Two years ago, I joined my friend and her family at the gravesite to commemorate his yahrzeit. It was a Sunday afternoon. Two nights later, we received the call that our four and a half year old nephew Lucas had been killed in a car accident.
Last night, I went to be with my friend at the memorial for the boys who died on Rosh Hodesh Adar at Merkaz HaRav. I want to share some of what I heard there in hopes that it will bring comfort at this season to Eddie and Sophie and all who loved Lucas, to Mimi and Paul whose son Ben died last week, and to anyone reading it.
My apologies in advance for any lapses in my memory or misunderstandings. The hour was late, the Hebrew was rapid and often accented.
Two speakers last night impressed me deeply. One was an elderly great man, I do not know his name, he is a Rosh Yeshiva, not from Merkaz Harav. He spoke in accented Hebrew, clearly Yiddish was his first language. He was the only speaker who brought books with him to read from and he read from the Gemara with Yiddish accented Aramaic, translating some parts into less accented Hebrew. American English was also in the background of his accent. He got my attention when he mentioned, in an aside, that he was born in Shanghai.
From Wikipedia:
Another wave of 18,000 Jews from Germany, Austria, and Poland immigrated to Shanghai in the late 1930s and the early 1940s.[30] Shanghai at the time was an open city and did not have restrictions on immigration, and some Chinese diplomats such as Ho Feng Shan issued "protective" passports. In 1943, the occupying Japanese army required these 18,000 Jews, formally known as "stateless refugees," to relocate to an area of 0.75 square miles (1.9 km2) in Shanghai's Hongkew district (today known as Hongkou District) where many lived in group homes called "Heime".[31] The total number of Jews entering Shanghai during this period equaled the number of Jews fleeing to Australia, Canada, India, New Zealand and South Africa combined. Many of the Jews in China later moved to found modern Israel.
Shanghai was an important safe-haven for Jewish refugees during the Holocaust, since it was one of the few places in the world where one didn't need a visa. However, it was not easy to get there. The Japanese, who controlled the city, preferred in effect to look the other way. Some corrupt officials however, also exploited the plight of the Jews. By 1941 nearly 20,000 European Jews had found shelter there.
This rabbi seemed to me as if he carried the history of the Jewish people in the 20th century in his body. He spoke of Rav Kook. He told stories that I did not understand.
And he taught a Gemara from Yevamot, the point of which was to say that a yahrzeit, the anniversary of a death, is considered like one of the shalosh regalim (three pilgrimage festivals). He went on to talk about the importance of walking at the regalim, how even one who arrived in a cart had to get down the last way to the Temple. How walking allows us to slowly come in to something. And how for anniversaries, Yahrzeits, as my friend calls them "angelversaries", we need to enter slowly, we are entering a holy time.
I regret that because of my difficulties in understanding, I did not retain more of what this great man said. He did speak several times about why he was there, and how important it is to bear the burdens of others and to be with those who are in sorrow.
The other speaker who impressed me greatly was the Be'er Sheva Chief Rabbi Yehuda Deri (Aryeh Deri's brother). He had an amazing presence, when he spoke I saw lots of energy and light around him, and I was quite a distance away. (Davka, the shul, Beit Knesset Yeshurun, felt very hamish, close and accessible and though we were of course on the balcony, I did not feel distant from the speakers or musicians.)
He started out by speaking about Nadav and Avihu, the two sons of Aaron who were killed suddenly on the day the Mishkan (tabernacle) was dedicated. He talked about the contrast - the happy celebration and the deaths, of course referring to the fact that the terror attack at Merkaz HaRav happened on the day that we were celebrating Rosh Hodesh Adar, when we increase joy. (And Lucas died on carnival.) He said that everyone cries when the portion of Aharei Mot (After the deaths - Leviticus 16) is read on Yom Kippur and quoted a commentary saying that is why we read it on Yom Kippur, because tears open the gates of heaven.
The middle of his talk was about Tzedakah (giving charity) and Gemilut Hasadim (acts of kindness). He quoted a teaching that when the merit of our fathers and the merit of our mothers fails us, doing acts of kindness will never fail us, interpreting a beautiful verse from Isaiah:
Isaiah 54:10: For the mountains (the merit of the fathers) may move, and the hills (the merit of the mothers) be shaken, my lovingkindness/loyalty (hasdi) will never move from you....
He had two other messages. One was based on a verse, all Israel wept after them. He said that the loss was not the loss of the families alone, but the loss of all Israel and that each of us there had to feel the loss. I think this is a teaching for whenever a child dies.
His last message he explicitly said was a message of comfort. It was based on a Talmud passage in Taanit 9 where it is written that Israel had three great parnasim (caretakers of the community in the broadest sense) - Moses, Aaron and Miriam - and that each brought a gift - by the merit of Moses, Manna, by the merit of Aaron, the clouds of glory, by the merit of Miriam, the well. He then said that the Gemara (?) says that these gifts all left Israel in one month, but that this is a problem because we know that Moses died on the 7th of Adar, Miriam in Nisan, and Aaron on Rosh Hodesh Av. Then he went on to say that what it means is that after Miriam and Aaron died, the well and the clouds did not depart, because Moses, their brother, carried on their work in the world. I took him to mean that as long as ones family are alive, as long as a sibling is alive, a child is not gone from this world. He also explicitly said that as long as the Yeshiva studies Torah and carries on the work of these boys, they have not departed.
May these words be of comfort to all who mourn this month and at all times, and may we find away to "hafach mispedi lemachol li" to turn weeping into dancing. At the end of the memorial, there was beautiful music and dancing.
Avraham David Moses, ztz"l
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Our shul was founded by Shanghai Jews who came to San Francisco after the war :)
ReplyDeleteAnother interesting connection-- students and faculty of the Mir Yeshiva also passed through Shanghai as an escape route from Europe before eventually ending up in Israel.