eliminate . Individuals have the capacity -- difficult though it may be -- to make choices that are different from , and better than , the choices of their parents and grandparents . Ancestry is not destiny .
Decades ago , when I was a rabbinical student , I participated in an interfaith group in Jerusalem for seminary students of a variety of religions and denominations and nationalities . On the anniversary of Kristallnacht , the terrifying Night of Broken Glass that heralded the beginning of the Holocaust , a German candidate for the Catholic priesthood told us that his father and grandfather had both participated in Kristallnacht as members of the German SS , but that he had chosen to enter the clergy to try to eliminate hatred and racism from his community -- and he had chosen to study for a year in Israel in order to learn about Judaism and make contact with Jewish people . When we studied , ate and sang together , I felt as though I were in the presence of Haman ’ s descendants who studied and taught Torah in Bnei Brak .
I pray that future generations of Jews will also come to know that bittersweet and hopeful feeling of meeting friends descended from enemies .
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