March 5, 2022
Author(s): Rav Hazzan Aliza Berger,
Parshat Pekudei
March 5, 2022 — 2 Adar II 5782
Of Mice and Maraschinos
by Rav Hazzan Aliza Berger
Temple Emanuel, Newton, MA
Ever since the war started in Ukraine, I’ve been feeling things that don’t make sense. The space over my heart feels achy, almost bruised. My breathing is shallow, like the air around me is thick with worry and the oxygen can’t get through. My heart races and then goes quiet and then races again. I’m desperate for information, doom-scrolling at all hours, reading every newspaper article I can find, as if my survival depends on what I learn. On a logical level, I know what I am feeling is not real. I live in Boston, thousands of miles from this war. I am safe. And yet, I can’t shake the feeling that this is how it starts, nor can I free myself from the inherited memory of how it ends.
If you asked a social scientist to explain my reaction to this war, they wouldn’t hesitate. They would explain that this is a classic expression of intergenerational trauma or transgenerational epigenetic inheritance. That is, not trauma that I have experienced firsthand, but trauma that my family experienced generations ago which has been passed down to me through stories, observed reactions, and even in the very cells of my being. As Peter McBride, the Director of the Cohen Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies explained at the 2021 Intergenerational Trauma Conference, these aren’t memories. When you’ve inherited trauma, you “hold on to the experience as a living experience.”
There was a famous Nature Neuroscience study performed in 2013 where researchers took male mice and exposed them repeatedly to a cherry scent while shocking their feet with an electric current. After a while, the mice became sensitized to the scent and would flinch away even without the electric shock. Those mice bred with female mice who were not exposed to the shock treatments, and their pups and were raised away from their parents so that they could not be taught to fear the smell of cherries. Even still, when the next generation was exposed to that cherry scent, they became jumpy and nervous just like their parents. They didn’t live through the experiment, they weren’t raised with any conscious knowledge of cherry-scented electric shocks, but they had a visible and strong negative reaction. Even the grandchildren of those initial mice reacted negatively to the scent of cherry.
This experiment demonstrates the power of inherited trauma. It isn’t conscious and wasn’t taught. It changes how we behave, what we do, and what we think. And it lasts, not just through our lives, but through the lives of our descendants.
As we process the trauma of the war in Ukraine, this lens of intergenerational trauma feels deeply relevant. For us, we know our trauma. Ukraine was a hotbed of Chassidism, of vibrant Jewish spirituality and connection, tradition and community. It was the birthplace of famous rebbes like the Ba’al Shem Tov, Nachman of Bretslov, Levi Yitzchak of Berdichev, and Menachem Mendel Schneerson. It was also a killing field for Jews. There were the horrors of the Khmelnytsky Uprising, mass murders in the Russian Revolution and during the Russian Civil War, and violent pogroms which claimed the lives of more than 100,000 Jews in addition to terrorizing, expelling, and impoverishing Jewish communities across Ukraine. All those violent episodes pale in comparison to the Sho’ah. Recent estimates suggest that between 1.2 and 1.6 million Jews died in Ukraine including the nearly 34,000 who were killed in the Babi Yar ravine outside Kiev in September of 1941. This war awakens our intergenerational trauma, especially as we see Putin bombing the memorial site of Babi Yar and claiming that he must invade Ukraine to liberate the country from Neo-Nazi leadership. As President Zelensky tweeted, it’s as if he’s killing our ancestors again.
The more we delve into our own pain, the easier it is to lose track of the other forces of intergenerational trauma at play here. But we must remember that non-Jewish Ukrainians are also traumatized. Ukraine came under Russian control at the very end of the 18th century. For nearly a hundred years, Russia tried to erase Ukrainian culture by abolishing the printing of books and newspapers in Ukrainian, banning the instruction of Ukrainian in schools, and by persecuting scholars and cultural elders. Ukraine fought for cultural independence, only to see itself divided amongst four nations and again oppressed under Russian control. The Russians, especially with the rise of communism, exploited the Ukrainian people. Stalin seized land in the name of collectivization, diminishing productivity and uprooting people from their homes. He sent gangs of police and communist goons confiscate foods, not just from farms, but also from individual homes. People were so desperate they resorted to eating mud and twigs. There are even documented reports of cannibalism. According to the joint statement adopted by the United Nations in 2003, between seven and ten million Ukrainians died during this time, which is now known as The Great Famine or Holodomor. And, if that wasn’t painful enough, while the Ukrainian people were fighting for their lives, Stalin used this famine as a cover while he systematically imprisoned and executed leaders of the Ukrainian People’s Republic. Now, as the people of Ukraine see Russian forces rolling in, they are plugged back into their own intergenerational trauma—that Russian control means loss of identity, loss of resources, and loss of life. That is a powerful inspiration to stand in line for a weapon to defend your country.
What do we do with all this trauma?
Because of our history, Jewish tradition and especially Jewish liturgy is basically a manual for how to process inherited traumas and how to move forward in a healthier way. The Torah recounts countless episodes of suffering and loss, but after each one, the Torah instructs us to remember. Remember the feeling of loss and abandonment in Aramea. Remember the way the Amalekites attacked us. Remember fleeing from Egypt. The first lesson of our tradition is to be awake to history. To remember what happened to us, so that when the feelings rise in our body, we can recognize where they are coming from and make thoughtful choices about how to respond rather than just impulsively reacting like those mice in the cherry experiment.
But there’s more. The Torah demands that we not only remember, but also channel that memory into action. We are taught 36 times that because of our suffering, because of our memory of trauma, we must welcome the stranger, we must help the widow and the orphan and those at the fringes of society. The Torah teaches us that memory isn’t enough to combat those nightmares. The truest remedy is to do our part now to make the world a better place. תקן עולם במלכות שדי to heal the world by connecting with our hearts, with the pain of our memories and inherited trauma, and then by making the world better for the people in front of us.
Yaryna Arieva and Sviatoslav Fursin know this better than almost anyone. They were engaged to be married in May, looking forward to a sweet celebration at a posh restaurant overlooking the river. But when the war broke out, they realized they couldn’t wait. As sirens broke out around them and panicked civilians tried to flee, they stood together affirming their love and lifelong commitment to one another. After their wedding, they wiped away tears and shared with CNN that they plan to spend their first week as a married couple fighting to protect their country. As Arieva shared, “the situation is hard. We are going to fight for our land…we have to protect it. We have to protect the people we love and the land we live on.”
Yaryna and Sviatoslav could have responded to the war by drowning in grief and sadness, they could have wallowed in the symptoms of inherited trauma, but instead they made a different choice. Like our ancestors throughout history, they chose to sanctify this moment. Not the moment they dreamed of, not the moment they hoped for, but the moment they have now. Kiddush. They did not forget history nor the trauma of their past and of their people, instead they used that memory to fuel action. They have become heroes.
We can too. Like those mice in the experiment, each one of us suffers from triggers and traumas that we do not control, and which send us scurrying in fright. But unlike those mice, we are not powerless. We have the power to claim this moment. We have the power to remember. And more than anything, we have the power to channel that memory, that trauma, into transformation.
תקן עולם במלכות שדי To heal the world, you must feel the world. Heal the world with the power of Shaddai (sung)