“In the remembrance of a weeping queen.” Richard II, 3, 4 William Shakespeare (1595)

Do you remember the first time you saw your mother cry?

You probably do. It’s unforgettably traumatic for most children.

I certainly do, indeed many: Her sitting in the bathroom, holding me, trembling, my father pounding on the locked-door. Her babysitting me, helplessly agonizing, as her daughter underwent an emergency appendectomy. Her tearing when she “Forgot” to bring a birthday cake (we couldn’t afford) to school.

On the ninth day of Av, we traditionally cry, remembering every calamity that ever befell our people.

Yet, Av has another, in my humble opinion, more important meaning -Father.

As a father, and mother, we protect our children from traumatic memories. The most striking example was my parents, and their generation of Survivors, never speaking about their experience.

Indeed, the very word Holocaust, or Shoah, didn’t exist. They only referred to “The War.” If we asked why they had numbers on their arms, they replied they received them during”The War”, as if it was a souvenir.........

© The Times of Israel (Blogs)