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Date: Sat, 3 Oct 2015 23:59:19 -0400<br>
Subject: [RCA Forum]: Fwd: fyi - Cancel Simchas Torah!<br>
From: <br>
To:
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I like the sentiment. Not sure about the actual suggestion. Any thoughts
on doing something, or not,to acknowledge the current situation? <br>
---------- Forwarded message ----------<br>
From: "Rafael Medoff"
<<a href="mailto:rafaelmedoff@aol.com">rafaelmedoff@aol.com</a>><br>
Date: Oct 3, 2015 10:28 PM<br>
Subject: fyi - Cancel Simchas Torah!<br>
To: <a href="mailto:rafaelmedoff@aol.com">rafaelmedoff@aol.com</a><br>
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<dd><font face="arial" size=5>CANCEL SIMCHAS TORAH!<br><br>
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<dd><font face="arial" size=2>by Rafael Medoff <br><br>
<dd>(Dr. Rafael Medoff is the founding director of The David S. Wyman
Institute for Holocaust Studies, and winner of a 2015 Rockower Award from
the American Jewish Press Association for Excellence in Jewish
Journalism.)<br>
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<dd>One of the most poignant anecdotes I have encountered in thirty-plus
years of Holocaust research came out of an interview I conducted many
years ago with the daughter of a Brooklyn rabbi.<br><br>
<dd>She told me of a remarkable rule that her father, Rabbi Baruch David
Weitzmann, imposed on his Brownsville congregation in 1942, after the
first reports about the ongoing mass murder of Europe's Jews were
confirmed.<br><br>
<dd>"He wanted us to feel the tsa'ar of the Jews who were being
killed in Europe," the rabbi's daughter recalled. "So if
somebody wanted to get married--and there were a lot of these situations,
involving boys who were about to go into the army--they came to our
house, there was a little chuppah, some cake and soda, nothing more. No
celebrations, no dancing, just the chuppah. He explained to us that you
cannot celebrate at a time when other Jews are dying." <br><br>
<dd>Consider, for a moment, how drastically this deviated from normative
Jewish practice. The mitzvah of making a bride and groom happy at their
wedding is considered so important that it is one of the few commandments
which supersede the obligation to study Torah. Normally stoic rabbis set
aside their books to take part in wild dancing and assorted ribaldry to
entertain the newlyweds. <br><br>
<dd>The Talmud (Tractate Brachot 6-b) declares that one who gladdens the
hearts of the bride and groom at their wedding "merits to acquire
the knowledge of the Torah." One Talmudic sage compares making
newlyweds happy at their wedding to bringing a sacrifice in the Temple in
ancient Jerusalem; another says it is the equivalent of rebuilding some
of the ruins of Jerusalem.<br><br>
<dd>This is the mitzvah that Rabbi Weitzmann in effect temporarily
suspended in 1942, in order to raise Jewish awareness of the mass murder
in Europe and, hopefully, galvanize his congregants to action. The
importance of feeling another Jew's pain, he decided, took precedence
over the obligation to celebrate at a wedding. There is a time for
singing and dancing, but there is also a time for mourning--and mourning
sometimes must extend beyond one's immediate family. <br><br>
<dd>The very existence of the American Jewish community, after all, is
based on the premise that Jews should care about, connect with, and
assist each other. We are not merely a haphazard mass of individuals who
happen to practice similar religious rituals in our private lives. We
join together--in prayer, in celebration, and in other activities of
communal partnership. The classic United Jewish Appeal slogan, "We
are one!," resonated deeply precisely because it spoke to the
essence of Jewish peoplehood.<br><br>
<dd>Rabbi Haskel Lookstein, in his seminal book "Were We Our
Brothers' Keepers?," confronted the painful fact that most American
Jews in the 1940s failed to adopt an appropriate sense of urgency with
regard to the plight of Europe's Jews. "One looks in vain," he
writes, "for a sign that American Jews altered some aspect of their
lifestyle to indicate their awareness of the plight of their European
brothers [and] keep the matter at the forefront of their consciousness
and to generate feelings of sympathy and solidarity….The Final Solution
may have been unstoppable by American Jewry, but it should have been
unbearable for them. And it wasn't. This is important, not alone for our
understanding of the past, but for our sense of responsibility in the
future."<br><br>
<dd>One wonders how Rabbi Baruch David Weitzmann would have responded to
this week's brutal murders by Palestinian Arab terrorists in Israel. Two
rabbis stabbed and shot to death in the streets of Jerusalem. A young
couple gunned down in front of their four children. The latter attack hit
particularly close to home for American Jews, as one of the victims,
Rabbi Eitam Henkin, was the son of the renowned educator Rabbanit Chana
Henkin, who has touched our lives through her writings, lectures, and her
Nishmat school, where so many young women from our community have
studied.<br><br>
<dd>If he were alive today, maybe Rabbi Weitzmann would cancel the
singing and dancing of this year's Simchas Torah holiday. Maybe he would
say this is a time to feel the tsa'ar of the Jews in Israel, not a time
for celebrating. <br><br>
<dd>But today's Jewish community may not be ready for such a dramatic
step. Perhaps something more modest would be in order. There are seven
extended dances in the synagogue during the Simchas Torah celebrations.
Why not cancel the seventh one? --and, of course, explain the reason for
the cancelation.<br><br>
<dd>Still too drastic? How about just shortening the last dance--and
pausing to speak about the Henkins, about their orphaned children, and
about what practical steps American Jews can take, in the realm of
political action, to respond to the murders. Is that too much to ask of
American Jewry today?<br><br>
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