Yom HaShoah Talk Delivered at CBAJ, Albany: On the Piaseczner Rebbe

My grandfather, Shimon Tuvia Anisfeld, z’l, was shot in the Tarnow ghetto when caught studying Talmud. He was one of many who continued to study religious texts and practice Judaism amidst the harshest of conditions. This seems strange. What kind of a response is Talmud study to genocide and slave labor? What does it mean to be involved in such a religious activity in the face of Nazi persecution?

I want to quote from Hillel Seidman’s Warsaw Ghetto Diary, as he paints a picture of just such Talmud study in a slave labor shoe factory in the Warsaw ghetto in late 1942. This is what Seidman reports:

Now I am in Schultz’s factory; I have come at the time when people are both hammering in nails and reciting Hoshanot prayers. Here are gathered, thanks to one of the directors Mr. Avraham Handel, the elite of the Orthodox community: Hasidic masters, rabbis, scholars, religious community organizers . . .Sitting beside the anvil for shoe repairing . . . is the Koziglover Rav. . . He is sitting here, but his spirit is sailing in other worlds. He continues his studies from memory, without interruption, his lips moving constantly. From time to time he addresses a word to the Piaseczner Rebbe, . . . who is sitting opposite him, and a subdued discussion on a Torah topic ensues. Talmudic and rabbinic quotations fly back and forth; soon there appear on the anvil, -- or, to be precise, on the minds and lips of these brilliant scholars – the words of Maimonides and Ravad, the author of the Tur, Rama, earlier and later authorities. The atmosphere of the factory is filled with the opinions of eminent scholars, so who cares about the S.S, the German overseers, the hunger, suffering, persecution and fear of death? They are really sailing in the upper worlds; they’re not sitting in a factory on Nowolipie 46, but rather in the Hall of the Sanhedrin. (Taken from Nehemiah Polen, The Holy Fire, pp. 148-149)

The picture painted here is one of extraordinary transcendence. Surrounded by fear, hate, hunger and death, these religious leaders have the inner strength to transport themselves to somewhere else. They cannot be dominated; their spirit is free, as they engage in a discourse that spans thousands of years. They have neither really escaped nor directly defeated the machinations o f the Nazis, but they have transcended them and the hateful world they created. We normally talk about the two options of victimhood and armed resistance. By contrast, these rabbinic leaders demonstrated a kind of religious heroism and spiritual resistance.

Among those mentioned in the scene above is the Piasetzner Rebbe, Rabbi Kalonymous Kalman Shapira, also known as the Warsaw ghetto rebbe. His writings from the war, a collection of drashot or homilies known as the Esh Kodesh, the Holy Fire, were delivered and written during his years in the Warsaw ghetto, were buried, and later discovered by a construction worker digging in the site of the former Warsaw ghetto some years after the war. The Rebbe was later shot and died in the Trawniki labor camp.

The Piaseczner Rebbe was already a figure of great renown in the world of Polish Hasidism before the war, known for his innovations in education and beloved for his gentleness and dignity.

At the start of the war, he was offered a chance to escape Poland, but refused, clear that his role was to accompany his Hasidim through whatever transpired. During those terrible years, he provided material and spiritual aid to many, often at great personal risk to himself. In his drashot, he tries to offer some encouragement and solace to his followers, and to lend them strength to continue religious life and not lose faith.

I want to give you a small taste of his writing. At one point he himself addresses a version of our question: He worries that being occupied with Torah at a time of such horrific events is wrong and callous:

There are times when the individual is astonished at himself. He thinks: Am I not broken? Am I not always on the verge of tears – and indeed, I do weep from time to time! How then can I study Torah? How can I find strength to think creatively in Torah and Hasidism? At times the person torments himself by thinking: Can it be anything but inner callousness that I am able to pull myself together and study despite my troubles and those of Israel, which are so numerous?

He does not directly answer this question or sense of doubt, but in the passage that follows this one He finds comfort simply in God’s Presence. He discovers that God, too, is weeping, though His weeping is hidden, and that if he can break through and become intimate with God, he, the Rebbe can cry together with God and be comforted. This is how he puts it:

God, blessed be he, is to be found in His inner chambers weeping, so that one who pushes in and comes close to Him by means of studying Torah, weeps together with God, and studies Torah with him. Just this makes the difference: the weeping, the pain which a person undergoes by himself, alone, may have the effect of breaking him, of bringing him down, so that he is incapable of doing anything. But the weeping which the person does together with God – that strengthens him. He weeps – and is strengthened; he is broken – but finds courage to study and teach.

(Parashat HaHodesh, 1942, translation from Nehemiah Polen, The Holy Fire)

Just this makes the difference, he says: not crying alone, but crying together with God. The situation hasn’t changed but somehow now he feels accompanied in his suffering and this Divine company makes all the difference.

Here we get an inkling of the inner spark, the divine connection that kept the Rebbe going, that gave him the strength to stay with his followers and accompany them with love and comfort through the horrors of slave labor and extermination.

Indeed, there is a deep connection between what he, the Rebbe, says he experiences from God, and what he offers his own Hasidim, his followers – a sense of accompaniment, of Presence in their suffering. This was precisely the reason he did not accept the offer of escape at the start of the war.

And again, during his last days in the Trawniki labor camp, there were numerous attempts made by the Jewish underground to rescue him and a number of other notables. Then, too, he refused. Apparently, he and some 20 people – artists, physicians and communal figures – had gotten together and made a pact that not one of them would leave the camp without the others.

I want to close again with his words:

Just this makes the difference: the weeping, the pain which a person undergoes by himself, alone, may have the effect of breaking him, of bringing him down, so that he is incapable of doing anything. But the weeping which the person does together with God – that strengthens him. He weeps – and is strengthened; he is broken – but finds courage to study and teach.

Zechuto yagen aleinu. May his merit act as a shield for us.