While in Japan earlier this summer for a summit of religious leaders, I took a bullet train to Hiroshima to bear witness to the tragic history of the city.
Arriving in the modern train station and walking through the city, it is hard to imagine that it had been the site of complete devastation 63 years ago. The site of the nuclear blast is now a public peace park, bordered by a marker to memorialize the dead at one end and the burned-out shell of the single surviving structure at the other.
In the center is a bell that visitors are invited to ring to signify their presence, much as Jews might leave a stone on a grave. A children’s memorial is adorned by thousands of paper cranes of every color imaginable, sent to Hiroshima from around the world as a pledge to guard against another nuclear horror in the future.
August 6 is the anniversary of the day we dropped the bomb on Hiroshima. August 9 is the date we bombed Nagasaki. This year, August 9 is also the day we begin commemorating Tisha B’Av.
The confluence of dates this year is a jarring reminder of the long, long history of human conflict. It challenges us to consider what message the Jewish community might bring to the modern manifestations of destruction, desolation, violence and, eventually, rebirth.
On Tisha B’Av we recall the trauma felt when our beloved Temple was destroyed and our community scattered among the peoples of the earth. Though devastated and mournful, we nonetheless reinvented ourselves, with rabbinic Judaism replacing temple-centered worship. That ability to adapt to changing circumstances has allowed our people to survive long after other ancient nations disappeared.
Six decades ago America employed the power of the atom to annihilate an entire city — tens of thousands were immediately incinerated in a firestorm that melted flesh off bones and radiated organs within their human hosts. A thriving city of businesses, schools, neighborhoods, shrines, homes and average citizens going about their business, was gone in the blink of an eye.
Within hours or days, tens of thousands more succumbed to the effects of radiation. Within years, cancers and other illnesses claimed more lives — hundreds of thousands all told, and the effects still linger in the scars of survivors and their children.
Like our ancient nation, Hiroshima and Japan arose from the ashes, becoming a world power and a leader of industry. The Japanese also adapted to new realities, turning their energy to technology and science and, in many ways, leading the way into the modern era.
And yet our human inclinations to violence and destruction remain. Today’s weapons are many times more powerful than the bombs that destroyed Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The major world powers may be curbing their nuclear arsenals, but the nuclear threat is greater today than it has been in decades.
North Korea and Iran are racing to expand the club of nuclear nations, and their pursuit of nuclear power is encouraging others nations to follow suit. As nuclear power spreads, the risk of nuclear weapons landing in the hands of rogue terrorist groups increases.
The Jewish and Japanese destruction narratives are stories of devastation followed by perseverance, resilience and survival. Yet the power we have today so far surpasses that of America 60 years ago, let alone that of the ancient world, that no amount of ingenuity will allow humanity to survive if we unleash the power at hand.
The unthinkable is, in fact, possible, as a visit to Hiroshima makes all too clear. During these days of memory and mourning for what was lost, then, let us also contemplate the horror that may yet come.
Rabbi Marla Feldman is director of the Commission on Social Action of Reform Judaism.
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On this Tisha b' AV remember the the martyred Soviet Yiddish writers and poets murdered by STALIN - yemach shemo ve zichro- the night of August 12 , 1952
I would rather remember the martyred Jewish writers than have to lower myself to the Political Correctness Rabbi Feldman advocates. Every Tisha B'Av we get Hiroshima thrown in our face. Can we simply recall the Churban of the two Temples as well as other calamities in Jewish History?
although I comprehend the meaning of what the bomb did, I cannot share your total feeling for that day. I was on my ship that day,doing escort duty for the third fleet off the coast of Japan.A few days prior, we had been hit by a kamikaze plane at Okinawa with casualties.And when I read some months later what the Japanese had in store for us if we invaded the home islands,I would not be writing this today.So matbe it is good to look at the other side of the story once in a while.
Having visted Hiroshima, and being married to a Japanese, it strikes me how ingrained in the Japanese psyche the events of August 1945 really are. One cannot visit the peace memorial or the nearby bomb museum and come away unaffected. This is the kind of place one must experience for themselves. Each visit is personal, and cannot be fully explained to someone who has not seen it for themselves. The museum carries a powerful message. Its a cautionary tale for all future generations.
The atomic bombing of Hiroshima & Nagasaki SAVED MILLIONS of lives of both Japanese citizens & Allied servicemen. Official estimates of dead due to U.S invasion of mainland Japan - 12 MILLION Japanese( remember they were willing to commit suicide rather than surrender....sound familiar re Israel's enemies TODAY ?!!) & 1 MILLION American troops!!!Kudos to Democratic President Harry S. Truman for ENDING the war so quickly ( & demonstrating to STALIN that he would not Appease him as others in the WEST had APPEASED HITLER less than a decade earlier !!)
On T'Isha B'Av I too mourn, I mourn the fact that the Atomic Bomb was not developed in time to have been dropped on Berlin.
Marla feldman's misplaced "pacifism" will not save Israel's nearly 6 MILLION JEWS from nuclear annihilation at the hands of Iran's reincarnation of Haman-Hitler. Only FAITH in the G-D of Israel & the courage & determination to ACT( & NOT depend on the modern-day APPEASERS whose ideological forefathers sold out democratic Czechoslovakia to Hitler & abandoned European Jewry to Nazi extermiNATION). The NUCLEAR option may be the Jewish State's only means of survival !! Better an Israel hated by the world than ANOTHER Auschwitz 'mourned' by the world !!
This column is politically-correct nonsense. Comparing the calamities visited upon the Jews with an act of war against an enemy nation, an act that brought to a speedy end a war that would have gone on for months or years, with probably millions of casualties borders on the obscene. With 'Rabbis' like this, who needs the Iranians?
The bomb saved the lives of hundreds of thousands American servicemen. Among them the 550,000 Jews who were in the service. And that's the bottom line.
It is with great sadness that I read through the comments left in response to Rabbi Feldmans compassionate urgings. Sufferings purpose is to make us able to embrace and feel the suffering of others. Japan is a nation with a deep wound and it is searching for healing like the Jewish nation. Will you find it?