Silva

As today is Yom HaShoah (Israel's Holocaust Remembrance Day), I thought to take a minute and write something. There have been years that I haven't left one of these notes, feeling little purpose in doing so since I'm hardly around anyways, but I often find myself regretting, having failed to do this one small thing to spread awareness where it otherwise might not have reached. I had hoped to write in advance and have time to edit, but time flew by quickly, so please forgive any grammar short-comings.  This year, I want to focus on names, as it's something that's been especially pronounced to me over this past year.
We all have many names. The name given to us at birth is only one of the multitude we gain throughout our lives. There are the nicknames, the terms of endearment, the slurs others apply to us, and the names we choose for ourselves on online forums like this one. Each comes with its own host of connotations and impressions, of memories and regrets.
Those connotations and impressions change and develop as time goes on. I don't view my name here the same way I did when I first chose it and I suspect that others experience similar. Some choose to pick a new name that they feel fits better and some continue with the old, adding further texture to the name's tapestry of impressions. Our names are defined by us and capture parts of our essence, intentionally or not.
It took me a long time to truly absorb what it meant that the Nazis tried to wittle down the Jews and the other prisoners of concentration camps into something less than human, how they sought to forcibly remove that essence of their names by tattooing a number, free of impressions, on their arms.
Some time ago, a teacher introduced me a website called Illuminate (https://www.illuminatethepast.org/). Essentially, each Yom Hashoah, they have people around the world light virtual candles in honor of someone who died in the Holocaust. The website provides a name and a little about the person when possible.
It doesn't capture all the nuances of a name, all the slight implications and meanings so innate to the person and those who lived around them. How can it? But it's something, a start, and that's worth something.
If you feel comfortable doing so, take a minute, light a candle, remember a name for those who cannot. As the days go by and you hear of recent events, please pause for a moment and recognize the fortune of your own world and immediate surroundings; they might not be ideal, but they could be much, much worse. Recognize the power of the names in your life and never think it your right to deprive another person of their own. As many a fictional character has said, names have power; don't take it for granted.