Rabbi's Blog

Dear OZ family,

I am grateful to Glenn Richter for pointing out to me a commemoration that took place this past weekend in the Ukrainian cities of Chernowitz & Lutsk. These events remembered the liquidation of the ghettoes in these two cities 79 years ago. My father always kept the Hebrew date of the liquidation  as the yahrzeit of all his family members that he never saw again, after the barbaric expulsion of the Jews from the city. There were no railcars nearby so the Jews were marched into the forest to be shot. My father managed to escape and spent the next two years hiding in the forests of Northeastern Poland until Russian liberation.  The liquidation was on  the 8^th of Elul and coincided with August 21^st in 1942. My father kept that yahrzeit for 77 years. In contrast, I would have to live to be 135 to keep that many yahrzeits for him.

My father traveled back to Lutsk once on a trip to Europe with Rabbi Avi Weiss, and found the house where he had lived. A monument to those who were murdered in Lutsk in 1942 reads on its base, “To the Ukrainians murdered in cold blood by the Germans in August, 1942”. This disturbed my father and his group to agitate for a correction. In reality, the Ukrainians assisted in the hunting and capture of many Jews who escaped the liquidation. The base now includes Jews, and the irony is that today’s political leadership of Ukraine, for better or worse includes quite a few Jews. With my father’s passing, I have taken the yahrzeit of 8 Elul as a day to keep the family’s memory alive. The Mitzva to remember what Amalek did to us over 3,300 years ago would assure that we would always agitate against evil. Amalek is hated because they attacked the weakest of our people. That is how last week’s Parsha ended. This week’s Parsha begins with a description of how we share our bounty in our new land with the less fortunate.

If Amalek is despised for harming the weak and vulnerable, it stands to reason that the Torah value system that this creates, requires us to protect and support the needy, which is stressed dozens and dozens of times throughout the Torah. May we merit to be on the giving side of this equation, and take comfort in the knowledge that if we ever have to be on the receiving end, that those imbued with Torah values will always be there to help.

Be safe.   Be healthy.  Be excellent.

Rabbi Allen Schwartz     

Rabbi Allen Schwartz

Congregation Ohab Zedek

118 West 95^th Street | New York, NY  10025-6604

Phone 212.749-5150, ext 200 | Fax 212.663-3635

E-mail ras@ozny.org

Website:  www.ozny.org