Nissan 1, 5768, 4/6/2008
The Gabbai
Yaamod, 57200148! ... Shloimele Shloimele! Is it really you?"
The gabbai's eyes moved rapidly across the familiar faces of the men packed
into shul on this sunny Shabbos morning.
Shloime Kaufman, the gabbai, had been going through this routine for the
past twenty years, looking out over the congregation and at his many friends
and neighbors a world of warm-hearted people with whom he shared his life.
Choosing a few each week for aliyos was a job that came with its
difficulties, but it also gave him the weekly opportunity to count these
blessings. This secure, contented world in which he found himself was all
the more precious because, by any law of logic or probability, it should
never have come into existence.
The world Mr. Kaufman had known as a child and young man in Poland had been
erased. It had collapsed all around him, snuffing out the lives of his loved
ones. At the time, he had thought that surely the few survivors who managed
to emerge from the rubble alive would be left with nothing no yeshivos, no
shuls, no gedolim to guide them. And yet, here he was, the grandfather of a
beautiful, Torah-observant family, the gabbai of a thriving shul, surrounded
by friends and family. Better to relish the miracle of the present than
think too much about the searing pain of the past.
Mr. Kaufman scanned the rows of men as the Torah was removed from the ark.
His eyes rested upon an unfamiliar face, a man about his own age with a
short grey beard. He hadn't seen him in shul before. He surmised that he
must be a guest. But there was something very familiar about this face.
Suddenly, the man's features and expression jarred loose a powerful flash of
recognition in Mr. Kaufman's mind. It was Menachem Reiner, his closest
childhood friend. It was Menachem, the boy with whom he had grown up in
their small Polish shtetl, with whom he had attended yeshivah in Bialystock.
It was Menachem, the young man to whom he had clung, and who had clung to
him, as they began their cattle-car journey into the fearsome blackness of
Auschwitz . They had promised each other to stick together, they had given
each other courage and hope. Bearing the numbers the Nazis had tattooed on
their arms, they had found in each other the strength to hold onto their
humanity and resist becoming only numbers. They had vowed to help each other
survive, both in body and soul.
And they did survive, Boruch Hashem. But when the war ended, each went his
own way, eager to begin anew. For sanity's sake, they each tucked the past
away into a deep, locked box that would be opened only on rare occasions.
Menachem had settled in Israel , and Shloime Kaufman had obtained a visa for
America .
Consumed with creating a future and healing the wounds of the past, they had
lost touch with each other. That was forty-two years ago. Now, with
unbelieving eyes and trembling hands, Mr. Kaufman beheld the unmistakable
face of his friend once again. Shlomie decided in his mind: Menachem Reiner
would get the sixth aliyah.
As the Torah reading began, the gabbai felt as if his heart could not be
contained in his chest. He wanted to leap across the rows of men and fall
upon his friend in a mighty embrace. "This must be how Yosef felt when he
finally saw his brother Binyamin," he thought to himself. "All these years!"
Nevertheless, he clamped a tight lid on his emotions and performed his duty,
calling up each aliyah with the traditional chant of "Ya'amod" followed by
the honoree's Hebrew name. By the fifth aliyah, however, beads of sweat were
sparkling on his forehead and tears were welling up in his eyes. He prayed
that when the time came to call up number six, his voice would be able to
break free of his tight throat.
There was no need to ask Menachem his name because he could never forget
Menachem ben Yehoshua. For the first time, he began to wonder how would
Menachem react when they came face to face? It was time to call him up, but
Mr. Kaufman could not open his mouth. There were no words fit for this
moment. All the suffering locked away in that figurative box was now out in
the open, laid out before his eyes, and it was too much to bear.
The congregation began murmuring and looking toward Mr. Kaufman, fearing
that the pale, trembling man was becoming ill. A deep cry rose up inside the
gabbai a cry to Hashem that contained in its broken sound all of His
children's cries of anguish. Mr. Kaufman turned in the direction of his
friend and at last found his voice. "Yaamod, 57200148!" he called.
The baffled men in the shul did not understand what had happened. What was
this number? What had become of Mr. Kaufman? But in the back of the room,
one man understood completely. The number was Menachem's number, tattooed on
his arm as a lifetime reminder of the darkest period of Jewish history, the
epic tragedy of his people which he had witnessed with his own eyes.
The entire shul sat in stony silence as Menachem moved slowly toward the
bimah. Finally, as they saw him approaching his long-lost brother, they
understood the scene that was unfolding in front of them. Menachem needed no
introduction. With tears coursing down his face, he cried out, "Shloimele!
Shloimele! Is it really you?" "Yes, Menachem, it's really me!" Mr. Kaufman
answered, embracing his friend. They wept into each other's shoulders,
rocking gently. "Ay, ay, ay, ay, ay," Mr. Kaufman breathed. Words were
powerless to carry his chaotic emotions.
The entire shul sat spellbound, witnessing a moment that could have melted a
heart made of iron. As these two men stood together, living witnesses to the
Jewish people's miraculous survival, it seemed that the Heavens had opened
up to declare, through them, that Hashem would never forsake His people. Am
Yisrael Chai! The Jewish nation is alive, and Torah has been rebuilt in
America .
The Holocaust survivors who came to America planted the seeds, and it is up
to us to reap the fruits of their labor and continue their legacy.
(From,
Stories for the Jewish Heart - Book 2 R. Binyomin Pruzansky)
(Thanks to Jack L. for emailing me this)
