Night of Fire and Glass

Seventy-five years ago, the Nazis marched through the streets of Germany and Austria, attacking Jews, smashing windows of Jewish-owned stores, destroying synagogues, ransacking homes and hospitals, burning books and Torahs.  For two days, Jews were terrorized, beaten and arrested and sent to concentration camps while the government looked on.  When it was over, 91 people had been murdered, 30,000 had been arrested and sent to camps, more than 1000 synagogues had been burned and more than 7,000 Jewish businesses had been destroyed.  After two days of rioting, the Jewish community was fined $1 billion reichsmarks.

How can we possibly speak of such unspeakable horrors, of such hatred and violence and inhumanity, that happened so long ago?  How can we possibly find the words?

How can we not?

We can, because we must.  We find the words, we tell the story, and we remember.

We do, because this must never happen again, to anyone, to any people, in any land.  We find the words, and so we say: amen


Words for Kristalnacht

09-10 November 1938

Stars littered the ground

Crystal fire

Shards of ice

Glass

The smoke of a thousand thousand years

Ascended

Coiling upwards, twisted

With the memory of a People

Chosen once in light

Chosen again

In darkness

In ashes and in blood

Pounding rhythms shout out

Felt through their nsoles 

Driving forward, driving onward

Faster and faster and faster, and pulled forward

Pulled ever onward

In a rush, at a run, rippling in shadow

It invades your blood,

That rhythm,

That pulse,

That pull and push

That wraps ‘round your heart

In pounding and pulsing rhythms

That cradle your source

Your soul

The darkness swallows the cries

Of a thousand thousand lights

A thousand thousand years

A thousand thousand sighs

Of love

Of hope

Of God

Leaving only broken glass

And crystal fire

And glistening stars to lead us

Home.