How we use our voices matters
The word "bystander" sounds passive. Someone standing by, watching, not quite involved. But at our Yom HaShoah service this week, when Judith Hayman shared the story of Charlotte Amdurer, it became clear that standing by is never neutral. It is a choice. And choices have weight.
Charlotte's story, like so many survivor testimonies, carries the shadow of those who watched and did nothing. Neighbours who looked away. Colleagues who stayed quiet. People who knew, and chose not to act, not to speak, not to intervene. The machinery of the Shoah depended not only on perpetrators but on the vast, complicit silence of ordinary people.
We read Tazria-Metzorah this Shabbat, and the rabbis have long taught about lashon hara, the harm that words can do. But I find myself thinking about the other side of that teaching. If words carry moral weight, so does silence. The failure to speak, when speaking matters, is its own kind of wound.
What Charlotte survived, what she chose to share, is an act of extraordinary courage. Testimony is not simply memory. It is speech that refuses to let silence have the final word. Judith carried that testimony into our community, and in doing so, became part of the chain of witness that keeps Charlotte's story alive.
We are now part of that chain. Every person who sat with us during our service, who listened, who felt the weight of Charlotte's words, carries something forward.
Tazria-Metzorah asks us what happens to a community when speech fails entirely. When the voices that should have said "stop," "no," "this is wrong," were swallowed by fear or indifference. The bystanders of the Shoah are not ancient history. The impulse to look away, to stay quiet when discomfort rises, to protect our own ease over someone else's dignity, that impulse lives in every generation. Including ours.
Charlotte's testimony, and Judith's act of sharing it, asks something of us. Not guilt. Not despair. Something more demanding than either: presence. The willingness to witness, to speak, to refuse the comfort of silence when silence becomes complicity.
Our tradition asks us to choose life, to choose blessing. Part of that choice is how we use our voices. Part of it is whether we use them at all.
Shabbat Shalom
Rabbi Adrian
Source: Generation 2 Generation (n.d.) Charlotte Amdurer. Available at: https://www.generation2generation.org.uk/holocaust-survivor-charlotte-amdurer
我们如何运用声音至关重要
4月16日
“旁观者”（bystander）这个词听起来很被动。它让人想到一个站在旁边观看、并不真正参与其中的人。但在本周的大屠杀纪念日（Yom HaShoah）礼拜中，当朱迪思·海曼（Judith Hayman）分享夏洛特·阿姆杜勒（Charlotte Amdurer）的故事时，我们清楚地看到，袖手旁观绝非中立。它是一种选择。而选择是有分量的。
夏洛特的故事，就像许多幸存者的见证一样，带着那些袖手旁观、无动于衷者的阴影：那些视而不见的邻居，那些保持沉默的同事；那些明明知情，却选择不采取行动、不发声、不干预的人。大屠杀这台残暴机器的运转，不仅依靠加害者，还依靠普通大众那庞大且共谋式的沉默。
本安息日我们读到《塔兹里亚-梅佐拉》（Tazria-Metzorah）篇章。长期以来，拉比们一直教导关于“恶言恶语”（lashon hara）——即言语能造成的伤害。但我发现自己在思考这一教导的另一面：如果言语具有道德分量，那么沉默也是如此。当发声至关重要时却保持沉默，这本身就是一种伤口。
夏洛特当年的幸存经历，以及她如今选择分享的内容，都是非凡勇气的体现。见证不仅是记忆，它更是一种言说，拒绝让沉默拥有最终的决定权。朱迪思将这份见证带入我们的社区，并由此成为了“见证之链”的一环，让夏洛特的故事延续下去。
现在，我们也是这锁链的一部分。在礼拜中与我们坐在一起、倾听并感受到夏洛特话语分量的每一个人，都在传递着某种东西。
《塔兹里亚-梅佐拉》问我们：当言论完全失效时，社区会发生什么？当那些本该说“停下”、“不”、“这是错误的”的声音被恐惧或冷漠吞没时，结果会如何？大屠杀中的旁观者并非遥远的陈迹。那种视而不见、在感到不安时保持沉默、为了保护自己的安逸而牺牲他人尊严的冲动，存在于每一代人中。也包括我们这一代。
夏洛特的见证，以及朱迪思的分享，对我们有所要求。不是要求我们内疚，也不是绝望，而是比这两者更具挑战性的要求：同在（Presence）。当沉默变为共谋时，我们要愿意去见证、去发声，并拒绝那种安逸的沉默。
我们的传统要求我们“选择生命”，选择祝福。这种选择的一部分在于我们如何运用声音，而另一部分则在于我们是否决定去运用它。
安息日平安 (Shabbat Shalom)
艾德里安拉比 (Rabbi Adrian)
资料来源： Generation 2 Generation (n.d.) Charlotte Amdurer. 详见: https://www.generation2generation.org.uk/holocaust-survivor-charlotte-amdurer