
When the calendar turned to November 9, 1938, and the fateful Kristallnacht – the Night of Broken Glass – was etched in to our history books, this world majority was silent as synagogues were burnt and over ninety Jews were beaten to death. It was a German problem. Let them deal with it.
In 1945, the first Allied soldiers walked into how the Germans dealt with their “problem.” The soldiers who entered the Dachau concentration camp began to vomit merely at the sight of the prisoners in the camp. Even after weeks and years spent in the safety of their homes, these soldiers would wake up in terror of their memories. They brought out the first pictures of what we as a world allowed in silence.
When the survivors crawled their way out of the hell of Germany, they begged for a place to go. A safe place. A place where they could try to remember what is was like to be human. In the classic response of mankind, the majority was once again silent. It was a Jewish problem. Let them figure it out.
We look back – or at least we should – with disgust at a world that lacked the courage to act. The world was silent, and oftentimes silence is not golden. It is just yellow.
Today we face a new holocaust; a holocaust that dwarfs the one instigated by Hitler. Since 1973, fifty-three million babies have been sucked in pieces from their mother’s womb. The majority is divided between those who think it is morally wrong, those who would not do it themselves but who also do not wish to judge those who chose to murder their baby, and those who don’t really want to talk about it because it makes them uncomfortable. And this majority maintains status quo. They are silent.
Speaking out, going to marches, attending fundraisers, showing up at hearings – that’s not for them. They are noble and decent people who really do not want to argue this point. This is a political issue. Let the politicians fight it out. How can we smugly criticize those people who did nothing to save the Jewish people? How can we in horror ask – “How could you let this happen? Why didn’t you do anything?” – when we are every bit as guilty as they?
I went to the Yad Veshem Holocaust Memorial in Jerusalem in 1996. I felt a growing uneasiness as I walked deeper into the dark recesses of that solemn building. Heaviness began to pull on my heart as I viewed the photographs of the beginnings of genocide. I moved rather steadily through the museum until I reached one photograph that had been blown up to over seven feet. I was transfixed. In it was a group of Jews with their hands up, walking down a road. Later, I would notice that a woman at the front of the group had her face turned and that the guards on the side of the rode who stood with pointed guns were laughing. However, at that first view of the iconic photograph, all that I saw was a little boy. He wore shorts and a little jacket and what looked like a golfer’s hat. His hands were raised above his head. His eyes – his beautiful little eyes – were filled with terror. His fear was palatable.
I stood against a black-painted wall opposite the picture and wept. As the tears coursed down my cheeks I could not seem to pull my eyes away from his. The picture seared into my mind. I so wanted to step into the picture and take that child into my arms and remove him from harm and then return to the picture and finish the mocking Nazi soldiers. I wanted to be an equalizer. From that day on, I made a promise with myself to never turn my eyes from pictures of the holocaust. I would look at them so as not to devalue those in the picture who had suffered and died.
As much as I have dreamed of it, I cannot save that child. There is nothing I can do. But I can fight for millions of children who are every bit as terrified as that little Jewish boy. How many of us have ever looked into their eyes? That is no longer a hypothetical question. Ultrasound – the window to the womb – allows us to look into the faces of these babies who are slated for extermination. Will we turn our eyes away? Will our discomfort cause us to recoil from knowing the truth of what happens in the modern-day death camps? Do we have the courage to speak for those who have no voice? Do we have even the audacity to show up and simply be counted with those who oppose the slaughter of our future?
Or will we remain just another member of the silent majority?