At first I thought the siren was an alarm, and a second later I realized it was the siren of Holocaust Day, and I stood still as the image of crowds of people being herded into gas chambers kept running before my eyes.  Last night Hillel was debating with himself about whether what we did in Gaza was genocide and I didn’t have the energy to enter the debate – but while I agree it was a terrible thing to demand the return of the hostages by trying to bomb terrorists and calling the many deaths ‘collateral damage,’ it was no where near the intentional destruction of a race.  

I stood with the sirens thinking of the masses of people destroyed and then all the relatives I never met and suddenly the image of lines leading to death chambers was replaced by a seder table with aunts and uncles telling inside family jokes.  It’s something I always miss on Passover – being with the same people every year, where the annual repetitions of family traditions are comforting.