“What an unbelievable story!!
Here I am in Toronto. I am walking into a meeting that I was told was to begin at 10:30. I arrived and was then told it was only starting at 11.
I may have been a tiny bit annoyed…
So I had a half an hour to kill.
Next door to the restaurant is a Judaica store so I figured I’d go in and look around. Kill some time.
As I walked in, I was greeted by this man, Moshe. I heard his Israeli accent so we decided to talk in Hebrew a little.
He asked me for some perspective on the war and I told him my thoughts.
I asked him “If you lived in the time of Purim/Hanukah/Passover and I told you that one day we’d celebrate these time periods, what would you have said?”
“These events were horrible tragedies! How could you ever say we’d celebrate?”
Well, I told him, the same will be with Simchat Torah. We will dance again. We both said “Am Yisrael Chai”!
He began to cry. We both did…
But then he tells me he has to tell me a story.
I braced myself.
He tells me that there was a synagogue in NY and in this synagogue, there was an elderly man. This man consistently did something very strange. Every time the priests would bless the congregation on the holidays, he would walk out of the synagogue.
Every time.
After years of this man doing this; someone approached him. He had to know what the story was.
So he invited the elderly gentlemen to his house for a Shabbat meal.
So the man comes over and he asks him “I must know. Why do you walk out when the priests bless the congregation?”
The elderly man tells him the following story.
He was a survivor and was in one of the concentration camps and it was Passover. They wanted to get their hands on matza. But how do you get matza in a concentration camp?
Well, someone pointed out that one of the guards was a Jew. They somehow convinced the guard to get them matza.
And so there were hundreds of Jews sitting around conducting the Seder from memory with two pieces of matza.
Then a Nazi entered the room.
The Nazi saw what was happening and immediately asked who was behind this. He said he was going to kill whoever was responsible for the matzas.
The rabbi of the group got up and declared that it was him and he opened his shirt and told the Nazi to kill him.
The Nazi said he would not kill him today. He would do it tomorrow.
And the next day, the Nazis gathered up the whole camp and put the rabbi in the front with the intention of executing him.
The rabbi asked if he can make one request. He requested to bless the Jews in the camp. He said he’s a kohen (priest) and he wants to give them a blessing. For whatever reason, the Nazi agreed.
And so he blessed the whole camp.
The elderly man in the NY synagogue said he can never forget that blessing and he never wants to. He said that blessing was so fresh in his memory and he wanted to keep it that way.
He said he can never get a blessing from another kohen/priest again. The blessing that day in the concentration camp, he said, was one of the most special moments of his life.
This man in this judaica store told me this story and we both stood there crying.
So happy the timing got mixed up and I had that half an hour to meet this man, to meet Moshe.”
