This coming Sunday, June 20, 21 is the fast day of the 17th of Tammuz. It is the day that the walls of Jerusalem were breached by the Babylonians in 586 BCE, enabling the enemy's conquest of the holy city, leading to the destruction of the Holy Temple three weeks later on the 9th of Av.
What is the mindset to enter into this period?
Let me share a story, recorded in the gripping autobiography of Rabbi Lau, Out of the Depths. When Rabbi Lau, former chief rabbi of Israel, shuts his eyes and recalls his childhood, his mind is crowded with images of trains, of boots pounding on the pavement, of barking dogs. He hears children wailing, "Mamme! Tatte!" as they are torn from their parent's arms, the Gestapo screaming, "Schnell, schnell!" as they wield their clubs, and always, the dogs barking.
"Lulek," as Rabbi Lau was then called, was two years old when the Second World War broke out, and eight when he was liberated from Buchenwald.
Rav Yisroel Meir was born on 1 June 1937, in the Polish town of Piotrków Trybunalski. His father, Rabbi Moshe Lau, was the last Chief Rabbi of the town; he was sent with another son, Shmuel, to the Treblinka extermination camp, where they were gassed.
The father’s last instructions to his sixteen-year-old son Naftali were to protect his little brother, Lulek, to ensure that the Rabbinical chain remains unbroken. Their mother also died in the camps two years after her husband.
"I was separated from my mother in November 1944," says Rav Lau. "I can still hear the Germans yelling 'Schnell, schnell!' as they crowded us onto the train platform. My brother Naftali, who was eighteen, had been put with a group of men, and I was with my mother. Women and children were being shoved into one freight car, men into another.
"At the last second before boarding the train, my mother gave me a hard shove – over to the men, whom she hoped would be used for labor and not killed. 'Tulek!' she called to my brother. 'Take Lulek! Goodbye, Tulek! Goodbye, Lulek!'
"I never saw her again.
“Never in my short life had I cried like that, and never in all the long years since then. It took a long time until I understood that by pushing me away like that, my mother had saved my life."
He ended up in Buchenwald. His brother smuggled him into the camp in a sack. And Lulek survived.
Rav Lau once shared his memories when the Americans have arrived and Buchenwald was liberated. "I remember the looks of horror on the faces of the American soldiers when they came in and stared around them. I was afraid when I saw them. I crept behind a pile of dead bodies and hid there, watching them warily.
"Rabbi Herschel Schachter was the Jewish chaplain of the division. I saw him get out of a jeep and stand there, staring at the corpses. He has often told this story, how he thought he saw a pair of living eyes looking out from among the dead. It made his hair stand on end, but slowly and cautiously he made his way around the pile, and then, he clearly remembers coming face-to-face with me, an eight-year-old boy, wide-eyed with terror. In heavily-accented American Yiddish, he asked me, 'How old are you, mein kind?' There were tears in his eyes.
"'What difference does it make?' I answered, warily. 'I'm older than you, anyway.'
"He smiled through his tears and said, 'Why do you think you're older than me?'
"And I answered, 'Because you cry and laugh like a child. I haven't laughed in a long time, and I don't even cry anymore. So which one of us is older?”
There is a photo that is framed and hangs on the wall for all to see as they enter Rabbi Lau’s home. It's the famous photograph of a smiling, eight-year-old Lulek, a coat draped over one arm, the other holding a suitcase.
"An American soldier donated an old suitcase to me from the army surplus storehouse. It went with me to Israel, and it held everything I owned, as I wandered from one educational institution to another. By the time I got married, it was so shabby that my wife wanted to throw it out, but I refused to part with it. 'This was my house,' I told her. 'If our children ever complain, I'll show it to them and say, "This is what your father had when he was a boy." I put it up in the storage loft of our building, and when we moved to another apartment, I came back for it. I climbed seventy-five steps to retrieve it, but I found nothing there but the handle. The suitcase had disintegrated.
"But I have the photo. Elie Wiesel, who was with me in Buchenwald, presented it to me at an event; he'd spotted it in a museum in Vancouver. It came as a complete surprise to me. As soon as the children saw it, they all said, 'There's the suitcase!'
"When I leave my house every day, on one side of the door is the mezuzah; on the other side is this photograph. Each time I see it, it says the same thing to me: Yisrael, look at Lulek. Now your task is to justify the fact that you were saved. You must carry out your parents' mission; you must keep the chain unbroken. This is from whence you came."
"And across from the photo, the mezuzah tells me 'before Whom I'm destined to give an accounting."
Forward fifty years. In 1993 Rav Yisroel Meir Law was appointed as the Chief Rabbi of Israel. He decides he wants to go back to his father’s shul in the Polish town of Pietrikov. The fact that both of his parents and siblings were murdered in the Holocaust and now he could come back as Chief Rabbi of Israel to that very same city, was deeply meaningful to him. As it happened to be, he arrived in his hometown, for the Shabbat before Tisha B’Av – Shabbat Chazon.
Rabbi Lau is known as an exceptional orator—just like his father, Rabbi Moshe Law, was, and just like his cousin, Rabbi Meir Schapiro, who used to be the Rabbi of Pietrikov before Rabbi Law, and then moved to become the Rabbi of Lublin where he died in 1933. Now, no Lau has given a sermon in Pietrikov since 1941, when Reb Moshe Lau was beaten publically and sent to the death camps. Now, more than five decades later, his son returned to the very same spot to deliver a sermon on that special Shabbat.
What a sermon he gave! One that is engraved in my heart.
Let me share with you one point Rav Israel Meir Lau shared with the audience a remarkable story of the Midrash on the book of Eicha (Lamentations). It is an incredibly moving and powerful Midrash.
When the Master of the World allowed His Holy Temple to be destroyed [in 586 BCE] Abraham, the first Jew, came to G-d, weeping and wailing, over the fate of his children. Even the ministering angels joined him in mourning. Abraham asked G-d, how could You allow this to happen to my children?
Israel has transgressed my laws, G-d replied. Says who? Abraham asked.
The Torah will testify against them, G-d said.
The Torah came forth to testify against the Jewish people.
Abraham turned to the Torah and said: My Daughter! You will testify against the Jewish people? Have you no shame? Have you no dignity? Have you no gratitude? When G-d was searching for a nation to accept you, His Torah, He went around to all nations and they all refused you. It was only the Jewish people who came to Mt. Sinai and accepted you with grace and respect. Now you have the audacity to testify against them? Shame on you!
And the Torah became silent. She refused to say another word against the People of the Book.
So G-d said to Abraham, that the 22 letters of the Hebrew alphabet will come to testify against Israel. The 22 letters of the holy tongue—considered the building blocks not only of Torah but of creation itself—showed up to testify that the Jews have transgressed the laws of G-d.
The Aleph rose to testify and Abraham said to the letter Aleph: “Shame on you! How can you testify against the children of Israel? The Ten Commandments begin with your letter—the letter Aleph. Remember the day G-d came down on Mt. Sinai and declared the Ten Commandments opening up with your letter, and no nations accepted them, save for the Jewish people?! How dare you to demonstrate such a lack of gratitude and appreciation? How dare you speak up against these same Jews? You should be ashamed of yourself!
And, indeed, the Aleph became silent and walked away. It would not say another word against the Jewish people.
The letter Beis was then summoned to testify. Again Abraham challenged it: “Are you not ashamed to testify against the Jewish people? Does the entire Torah not begin with the letter Beis (Bereshit barah Elokim)? Who was the nation who, with excitement and alacrity, accepted the Torah which opens with your letter? It was only the Jews! Whence the chutzpah to speak out against them?
The Beis was silenced. It could not testify against the Jews.
G-d summoned the letter Gimmel.
“Are you not ashamed of yourself,” thundered Abraham. “You're the first letter of the commandment to wear tzitzit. Who keeps the mitzvah of tzitzit besides for the Jews? They are the only people who accepted your mitzvah, the mitzvah which opens with the letter Gimmel. How dare you?!
The Gimmel was silenced silently.
And so, continues the Midrash, when the remainder of the letters observed this, they all felt ashamed to testify against the Jewish people and none of the letters would say anything negative.
Immediately, Abraham spoke up and said: I waited 100 years to have a son. And then I was willing to sacrifice my beloved son for You. Won't You remember that?
Isaac added: I was willing to be sacrificed. Won't You remember that?
Jacob added I spent my life tending to my children, the house of Israel, in service of Your plan. Won't You remember that?
Moses added I was a faithful shepherd to the house of Israel for forty years. In the desert, I ran before them like a horse, and You didn't even let me enter the land with them, and now You're allowing them to be exiled and killed? Won't You remember?
Moses and the prophet Jeremiah (author of the book of Eicha, Lamentations, that we read on Tisha b'Av) went to see the destruction with their own eyes. It was hard for them to walk because the roads were filled with corpses. And they saw people being killed left and right, death and suffering everywhere. Moses cursed the sun, saying: Sun, why didn't you go dark when this happened?
And then Rachel spoke.
G-d, she said: You remember that Jacob loved me exceedingly, but my father chose to give him Leah in my place. Jacob and I had worked out a system of signals, so he would know whether or not it was really me in his bedroom. But then I had pity on my sister and I taught her the signals so he wouldn't realize it was her. I even lay beneath their bed, and when he spoke to her, she was silent and I responded in her stead.
If I -- a creature of flesh and blood, made of dust and ashes -- could overcome my jealousy in order to be kind to my sister...why are You, the sovereign of all existence, jealous of the false gods with whom the Israelites dally, false gods who aren't even real?! How can You let Your jealousy cause your children to be slain and exiled?
And the mercy of G-d was stirred by Rachel's argument. And G-d said: For your sake, Rachel, I will restore the house of Israel to their place. Have hope for the future. The exile will come to an end. “And there is hope for your future, says the Lord, and the children shall return to their own border.”
Let me give one illustration of Rabbi Lau’s words.
Rabbi Zvi Hirsch Meisels, a Hungarian Rabbi, in his book Mekadshey Hashem relates his experience of Rosh Hashanah 1944 - six month before the end of the Second World War:
I managed miraculously to bring a shofar into Auschwitz. On the first day of Rosh Hashanah I went from block to block, shofar in hand, to sound the blows. I had to avoid the SS guards and the Jewish Kapos who would inform me. I was privileged to sound the shofar that Rosh Hashanah some twenty times, coming to a hundred blasts in total. This revived the spirits of the shattered camp inmates and gave them some peace of mind knowing that at least they could observe one mitzvah in Auschwitz – that of the shofar on Rosh Hashanah.
One transport of about one thousand souls was sent from Auschwitz on the first day of Rosh Hashanah towards evening. Because of the preparations for the trip and the confusion, they could not hear the shofar. The transport was at the edge of the camp near the gate, ready and waiting to leave the gates of Auschwitz. When I reached them, I told them I had a shofar with me, and they were brimming with joy and begged me to blow the one-hundred sounds quickly so they could fulfill the mitzvah before the gate opened and they would be on their way to who knows where….
I can still hear reverberating in my ears the sobs that burst forth from those thousand people during the blowing of the shofar. I especially remember the trembling voice of the well-known Chassid who announced the sounds before I blew them. He was Rabbi Yehoshua Fleischman, may G-d avenge his blood, from Debrecen, Hungary, who called out the notes in a piercing wail, tekiah, shevarim-teruah, tekiah…
There was a group of young boys who were locked in the block and were about to be sent to the gas-chambers crematoria. They found out that I had a shofar. I heard shouts and entreaties emanating from their block imploring me to come to them and sound the one hundred blasts of the shofar, so they could fulfill this precious mitzvah on Rosh Hashanah in their last moments of life before they would be gazed and burnt.
I was beside myself and completely confounded, because this involved a tremendous risk, since it was nearing twilight, a dangerous hour, and the Nazis would be coming to take them. If the Nazis were to suddenly show up while I was in there with the youngsters, no doubt they would take me to the crematoria as well.
I stood there weighing the situation and trying to decide what to do. But the youths’ bitter supplications were heart-piercing. “Rebbe, Rebbe! Please, have pity on our souls. We beg you to enable us to observe this mitzvah in our last moments.” I stood there immobile. I was all alone in my decision.
My dear son Zalman Leib stood next to me, and he too entreated me with bitter sobs. “Father, father! Don’t do this and endanger yourself because this may turn me into an orphan, and leave me stranded and alone. Father, father! Don’t go, don’t enter that block. You aren’t obligated to take the risk. You already blew the shofar so many times, and each time you risked your life. You have done more than enough.” When I gazed at my son, pity and compassion welled up in me and I saw that he was, in a certain sense, correct.
But on the other hand, the bewailing of the boys gave me no peace and aroused in my heart tremendous compassion for them,” Rabbi Meisels writes. Maybe this mitzvah will give them some protection during the difficulties that lie ahead. I was torn…
I reached a decision. I cannot turn the boys down. I will ignore the pleas of my dear son. The Kapos warned me twice that if the bell at the gate sounded, meaning that the S.S. was coming to the camp, then my fate would be sealed along with the boys in the block…
I accepted their conditions and went into the youths. I told my son Zalman Leib to stand in the street and watch the gate from a distance. If he sees the S.S. men coming he should run and alert me immediately and I will leave the block.
“Where is the pen, and where is the writer, who could possibly put on paper my inner feelings when I entered the block,” declares Rabbi Meisels in his book. It is a miracle that my heart was not splintered into pieces when I saw the dozens of youthful eyes and heard their terrible sobbing. With tears burning and voices beseeching to the heavens, they pushed to reach me, to kiss my hand, to touch my clothes. All the time bewailing, “Rebbe, rebbe!” Some of them were my students, and others were from my town. When I began to recite the prayer preceding the shofar blowing, “From the depths do I cry out to G-d,” they exploded into a cry and demanded that I give them a sermon. They insisted on words of inspiration and would not even let me continue the prayer. I was so stunned and moved that I was mute, my tongue clung to my palate, and I could not open my mouth. I was also afraid that if there were any further delay this window of opportunity would be closed. Dusk would soon settle and the ensuing danger would be great.
Imagine… Jewish youth from Hungry, lacked up in a block, waiting to be sent to die, requesting to hear words of inspiration, on Rosh Hashanah…
And Rabbi Meisels continues the story:
I acquiesced to their pleading and began a “speech.”
Friends, this was the deepest, holiest, and most precious sermon ever presented in the annals of mankind. A sermon in Auschwitz, a sermon spoken to the holiest of the holy, to the most sacred and beloved souls in all of our history.
The Rabbi began his “sermon” on the verse from Psalm 81 (recited in the prayers of Rosh Hashanah): “Blow the shofar at the moon’s renewal.” Rosh Hashanah is the only holiday in the Jewish calendar that takes place on the first day of the month when we can’t see the moon [Passover and Sukkot are on the 15th of the month when we have a full moon] We blow the shofar when the moon is eclipsed, concealed when all the light is covered by dense darkness… When G-d is most hidden from us.
This is when we blow the shofar. This is when we still hold on to the voice of Sinai and the hope of Moshiach. The Talmud teaches (Brachot 10a) that “even when a sword dangles at your throat, you must not despair of Divine mercy.”
Rabbi Meisels continues:
“I must continue relating what happened so that future generations will know the great devotion, mesirut nefesh, and holy words I heard that day from those teenagers in the moments before they were taken to their deaths. After I sounded the shofar, I tried to go outside. One boy stood in my way and uttered a mournful cry, “Friends, the Rebbe gave us encouragement; even when a sword dangles at your throat…” The others responded amidst their tears with a resounding ‘Shema Yisrael Hashem Elokanu Hashem Echad…
These boys – oy, how we want to embrace each and every one of them -- heard the shofar and then they have led soon after into the gas chambers….
And here we are today, exactly 77 years later, still holding on to the shofar and to the entire Torah!
This is what Rabbi Lau said in his sermon back in his father’s city of Pietrikov. Moses knew something about his people that even Abraham did not realize. Not only can we ask the letters to be silent, but we can ask the letters to testify!
How right he was! The Gestapo sent his father, Reb Moshe Lau, to Treblinka. 60 years later, his son Lulek returns to his father’s pulpit and declares: No! The Torah has not been forgotten. Do you want to testify? Please do! Aleph, Bet, Gimmel—you are welcome to come and testify. Say the truth of what your eyes saw over the law two millennia of Jewish history.
I once heard a lovely illustration of this point by Rabbi Manis Friedman.
Three thousand, three hundred and thirty-three years ago, G‑d asked us if we would marry Him. We had an extraordinary wedding ceremony, with great special effects—we were wowed. After the wedding, He said, “I have a few things I’d like you to take care of for Me, so, please . . . I’ll be right back.” He hasn’t been heard from since. For more than three thousand, three hundred years. He has sent messengers, messages, postcards—you know, writing on the walls . . . but we haven’t heard a word from Him in all this time.
Imagine, a couple gets married, and the man says to his new wife, “Would you make me something to eat, please? I’ll be right back.” She begins preparing. The guy comes back 3333 years later, walks into the house, up to the table, straight to his favorite chair, sits down, and tastes the soup that is on the table. The soup is cold.
What will his reaction be? If he’s a wise man, he won’t complain. Rather, he’ll think it’s a miracle that the house is still there, that his table and favorite chair are still there. He’ll be delighted to see a bowl of soup at his place. The soup is cold? Well, yes, over 3300 years, soup can get cold.
Now we are expecting Moshiach. If Moshiach comes now and wants to judge, what’s he going to find? Cold soup?
If Moshiach comes now, he will find an incredibly healthy Jewish people. After 3333 years we are concerned about being Jewish, which means we are concerned about our relationship with G‑d.
So, let Moshiach come now and catch us here with our cold soup because we have nothing to be ashamed of. We are truly incredible. When G‑d decided to marry us, He knew He was getting a really good deal.
Shabbat Shalom,
Rabbi Yoseph Geisinsky
Jason Bennett wrote...