CLERGY CORNER: Terror!

Posted on 19 November 2015 by LeslieM

What can we do while the world is being terrorized?

The terror is intended to destroy and divide. The terrorist are looking for free nations that are united and looking to take away all that we believe in. How do we survive? How do we win? Can we win? Can we succeed in being a free people with good values who love and care for the world around us?

As a Jew, I can tell you yes – yes, we have survived until now and we will continue to not only survive, but thrive!

How?

Let me answer with a story:

Some time ago, Rabbi Yitzchak Dovid Grossman, the Rabbi of the city of Migdal Haemek in Israel was visited by Mutty Dotan, head of the Lower Galilee Regional Council. Dotan told him that he had just returned from Germany where he attended a ceremony in honor of the 25th anniversary of the twin cities pact between the regional council and the Hanover district in Germany. After the ceremony, German Bundestag (Parliament) member, Detlev Herzig, of the SPD party, approached him and related this story.

His father had died a few weeks before and, before his demise, he confessed to his son his part in the Holocaust. He explained that since there are many Holocaust deniers today, he wanted to share the truth with his son.

He told his son that he had been an officer in the German air force, the Luftwaffe, during World War II and handed him an envelope. Upon opening the envelope the astonished son found a Wehrmacht army officer’s certificate, wrapped in a strange wallet made of parchment.

His father explained that while destroying a synagogue with his Nazi comrades during the war, he encountered on the floor a scroll made of high quality parchment. The Nazi officer cut out a piece of the scroll to use as a wallet, in which he placed his celebrated officer’s certificate.

Later he discovered that the scroll of parchment was something very sacred to the Jews, it was their Torah scroll. He told his son to give over the evidence to the first Jew he would meet and ask him to deliver it to a holy Jew in Israel who would know how to use it properly.

Upon returning to Israel, Dotan decided that the one who fit the description best was Rabbi Yitzchak Dovid Grossman, founder and Dean of the school network Migdal Ohr, Chief Rabbi of Migdal Haemek, and recipient of the 2004 Israel Prize for Lifetime Achievement.

Rabbi Grossman took the wallet in his hand. There it was: Made of the parchment of a Sefer Torah, a Torah scroll, this Nazi officer fashioned a nice wallet for himself. Trembling and gripped with emotion, Rabbi Grossman observed that the Nazi had cut out a piece of the Torah from the book of Deuteronomy.

The Rabbi began to read the words inscribed in ink on the parchment of the Torah scroll. They were the terrifying words of the chapter of rebuke in Deuteronomy 28, in which the Torah warns of the terrible consequences if the Jews would abandon their covenant with G-d, if they would reject their Torah.

Then the Torah continues to say in Deuteronomy 29:9 and right there on that wallet: “You are all standing today before G-d.”

Rabbi Grossman remembered what the great Biblical commentator Rashi explains, that after hearing the horrifying words of rebuke, the Jews were terrified they would not survive. So Moses comforted them and said: “You are all standing today before G-d. Just as G-d cannot die, you too will never die.” These were the words inscribed on the wallet.

Imagine: Nazis come in to a synagogue, murder the Jews and desecrate the Torah scrolls — as was their routine. One of them has the chutzpah [audacity] to cut off a piece and use it for his personal wallet. At last, Hitler triumphed over the Jews and their G-d.

Six decades later that very wallet ends up in the hands of a Rabbi in Israel who has thousands of Jewish children studying from the very Torah they desecrated in his schools. This Rabbi now kisses the holy parchment, quotes the divine promise that we will never perish.

Through all the destruction in every generation G-d says clearly (Deuteronomy 29:9) “You are all standing today before G-d,” stand together and nothing can happen to you!

So I turn to each and every one of you and I am telling you: “Stand united, that’s how we will win this war!”

Rabbi Tzvi Dechter is the Director of Chabad of North Broward Beaches located at 4081 N. Federal Hwy., #100A, Pompano Beach, FL 33064. For all upcoming events please visit www.JewishLHP.com.

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