Reflections from the Second Generation: On Torah and the Shoah (Talk Given at Young Israel of Toco Hills)

When I was a child, brushing my teeth at night, I would set up little tricks for myself in order to make sure that the Holocaust did not happen again. If I was very careful about closing the lid of the paste or putting it on the right and not the left side of the faucet, then I could be sure to stave off the likely event of another Holocaust happening at any moment. This was magical thinking, born of a very deep fear that has always lived inside me.

My father was born in Krakow, Poland in 1934. On September 1, 1939 he was 5 years old. He was with his mother and two younger sisters, ages 3 and 1, out in the countryside enjoying the end of the summer in my grandmother’s childhood shtetl home of Mishlinetz. His father was not with them that day, as during the summer, he would stay in the city to work during the week and join them in the country for Shabbat. That Friday in September 1939, Germany invaded Poland, and the trains were taken over by soldiers so he was not able to rejoin them.

My father and his mother and sisters survived the war in Siberian slave labor camps. They were evacuated from the Polish countryside into the Ukraine and taken from there by the Russians as slave labor, part of a large group of Jewish refugees, quote “saved” by the Russians, though at the time they thought they were the unlucky ones. They endured their own suffering.

But we were asked to tell one story – and I want to share the story of my grandfather, who was left behind in Krakow. He ended up in the Tarnow ghetto. My dear cousin Lala chronicled what happened to him there – alone in a small room, he was studying Talmud one day when Nazi soldiers passed by and saw him with the Talmud through the window. They ordered him out into the courtyard and barked at him to sweep the floor. They shot him in the back while he was sweeping.

I chose this story because it gives me something positive to hold on to, to live for. The legacy of the Shoah for me has been primarily a deep sense of fear, depression and insecurity about the future. A part of me knows with certainty that the world is primarily evil – that evil is likely, at any moment, to swallow up the good. My dreams are like Pharaoh’s –yes, there are fat cows – that’s how we live now – but eventually the skinny cows will eat up the fat ones. This I know. That is the way of the world, and especially the way of the Jews. My father, too, lived a good life before the war. I expect my own life or worse, my children’s or granchildren’s lives, to be disrupted at any moment by war and persecution.

That is the dark side, the abyss I stand next to, circling, at all times. I am thrown back into it by an article about the horrors of the American prison system or the Syrian refugees or the rise of white supremacists. Any sign of evil triumphing can throw me.

I struggle with the question – what can we do to prevent this? How can we stop evil from triumphing in the world? How does one tip the balance to the good in this world? What is my role in particular? I don’t want to play toothpaste tricks anymore. I know things can’t be controlled, but I want to play my part for the good.

There are many answers and I admire those who have chosen other responses – helping other refugees, being strong about the State of Israel, fighting injustice in all its forms, healing and helping people in many ways.

But the reason I chose the story of my grandfather’s shooting is because for me the answer that has become clearer and clearer over the years lay in my grandfather’s hands just before he was shot – Torah. Torah is the antidote to evil in the world. Ki lekah tov natati lakhem. Torah is goodness. A good teaching given by the ultimate Good One to help us slowly, over time, uncover the true goodness of a world created out of love. Torah is the tool to tip the balance. Perhaps not today, perhaps not in our lifetimes. But slowly, one letter at a time, we effect the world through Torah.

In the end of the day, I do not believe that those Nazis killed my grandfather. He was attached to something above death, beyond denigration, something true and eternal and elevated and strong and steadfast in the face of evil. I attach myself to this same chain, to this same eternity. I am comforted and strengthened and energized. And sometimes, when I am studying a piece of gemara, I can feel my grandfather’s blood coursing through me.