May 2025:

We Will Remember

Twenty years ago, I lived in Israel, specifically Jerusalem. My friend Bracha and I studied at Pardes that year, and on one particular day we took a bus to Haifa and visited the beaches. The sand was so soft and fine, and the water was so clear. Standing there I knew that these were the same beaches that my grandfather, Ernest Isaac Rensin, wrote about in his journal (in fluent Hebrew script) when he lived in Haifa. Perhaps he even once stood in the exact spot where I stood, my feet in the faded imprint of his feet.

His father Bernhard, a.k.a. Berl, Bear, Dov and his mother Sophie fled Nazi Germany and bought land in Haifa. My grandfather was 10 years old in 1933 when he came to Haifa and he lived there for 8 years before coming to New York in 1941. By the time he died in 1995, he had lived in three countries — Germany, Israel and America. His father came from Russia and lived in four countries before his death. The Rensin name goes back to the 1800’s, but I was told by a professor who studied surnames that it was probably Aaronson. If you say the two names together you can hear the connection. The Rensins are an Ashkenazi family, described as such because Jews were rarely embraced by the local government and more often than not deemed “the other”. A German Jew or a Russian Jew is not simply a German or a Russian. They are the other because they come from somewhere else historically even in the country of their birth where they were often denied citizenship.

On that day in 2005, my friend and I returned to Jerusalem by bus, but just outside the city, as the sun started to go down, the bus pulled over to the side of the road. All the soldiers and several civilians including Bracha and I got out and stood in silence. It was Yom HaZikaron and the siren could be heard from the city, even at a distance, signaling to us that the day of remembrance for all who had died in war had begun. It was a powerful moment, the kind you remember for the rest of your life.

Passover calls us to remember the biblical story of our birth as a people, our exit from slavery, and our return to the land of Abraham. Then Yom HaShoah reminds us of the horrors of the Holocaust, preceded by pogroms, expulsion from Spain, persecution all the way back to the destruction of the 2nd temple in the year 70 that began the diaspora. Yom Hazikaron brings us to this century honoring all who died in the reestablishment of the land of Israel and all who have died to protect Israel since. This is who we are, we are a peoplehood that remembers. We remember biblically, historically, communally and personally.

We remember as a way to voice our grief, but we also remember as a way to honor those we have lost, and to recall our purpose as a people. We are supposed to be a light among nations, each of us a star in heavens of an infinite universe. My grandfather survived to marry, have two sons, work for Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) where he helped to build the communication system on the satellite that went to Mars. Years after his death his work helped us see the landscape of Mars through the eyes of this robotic wonder. His light in the heavens was not another sun across the universe but the light of a satellite seeking knowledge past that which a single lifetime could not provide. For me, my grandfather hung the moon and placed the stars.

He did not live long enough to see me go to Israel or become a rabbi. I was 19 when he died and I hadn’t even formulated the questions I would ask him today, but his journals are waiting for me to translate, to take me back to the land he knew and loved, the land that saved his life and therefor enabled mine.

As we move from grief to joy, from Yom Hazikaron to Yom HaAtzmaut (Israel’s Independence Day) we can remember every year that the flag has waved, that Hebrew is spoken, and that our homeland is once again a place for Judaism to grow and thrive. We can do this because we never forgot, we held in our collective hearts the land of our forefathers.

We remembered then, we remember now, and we will continue to remember in the hearts and minds of our children and that is how we will survive.

Rabbi Sarah Rensin

If you are in need of spiritual care, you can contact me at:

Rabbi Sarah Rensin
661-644-4614 (Mobile)
503-226-7079 x740 (Office)
rabbisarah@jfcs-portland.org

To read past blog posts, visit the Rabbi Rensin Corner archive here.