Sunday, March 16, 2014

16-Mar-14: Fifteen: A festival time reflection

Purim image from the sixteenth
century Sefer Minhagim,
Venice, 1593 [Image Source]
Purim, for those not so familiar with the intricacies of the age-old Jewish calendar, works in a slightly unexpected way. Throughout the world, Jewish communities began marking it last night with the first of two readings of the Book of Esther. Here in Jerusalem, we do the same but 24 hours later. So the first reading here in the capital of Israel is tonight (Sunday evening) and the second is Monday morning. Monday afternoon, we gather around family tables and celebrate what Purim stands for by means of a festive meal and appropriate beverages.

Exactly nine years ago, we were given an opportunity to publish a reflection about how Purim, with its family-focused joy and celebration of good triumphing over evil, feels to a family like ours that has lost a loved child to an act of hatred-based terrorist murder.

The result was a short essay published on the website. The themes on which we touched there remain on our minds, so here is a replay of that piece.


It's the number that conceals G-d's name, and is also the mysterious turning point for three generations of one family | Arnold Roth [Originally published March 19, 2005]

Most Jewish teenagers growing up in Australia during the 1960s were, like me, children of concentration camp survivors. Our parents were involved in owning small businesses or were employed. There was hardly a professional among them. At birth, most of us lacked even a single grandparent; almost all of us were named after family members who perished at the hands of the Nazis.

It was clear that we were everything to our parents, and no one needed to tell us why. Top of their priorities list was ensuring that we gained the best possible education. Little wonder that several of the largest and most successful Jewish schools in the world were started in Melbourne in the years right after World War II. And the community's interest in things Israeli was unlimited; the occasional Israeli film and Israeli visitor to Australia's distant shores were memorable events.


Holocaust Horrors



Malki Z"L at left, with her Australian grandmother
Genia, tibadel lechaim tovim


An unexpected photograph changed this for me a few years ago. I have a cousin, a kibbutznik, the daughter of my father's oldest brother. She was brought to Tel Aviv in the 1930s as a baby by her parents who fled pre-war Galicia, and has lived her life in Israel. Returning as a tourist to her roots, she traveled to Krakow in 2000, and via a chain of circumstances ended up in possession of four photocopied pages which she shared with me. These were Nazi documents - census forms which the Germans required the Jews in the Krakow ghetto to complete prior to dispatching them to the death camps.

The first page had been completed in the distinctive handwriting of my father, of blessed memory. A small snapshot attached to the form showed him as I had never seen before: virile, handsome, young. Two other pages were the census forms of two of my father's sisters. Their names were known to me from a family tree I had put together years earlier with my father's help. But until that moment, they were nothing more than names. Now I gazed at the portraits of two vibrant young women.


Feige, at left, who did not survive the Holocaust. And Malki, at right,
the eldest grand-daughter of Feige's brother (and our murdered child) who will
never reach her sixteenth birthday
Unlike my parents, Feige did not survive the Nazi murder machine. Whatever promise her life contained, whatever talents she was developing, whatever gifts she was planning to give the world - all these were overturned by a massive act of violent, barbaric hatred.



Unbearable Questions



Malki and Michal: the closest of friends



The Hidden Name



Here in Jerusalem, a day later than almost everywhere else in the world, Purim is marked on the 15th day of Adar. Jewish calendar dates are written using a simple alphanumeric code: alef is one, bet is two and so on. But longstanding tradition is to avoid the straightforward way of writing the number 15. You would expect it to be yud-heh (lit: ten-five); however these two letters happen to form the first half of G-d's name and are accorded special treatment and respect. Accordingly, 15 is written as tet-vav: nine-six. G-d's Name, as it were, is hidden within the number 15.

Purim is odd in another way: the name of G-d is completely absent from Megillat Esther. Does this mean the victory of the Jews over their oppressor happened without His involvement? Jewish tradition answers with a firm 'no'. G-d's role was crucial, but our ability to make sense of how and why He acts is limited, inadequate.

Those of us raised in the shadow of the Holocaust, and who have experienced the tragedy of a child's death by hatred, struggle to understand the nature of the Divine role in our lives as individuals and as a people. There are times, according to Jewish wisdom, when you need to know that G-d's hand is at work even when the evidence is difficult to see, even when there are more questions than answers.

Malka Chana Roth's memory is honored by the Malki Foundation. It supports families wanting to provide their severely disabled child with quality home care. More information at the Malki Foundation website

A Dutch version of the article above is online here.

1 comment:

Barbara Mazor said...

No words. Just hugs. May Malki's memory always be for a blessing.