Rabbi Avi Shafran
Selichot, 1939
Sept. 1 marked 70 years on the Gregorian calendar since the German invasion of Poland that began the Second World War and the destruction of Eastern European Jewry.
The war’s outbreak rudely interrupted the plans of millions, including those of a 14-year-old boy in a Polish shtetl. The boy — my father, may he be well — had been scheduled to travel to Bialystok to attend yeshiva.
He would eventually make it to yeshiva, in Vilna, but not before he, his family, and all the townsfolk of Ruzhan would flee their town ahead of the advancing German army. On Friday, Sept. 8, they found themselves in a town called Govrov, just before the Germans arrived there. The following Saturday night was the first night of Selichot — the special pre-Rosh HaShanah supplications asking God’s forgiveness recited late at night or early in the morning before services.
Pesach past illuminates the present
Our own private Passover
One day during my teenage years I began to think about what my father, may he be well, had been doing at my age. The thought occurred too late for me to compare his and his family’s flight by foot from the Nazis in Poland at the outbreak of World War II to my own 14th year of life — when my most daunting challenge had been, the year before, chanting my bar mitzvah portion.
Purim present
On the first day of the Jewish month Adar, the Talmud enjoins us to “increase happiness.” It is, after all, the month that holds Purim, when we express our gratitude to G-d for delivering the Jews in ancient Persia from their enemies, and when we give alms to the poor and gifts of food to one another.
In 2003, the first day of Adar brought us an early Purim present. It wasn’t food, but rather food for thought.
