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.

For Pesach: Listening at the Seder

Pesach is a time to tell the story to our children. It is a time to speak. But perhaps it is also a time to listen.

At the beginning of Magid, we are told a story about 5 rabbis who held a Seder together. What do we hear of their Seder proceedings? Only one teaching: Rabbi Elazar ben Azaryah says that he was never able to prove to others that the exodus needed to be mentioned at night (in the nightly Shma) until Ben Zoma came and expounded it from a certain verse.

Discussing this passage with my high school students, they suggested that more than the content of the teaching, what is being taught here is the process. These rabbis, after all, are our model for a Seder. What does the conversation at their Seder look like?

The conversation involves not just saying your own ideas, but also listening and repeating what someone else has said, and really learning from them. Ben Zoma’s insight could easily have been quoted in his own name: Ben Zoma said . . . .. But no. Instead it is introduced by Rabbi Elazar ben Azaryah, who frames it through his appreciation of its value; “Behold I am like a man of 70 years” and I was never able to prove this point until Ben Zoma explained it. Rabbi Elazar ben Azaryah is humble enough to give full credit to Ben Zoma.

Interestingly enough, the sage who is quoted here, Ben Zoma, is the very same sage to have said, in Pirke Avot 4:1: “Who is wise? One who learns from every person.” Ha! Rabbi Elazar ben Azaryah clearly learned both Ben Zoma’s teaching in the Haggadah and this Pirke Avot teaching – he learned from Ben Zoma how to learn from Ben Zoma.

There is more. Ben Zoma’s interpretation of the verse in the Haggadah is actually only one side of the coin. The Haggadah (also cited in Mishnah Brachot 1:5) goes on to quote the opinion of the Sages who disagreed with him. What is the content of the Sages’ opinion? That the phrase kol yemei hayekha, “all the days of your life,” which Ben Zoma understood to be teaching us to include night as well as day, according to the Sages comes to include the Messianic era in addition to the world of today.

The Messianic era? Also in Pirke Avot, we are told that a person who cites a teaching bshem omro, “in the name of the one who said it,” in other words, a person who cites his source by name, mevi geulah la’olam, “brings redemption to the world.” Citing a source by name? That is just what Rabbi Elazar ben Azaryah did here in quoting Ben Zoma! Did he bring redemption into the world? His citation did bring the mention of the Messianic era into the Haggadah. It is as if there is a little hint here that acting like Rabbi Elazar ben Azaryah, being humble enough to learn from others and give them credit, this is what brings about redemption, the very type of redemption we once experienced in Egypt and hope to bring about and experience again.

How do we get there? How do we get to a place of redemption? By talking and telling the story, yes. But also by listening to others – by getting outside ourselves and our need to be the smart ones at the table, by being humble enough to hear the wisdom of others, take it in, celebrate it and cite it, as Rabbi Elazar ben Azaryah did. May our listening bring redemption.

For Pesach: Rise Up in Praise

Our main purpose on this earth, says the Sefat Emet (and others), is to praise God, to be witness to His existence and deeply grateful for the gifts He has bestowed on us.

That is the tachlit, the destination point, of creation and that is the tachlit, the destination point, of leaving Egypt. In both cases, the goal is reached on the 7th day. On Shabbat we stop our own creative endeavors to testify that all creative activity is really God’s and we sing, as the Psalm of the Sabbath day says – tov lehodot Lashem ulezamer lishimkha elyon. “It is good to give thanks to God and to sing to His exalted name.” That is our job on Shabbat – the end-point of creation – and that was our job on the 7th day after leaving Egypt – we stood at the Sea and sang praises to the Lord, an experience that tradition considers one of our highest points of connection to God. We stood and sang out with all our hearts and rose above ourselves as we exalted God.

All of Pesach is moving inexorably toward this height of praise. The gemara says that the seder “begins with shame and ends with praise.” We are moving towards praise: We begin with stories and words, and we conclude with Hallel and song. Hallel is the end-point of our speech in Magid, and an extended Hallel and the songs of Nirtzah are the end-points of the whole seder. They lead naturally to the Song of Songs, which is read on the Shabbat of Pesach, and some read on the night of the Seder. And then we reach the pinnacle of praise – the moment at the Sea. For this purpose were we redeemed, for this moment of praise.

What does it mean to say that our life purpose is to praise God? Isn’t there so much else that needs fixing in this world? What sense does it make to focus on thanksgiving as the main goal?

The Mussar teacher Rabbi Shlomo Wolbe teaches that the virtue of hakarat hatov, gratitude, has great powers. Hakarat hatov literally means “to recognize the good.” To see the good in another – to appreciate the letter carrier for delivering your mail even though he is paid to do so, to see this act as itself a kind of small hesed— to see all those acts of goodness in the world, to notice them, is to bring warmth and friendship and love into the world. To see God’s hand of goodness in everything around you, to understand deeply that none of it, really none of it -- not the life nor the health nor the roof – none of it is deserved or obvious but all are acts of divine kindness, to understand all that is to be in a state of Dayenu, a recognition of the neverending shefa or overflow from above. Seeing the good is not passive, but active and transformative – it awakens the good and the love that is always just beneath the surface in our universe. As Rabbi Wolbe says, by noticing the good in the world, we actually “build” a world of hesed. We often think that the ultimate good is to do good; perhaps we should add to “doing good” the role of “seeing good.”

Praise transforms the world and it also transforms ourselves. On Pesach, we move from “shame” to “praise.” Shame is self-directed; it represents the normal way we exist in this world – referring everything to ourselves through the prism of the ego – did I sound ok? Did I look good? That was so embarrassing! These are the self-directed thoughts of our ego prison. On Pesach, we are delivered from many straits, including the confines of the self. Instead of shame, we emerge into the wide world of “praise,” a place where we move out of ourselves by acknowledging the existence of a Being so much larger than ourselves. We come out of the dark narrow cave and into the open light; we are no longer a little tiny ego on its own, but, in praising God, become part of the praise of the Universe, part of the waves of Halleluyahs and Hodu Lashem ki tov’s that go on without end. We raise God up, and in doing so, raise up ourselves, draw ourselves out of the self and into the vast expanse of Sea. We are free, not floating alone and free, but deeply connected and free precisely because of our connection. To this end were we made.

Post-Purim Shabbat: Walking, Not Running

In honor of the Shabbat after Purim:

Rest. Balance. Peace, inner and outer. These are among our tools for fighting powers of evil like Amalek.

The Sefat Emet points out the strangeness of the date of our celebration of Purim – we celebrate and say “for the miracles that happened at this time” on the day the people rested after their fight, not on the day of the victory itself. “With this rest [menuchah],” says the Sefat Emet, “they destroyed him [Amalek] more than with war.” Our rest is a way of fighting Amalek! We kill evil, not just through physical fighting (and I don’t deny the need also for the fight), but also through our special role in this world as carriers of God’s menuchah.

Indeed, in the megillah, the world of Haman and Achashverosh is always rushing. They have professional “runners,” ratzim, who are sent out, dechufim and mevuhalim, “harried and rushed,” with messages. And they “rush” to bring Esther her beauty needs. And later, Haman is rushed to the banquet with Esther.

Everyone is running around all the time. But not Mordecai. One gets a sense from him of steadfastness and balance. He is a calm, centered, devoted person who knows what he is about; he is said to be mithalekh, walking by the palace day in and day out to find out how Esther is faring. Notice the contrast – he walks; the rest of the world runs. Maybe that is why he finds out about the plot of Bigtan and Teresh; he is around in a calm enough state to overhear them.

Nor does Esther rush. She takes 3 days to prepare for her meeting with Achashverosh, and then meets with him twice before asking her question, striking at the right moment, not rushing into anything.

Such balance and patience are the mark of a person with faith, a person who knows, as Mordecai knows [the only person in the megillah of whom “knowing” (yada) is said, Esther 4:1] that salvation will surely come, whether through Esther or through another. Such a person has no reason to rush because he understands that he is not in charge and he trusts the One who is. He plays his part calmly and with dignity; he is on the alert to act and do his part, but he is never rushed or nervous or harried. Day in and day out he is devoted and balanced and available.
This is the rest – the peace of Shabbat – that is one of the Jewish people’s primary weapons in the war against Amalek. We walk through life in a strong steady pose of faith, trusting that the Good One is in charge, alert to play our role in His plan.

Or course, we are sometimes (often?) harried and rushed and impatient. And sometimes, as when we leave Egypt on Pesach, it is appropriate to rush, or at least to be ready, on the spur of the moment, to drop everything and follow God. But most of the time, this harriedness is a kind of imbalance, an unsteadiness and an impatience which shows – like the people in this week’s parsha, who rush to the building of a Golden Calf when Moshe is just a little bit later than expected – most of the time our rushing shows a lack of faith that all will be well, a lack of understanding about our role in the world. The world will continue to turn without us; ultimately, we do not need to rush around to make sure all will be well. We need simply to walk, like Mordecai, with faith and patience, ever-ready to seize the opportunities that emerge to those who carry themselves with balance and steadiness and menuchah.

We are not the runners of Achashverosh -- running back and forth and back and forth to little effect; we are the peaceful walkers of God.

Purim: Fighting Hatred With Love

In the face of senseless evil, be kind to each other.

Haman, like the nation of Amalek from which he springs, represents pure, incomprehensible evil and hatred, a desire to totally annihilate us.

What do we do to commemorate our salvation from this evil? We send gifts to each other; we take care of the weak and the poor; we eat together and enjoy each other’s company. We fight hatred with love.

In the megillah, of course, we also stood up for ourselves and militarily fought back. This stance, too, has its place in Jewish tradition. But we don’t commemorate this redemption with military training. We commemorate it with gift-giving.

In the face of evil, we take care of each other. In the face of hatred, we are generous and kind and inclusive. This is the world we want to live in, not Haman’s.

In the end of the day, there is so much we can’t control, so many forces awry in this world; in the face of everything evil that we worry about, our response on Purim is simple acts of kindness.

As Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., said: “Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.” On Hanukah we drive out darkness with light. On Purim, we drive out hatred with love.

The Sefat Emet says that the reason we read Parashat Zachor (last week) on Shabbat is because Shabbat, with its own kind of Zachor, is a tikkun, a fixing, for the actions of Amalek. We fight Amalek, which represents perpetual war, with Shabbat, which represents eternal peace, Shalom. We fight war with peace. We fight hatred with love and kindness.

May we all have a joyous and kind Purim!

Parashat Tetzaveh and Purim: Carrying Each Other

We carry each other in our hearts, and there is no greater divine service than this.

This was the service of the kohen gadol. He wore a breastplate and two stones on his shoulders and in both places, on his heart and on his shoulders, the names of the children of Israel were inscribed. The Torah says specifically that he “carried” (nasa) the names of the children of Israel “on his heart as a reminder before God at all times” (28:29). He carried them – no, he carried us – in his heart, and as a burden on his shoulders, all the time. Where did he carry us? Lifnei Hashem. Before God. This was his divine service – to be mindful of the people, to help shoulder their burdens, to keep their troubles in his heart, to remember them and think of their needs.

There is no longer someone bringing our needs before God at all times, but we, each of us, serves as a kind of kohen gadol, for one another. When we pray in our daily Amidah and include the names of the sick, we are not just reminding God to pay attention, but reminding ourselves. We inscribe their names on our own hearts just as the Kohen Gadol had them inscribed on his breastplate. Their names, their burdens, are ours to carry.

On Purim, what we celebrate is not just our redemption, but our redemption by means of the caring and efforts of fellow Jews. Esther could easily have hidden away in the castle, as Mordecai implies, and ignored the problem, but she carried the burden of her people. This was not Egypt, where God would do the work. This redemption required the real effort of the people.

Our means of celebrating is also peculiarly inter-personal. On Sukkot the mitzvah is for you to sit in your own sukkah and shake your own lulav, and on Pesah, for you yourself to eat the matzah. But on Purim two of the mitzvot are about caring for each other’s needs – matanot la’evyonim, gifts to the poor and mishloach manot, gifts to one another. You have an obligation to feed one another. The give and take symbolizes the give and take of our care for each other, the way that our fates and hearts are intermingled. We are responsible for each other’s meals. We are responsible for each other’s well being.

Carrying food to one another, carrying each other’s names and burdens – these, too, are the service of God.

Parashat Yitro: Approaching the Cloud

One of the best moments of my week involved crying.

Crying with one of my children as the child cried, too, half lying in my arms. Before that moment, I had been walking around with a vague sense of hurry and worry. At that moment of crying, I was entirely at peace, sad, but entirely at peace. There was nowhere else to be and nothing better to do than this. Above all, I felt connected, connected to my child, connected to myself and that deep point of sadness inside me, connected to all the troubles and sadness in the universe, connected to the God who cares about all that sadness, who, as one of my students reminded me this week, is “the healer of broken hearts” (Ps. 147:3).

Sometimes it requires going into the sadness, not pushing it away, but actually approaching it, to feel this sense of connectedness. When Moshe approaches God on Sinai in our parsha this week, the Torah says that everyone else stood back, but Moshe approached the arafel asher sham Elokim, “the thick dark cloud where God was” (Ex 20:18). That is where God resides. In the arafel. In the clouds. In the moments of darkness and worry and confusion and sadness. Yes, of course, God also resides in joy, but here in our parsha, the pinnacle of revelation is depicted as a thick dark cloud. The moments that we run away from, like the people do here, those are the moments that perhaps offer the deepest of connections and revelations if we could only muster the fortitude, like Moshe, to approach them.

Ki shamah, ki shamah, ki shamah Elokim. The Israeli singer Shuli Rand sings a song about this passage entitled Arafel and his refrain is this – ki shamah, ki shamah, ki shamah Elokim. “Because there, because there, because there is God.” There, in that sadness, in our very brokenness, there, in the places we hide from, it is there that we will find God, feel our connection to Him, to each other and to ourselves. There, in the crying, in the thick cloud of darkness.

The Piasetczner Rebbe talks about moments like this as cracks in the soul. Normally we go about our lives with our soul covered over with a thick impermeable layer. Then there are moments, moments of intense emotion, whether sadness or joy, and at these moments cracks open in this covering. The goal is to use these cracks to fully access our soul and our connection to God, to fully enter those moments as opportunities for spiritual connection, moments when we, too, have the ability to approach the arafel.