Rosh Hashana in the Telz Ghetto
The Telz Ghetto was in the very worst part of the city. The
men had already been deported, so the people, mostly women,
lived in cowsheds and stables. When Rosh Hashana, the Jewish
New Year, came, the women gathered in the old synagogue for
the holiday service. There were hardly any prayer books, nor
was there anyone to serve as rabbi or cantor. They all waited.
Suddenly a sweet voice was heard: "Bless the Lord who is
blessed" and the congregation responded: "Blessed
be the Lord who is blessed forever and ever." In front
of the Holy Ark stood a young girl who prayed by heart, like
a real cantor, and the congregation was swept after her. The
girl also pretended to blow the shofar. She put her hands to
her mouth and blew through her fists to make the sounds of the
shofar. The girl was Tova Golda Amalan. She was known for her
kindness and her concern for other people. In the village, Tova
Golda had helped a widower with his shopping and prepared his
meals on Shabbat and festival eves. Tova Golda refused to take
any money from the man, but he wanted to give her something
for all of her work. The old man was a cantor and Tova Golda
asked him to teach her the prayers for festivals; and so she
had learned the prayers and cantorial melodies.
Now, in these hours of grief and fear, she used her sweet voice
to sing her beautiful songs to comfort the women in the ghetto.
-Adapted from The Book of Telz, a Memorial to a Holy Community,
by Chassia Gering-Goldberg
On December 24 and 25, 1941, the Nazis murdered the Telz
women, including Tova Golda. Only 64 women survived.
Yom
Kippur in Elie Weisel's Night
"Should we fast? The question was hotly debated. To fast
would mean a surer, swifter death. We fasted here the whole
year round. The whole year was Yom Kippur. But others said
that we should fast simply because it was dangerous to do
so. We should show God that even here, in this enclosed hell,
we were capable of singing His praises."
"I did not fast, mainly to please my father, who had
forbidden me to do so. But further, there was no longer any
reason why I should fast. I no longer accepted God's silence.
As I swallowed my bowl of soup, I saw in the gesture an act
of rebellion and protest against Him. And I nibbled my crust
of bread. In the depths of my heart, I felt a great void."
Preparing
for the High Holiday
The
following article is excerpted from Vedem, the underground
magazine produced by boys in the Terezin Ghetto. The writer
is their teacher and mentor, Prof. Valtr Eisinger (1913-1945).
I noticed an interesting psychological feature in myself this
week: How even an unbeliever and atheist can be drawn against
his will into the emotions surrounding the high holidays.
Rosh Hashana, the Jewish New Year, is the first link in a
chain of ten days, when every Jew scrutinizes his actions
over the last year, weighs them on the scales of his impersonalized
sense of justice and, before his conscience or before God,
confesses all his sins and repents.
Not even
I could escape the atmosphere enveloping Terezin in the days
of Rosh Hashana, an atmosphere whose special aroma was sweetly
familiar to me from my Orthodox past. But in my case, it indicated
a special kind of contemplation. I did not examine my own
past actions, but rather those of the people around me.
The world
is swimming in a sea of war crimes. Its depths are unmeasurable.
So I ask myself: how should I behave towards the perpetrators
of that war? Is the German nation as a whole guilty? Should
our hatred, our just rage, and our judgment come down on them
all, without distinction?
I do not
want to give you ready answers. That would be too easy. Nor
do I wish to say straight out: Let us love these and hate
those. I shall try to outline a method that is less easy,
one that will force you to think and draw your own conclusions.
By a most
unusual chance I discovered, on the eve of Rosh Hashana, a
notebook of mine containing my notes on Eckermann's conversations
with Goethe. Some of the notes I include here:
1. "He
who would act justly, need never condemn, need never consider
what perversity is, but most only act well. It is not a question
of tearing down, but of building up, what could become a source
of joy to humanity."
2. "The
poet loves his country as a man, and a citizen, but the land
of his poetic power and his poetic acts is goodness, nobility
and beauty, which are bound to no particular region and no
particular country. Then what does love of one's country and
patriotism mean? They mean fighting against all harmful prejudices,
eliminating narrow-minded views, enlightening the spirit of
one's own nation.
3. "The
only important thing is how one weighs in on the scales of
humanity. Everything else is conceit."
Shofar from the Heavens
By GREER FAY CASHMAN
Jerusalem "Post" Oct. 12, 2005 7:13
Marta and Ernest Schwarcz were Holocaust survivors from Hungary.
Dr. Ernest Schwarcz was the founding director of Judaic Studies
at the CUNY, City University of New York. Prior to this position,
he served as Jewish Studies director at Mount Scopus College
in Melbourne, Australia.
Marta Schwarcz related that along with other Holocaust survivors,
they had left their native Hungary and
were living in Austria. While there, Ernest conducted Jewish
educational programs for refugee children waiting to settle
in new lands of promise far removed from the traumas they
had experienced.
When notified that he would be among some 800 passengers sailing
from Italy to Australia, Schwarcz calculated that they would
be celebrating the High Holy Days on board. He learned that
one elderly
man traveling on the ship had a Torah scroll. Now, all they
needed was a shofar. Schwarcz wrote ahead to Italy to everyone
who might provide a shofar.
When they arrived in Genoa on the day preceding Rosh Hashana,
they took a taxi to the synagogue to see if they could get
a shofar there. With tears in his eyes, the rabbi told them
that the congregation had only one shofar and he could not
part with it. Disappointed, the couple went back to the ship,
which shortly afterwards, left port. That evening, the captain
of the ship told Schwarcz to go up on deck because a helicopter
was dropping a package for him. Literally out of the sky came
a shofar - with the compliments of the chief rabbi of Rome.
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