Cousins

Liking to read along with her, this morning my reading was Elie Wiesel’s Night -- Kristen’s assignment for a college class. Night takes a couple hours to read, start to finish. My second reading, the first years ago. No less horrifying.

May 1945 we saw newsreels of liberated Nazi concentration camps; the newsreels still roll in my mind. Night stirs again my dismay at finding out that my Weller forebears were not Andrew, Henry, Lawrence and John -- but Andreas, Hans, Lorentz and Johann.

Who and what were my cousins in my generation during the Nazi Holocaust of the Third Reich?

Humanity is community, all are complicit. We think sin is personal, but in the Old Testament, sin was known to be communal. Guilt by relation.

Who are the cousins of Achan?

Who are the cousins of Adam?

Who and what are we, who are my cousins, and therefore who am I, and what are my sins unknown?

Shabbat. Shalom.