Torah as Jewish Culture

If you ever go to the Jaffa flea market in the afternoon, you will be treated to a unique experience. At a designated moment, the peddlers stop hawking their wares, the shoppers stop inspecting the merchandise heaped in piles on the sidewalks and all gather for an open-air mincha (afternoon prayers) session. I love this marketplace prayer. It has a special grace. I always prefer to pray with working-people who stop in the middle of their toil to praise G-d than to recite the prayers in the synagogue. When the Torah becomes our national way of life, a culture that bursts forth far from the walls of the study hall, it carries the whisper of redemption on its wings.

The Scroll of Ruth that we will be reading on the holiday of Shavuot this Wednesday is the story of the Jewish People living their Torah culture in their Land. Boaz is not a yeshiva head or a famous rabbi. He is a Jew who works his land. The working people in the Scroll of Ruth remain in their Land despite the famine and abandonment by their leaders. They conduct themselves according to the cultural code of faith and loving kindness that they absorbed from the Torah and that is part of their lives.

That is also our goal; to turn our Torah into our culture. "You know," said one of the senior managers of the Knesset channel after I finished an interview there, "all sorts of religious MK's come through our studio. I am secular - I try to understand them, but I just can't. You are the only person with a kippah on his head that I can understand."

I do not think that he meant that the religious MKs are not expressing themselves with enough eloquence. I think that he sensed the connection that Manhigut Yehudit makes between Judaism and reality.

The Scroll of Ruth teaches us that this authentic connection bears the secret of redemption. Many we merit to bring it soon!

I just watched a documentary of Jewish families in Poland in the 1930s in their villages. These were taken by family members who were in the US and came for a holiday. These are happy people, smiling, keeping their traditions as they had in that land for centuries.

Yet, 15-20 years later most were dead, murdered by the Germans. It is a sobering documentary.

Here in Warsaw one is surrounded by the past -- the 6 million Poles (Jewish and Gentile) killed by the Nazis have made the country wistful

I posted on another thread about Janusz Korczak, Henryk Goldschmidt, I see the goodness that mankind is capable of

This statue is in central Warsaw, on the ground of the Pałac Kultury i Nauki (Palace of Culture and Science, a horrible Soviet edifice put up by Stalin to intimidate the Poles) and it always touches me when I see it

If you read "The Pianist" by Władysław Szpilman'

One day, around 5th August, when I had taken a brief rest from work and was walking down Gęsia Street, I happened to see Janusz Korczak and his orphans leaving the ghetto. The evacuation of the Jewish orphanage run by Janusz Korczak had been ordered for that morning. The children were to have been taken away alone. He had the chance to save himself, and it was only with difficulty that he persuaded the Germans to take him too. He had spent long years of his life with children and now, on this last journey, he could not leave them alone. He wanted to ease things for them. He told the orphans they were going out in to the country, so they ought to be cheerful. At last they would be able to exchange the horrible suffocating city walls for meadows of flowers, streams where they could bathe, woods full of berries and mushrooms. He told them to wear their best clothes, and so they came out into the yard, two by two, nicely dressed and in a happy mood. The little column was led by an SS man who loved children, as Germans do, even those he was about to see on their way into the next world. He took a special liking to a boy of twelve, a violinist who had his instrument under his arm. The SS man told him to go to the head of the procession of children and play – and so they set off. When I met them in Gęsia Street, the smiling children were singing in chorus, the little violinist was playing for them and Korczak was carrying two of the smallest infants, who were beaming too, and telling them some amusing story. I am sure that even in the gas chamber, as the Zyklon B gas was stifling childish throats and striking terror instead of hope into the orphans' hearts, the Old Doctor must have whispered with one last effort, ‘it's all right, children, it will be all right’. So that at least he could spare his little charges the fear of passing from life to death."

and if that doesn't make one cry, nothing will

Outside the Jewish Cemetery here (Cmentarz Żydowski) I saw this sign yesterday (it's old, but on the side and I hadn't noticed it before) -- it says that 300,000 Poles of Jewish faith or origin were squeezed into the ghetto by the Germans. Food rations were slowly reduced and 100,000 died of starvation. Most of the others were sent to Treblinka or the other death camps. Only a handful made it out alive...

On every street corner you can see a small sign which says "Here on ______, the Nazis (Hitlerów) killed xx number of partisans/civilians etc." And every day there are flowers and żniczki (lighted candles)

I'm sorry for jumping on your thread, but this story of the utter evil and utter good displayed by men is always on memory.

To the credit of the Germans, their children are taught this every year from the time they are 5 until 15 and beyond. I was with a bunch of German 20-somethings when I went to the Muzeum Powstanie Warszawskiego (Museum of the Warsaw Uprising) for the second time. It had a new film computer-generated showing a birds-eye view of Warsaw after the Uprising. The Germans destroyed every inch of the city, but the ghetto was stark even in this starkness -- that area was burnt to the ground. And the guides and the story were continuously "The Germans did this" "the Germans did that" and I felt sorry for the German young to hear this, but they told me they understood and have been made to understand this through their lives. We cannot blame these for the sins of their grandfathers.

Forgive, but never forget...

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.