I have just returned from an intense tour of Poland and a healing week in Eretz Yisrael. Once we decided to go on the Poland tour, also going to Israel was a foregone conclusion. How would I ever be able to justify traveling so far and being so close to Eretz Yisrael without visiting?! Going to Israel first was an option, but there was the worry of cancelled or delayed flights, all too common these days with flights in and out of Israel, unfortunately. If we travelled to Eretz Yisrael first and there was a delay, we could miss the entire Poland (group) tour. On the other hand, going to Eretz Yisrael from Poland meant that a delay might leave us with extra time in Eretz Yisrael; there are worse things.
In fact, though, I am very thankful that we planned the trip that was. The Poland tour was intense, to be sure. It was also painful. I hadn't realized how painful it was until I was breathing the air and walking through the land of Eretz Yisrael; our land. Our land because we are the People of the Torah and the Author of Creation took it from them and gave it to us.
I have a few thoughts about Poland. I had mixed feelings about going there, as my grandmother, a"h—a woman who was the very personification of love—filled me with a hatred for that country. It is well deserved. Of course the horror of the death camps leaves the first and most intense impression. I know a fair amount about the Holocaust, but אין שמיעה כראייה/knowing something can't be compared to actually seeing it. Treblinka—where the average life expectancy of a Jew from the time he stepped off the train was 90 minutes. Auschwitz/Birkenau was able to murder over 1,000 people—men, women, and children—each hour. That is an Oct 7 every hour, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week; week after week, month after month. The efficiency was chilling. As the Jew got off the trains, they were given a tag to mark their luggage so they would be calm about leaving it on the platform. The men were separated from the women and children. That way there were fewer complaints about undressing. Absolutely chilling efficiency.
The next week, as that was all settling in my psyche, I realized there was something worse; not as dramatic, but worse. There were thousands of villages in Poland that each had an associated Jewish shtetl with a thousand or 1,200 Jews. People just rounded up and turned over to the Germans their friends and neighbors. People who had lived in peace for 100s of years were just rounded up and either shot in the surrounding forests (mostly by eager Lithuanian volunteers, not Poles) or deported to the murder centers. All of those thousands of small Jewish cemeteries are gone. Some marked by a fence, but otherwise no trace. The headstones all removed and used in the construction of Polish homes. That chills me to the bone. I can't see any beauty in Poland. All the lush forests, meadows, and flowing rivers—all coated and dripping in Jewish blood.
I took only one picture on the tour. I was focused on the moment and wanted to experience everything as a participant and not an observer. There was one sight, though, that I wanted to keep and share:
In the background you can see the all too familiar main gate of Auschwitz/Birkenau. In the foreground... an ice cream stand.
That brings me to the title of this TftD. I am coining a new term: יראת אישית/Awe of the Human. What do I mean by that? The very first Rashi on parshas Yisro:
וַיִּשְׁמַע יִתְרוֹ. מַה שְּׁמוּעָה שָׁמַע וּבָא? קְרִיעַת יַם סוּף וּמִלְחֶמֶת עֲמָלֵק:/And Yisro heard: What news did he hear and come? The splitting of the Yam Suf and the war of Ameleik.
Many years ago, when I was just beginning my life as an Orthodox Jew, the rabbi (Rabbi Aryeh Rodin, in Dallas, Tx) began his Shabbos sermon with this Rashi. It is certainly understandable that Yisro would be inspired by the miraculous salvation of the Jewish people and walking out through the sea. But why was Yisro inspired to join Klal Yisrael by the war of Amaleik?
What Yisro heard and understood was the depths to which a human being could fall without the Torah. Yisro didn't fear being attacked by Amaleik. Yisro didn't fear attacks by Nazis and Hamas terrorists. Yisro was terrified to realize that he could become Amaleik. The one and only protection from becoming a Nazi is to be part of the nation of the Torah.
Seeing that ice cream stand, seeing people enjoying bike rides through memorials to mass graves, seeing that Majdanek was surrounded by homes and farms, etc... everywhere I looked and everything I saw brought that Rashi into vibrant focus. There is Am Yisrael, the Nation of the Torah, and there are people who build ice cream stands.
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