Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 2004/04/19
[Author Prev] [Author Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] [Author Index] [Topic Index] [Home] [Search]If I must explain it to you, you do not have the ability to understand. So I won't. Sam S B. D. Colen wrote: >Why? > >-----Original Message----- >From: lug-bounces+bdcolen=earthlink.net@leica-users.org >[mailto:lug-bounces+bdcolen=earthlink.net@leica-users.org] On Behalf Of >Sam >Sent: Monday, April 19, 2004 1:11 AM >To: Leica Users Group >Subject: Re: [Leica] OT - Jeff Jacoby Article > > >The following is off topic, but is worth reading-- > >Sam S > > >*Faith in the depths of Hell* >Jeff Jacoby > > The order to kill every pregnant Jewish woman had been issued that >morning. So when a Nazi guard patrolling the Jewish ghetto in Kovno >noticed a pregnant Jew walking past the local hospital, he shot her at >point-blank range. She died on the spot. > > Hoping to save the baby, some passersby rushed the dead woman into >the hospital. An obstetrician determined that she had been in her last >weeks of pregnancy, and said that if surgery were performed immediately, > >her baby might be rescued. > > But could such surgery be squared with Jewish law, which is >stringent in its concern for the dignity of the dead? If the baby >didn't make it, the mother's body would have been mutilated for nothing. > > The question was put to Rabbi Ephraim Oshry, a young rabbinical >scholar. He didn't hesitate. "When saving a life is involved, we are >not concerned with the desecration of the dead," he ruled. Besides, if >the murdered mother could speak, wouldn't she welcome the "desecration" >of her body if it would assure her baby's survival? He ordered the >operation to proceed at once, and the baby was born alive. > > Then came a horrifying postscript. "The cruel murderers . . . came >into the hospital to write down the name of the murdered woman. . . . >When they found the baby alive, their savage fury was unleashed. One of > >the Germans grabbed the infant and cracked its skull against the wall of > >the hospital room. Woe unto the eyes that saw this!" > > This case from May 1942 was one of many that Rabbi Oshry was called >upon to decide during the Nazi occupation of Kovno, Lithuania's >second-largest city. He recorded the heart-rending questions that were >brought to him in brief notes on scraps of paper, then buried the scraps > >in tin cans. Someday, he hoped, those scraps might be found -- evidence > >that even in the midst of the Nazi inferno there were Jews who clung to >their God and His law, refusing to abandon Him even as they must have >wondered whether He had abandoned them. > > More than 90 percent of Kovno's 40,000 Jews were killed in the >Holocaust -- either by the Germans or by their Lithuanian >collaborators. Rabbi Oshry was one of those who survived. After the war > >he retrieved his notes and began writing them out as full-length >rabbinical rulings, or responsa. These were ultimately published in >five Hebrew volumes; in 1983 a book of excerpts in English -- /Responsa >from the Holocaust ><http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1880582716/townhallcom/>/ -- was > >published by Judaica Press. > > I read /Responsa from the Holocaust/ soon after it came out, and >found it deeply moving. With the approach of Holocaust Remembrance Day, > >which occurs this year on April 19, I took it down from the bookshelf >last week -- and again found it powerful and affecting. The questions >laid before Rabbi Oshry can reduce you to tears, but what is really >extraordinary, I saw now, was that anyone would care enough to ask such >questions in the first place. > > In October 1941, "one of the respected members of the community" >asked Rabbi Oshry if he could commit suicide. His wife and children had > >been seized by the Nazis, and he knew that their murder was imminent. >He feared that the Nazis would force him to watch as his family was >killed, and the prospect of witnessing their deaths was a horror he >couldn't bear to face. He begged for permission to take his own life >and avoid seeing his loved ones die. > > Later that month, the head of another household came to Rabbi Oshry >"with tears of anguish on his face." His children were starving to >death and he was desperate to find food for them. His query was about a > >bit of property that had been left behind by the family in the next >apartment. The entire family had been butchered a few days earlier, and > >there were no surviving relatives. Under Jewish law, could he take what > >remained of their belongings and sell them to raise cash for food? > > Next to such questions, answers seem almost superfluous. (The rabbi > >did not permit the suicide; he allowed the neighbors' property to be >taken.) What is stunning is that men and women in the throes of such >hideous suffering and brutality were still concerned about adhering to >Jewish law. In the lowest depths of the Nazi hell, in a place of terror > >and savagery that most of us cannot fathom, here were human beings who >refused to relinquish their faith -- who refused even to violate a >religious precept without first asking if it was allowed. > > Violence, humiliation, and hunger will reduce some people to animals > >willing to do anything to survive. The Jews who sought out Rabbi Oshry >-- like Jews in so many other corners of Nazi Europe -- were not reduced > >but elevated, reinforced in their belief, determined against crushing >odds to walk in the ways of their fathers. > > Some Jews fought the Nazis with guns and sabotage, Rabbi Oshry would > >later say; others fought by persisting in Jewish life. In the end, >/Responsa from the Holocaust ><http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1880582716/townhallcom/>/ is a >chronicle of courage and resistance -- and a profound inspiration to >believers of every faith. >_______________________________________________ >Leica Users Group. >See http://leica-users.org/mailman/listinfo/lug for more information > >_______________________________________________ >Leica Users Group. >See http://leica-users.org/mailman/listinfo/lug for more information > > > >