Category Archives: Holocaust

Ice and Fire: A Different Sort of Holocaust Story

It wasn’t the most exciting or terrifying tale of the war years I had ever heard, or the saddest or the most shocking. But somehow it was the most moving one.

The man who recounted it had spent the war years, his teenage years, in the chilling vastness of the Siberian taiga.  He and his Polish yeshiva colleagues were guests of the Soviet authorities for their reluctance to assume Russian citizenship after they fled their country at the start of the Nazi onslaught.

He had already spoken of unimaginable, surreal episodes, fleeing his Polish shtetl with the German advance in 1939, of watching as his uncle was caught trying to escape a roundup of Jews and shot on the spot, of being packed with his Jewish townsfolk into a shul which was then set afire, of their miraculous deliverance, of the long treks, of the wandering refugees’ dedication to the Torah’s commandments.  And then he told the story.

We were loaded onto rail cattle-wagons, nine of us, taken to Novosibirsk, and from there transported by barge to Parabek, where we were assigned to a kolchoz, or collective farm.           

I remember that our first winter was our hardest, as we did not have the proper clothing for the severe climate     

Most of us had to fell trees in the forest. I was the youngest and was assigned to a farm a few miles from our kolchoz. The nights were terribly cold, the temperature often dropping to forty degrees below zero, through I had a small stove by which I kept a little warm. The chief of the kolchoz would make surprise checks on me to see if I had fallen asleep, and I would recite Psalms to stay awake. 

One night I couldn’t shake the chills and I realized that I had a high fever. I managed to hitch my horse and sled together and set off for the kolchoz.  Not far from the farm, though, I fell from the sled into the deep snow and the horse continued on without me. I tried to shout to the animal to stop, to no avail. I remember crying and saying Psalms for I knew that remaining where I was, or trying to walk to the kolchoz, would mean certain death from exposure. I forced myself to get up and, with what little strength I had left, began running after the horse and sled.

Suddenly, the horse halted. I ran even faster, reached the sled and collapsed on it.

Looking up at the starry sky, I prayed with all my diminishing might to G-d to enable me to reach the relative safety of the kolchoz.  He answered me and I reached my Siberian home, though I was shaking uncontrollably from my fever; no number of blankets could warm me. The next day, in a daze, I was transported to Parabek, where there was a hospital.           

My first two days in the hospital are a blur, but on the third my fever broke and I started to feel a little better. Then suddenly, as I lay in my bed, I saw a fellow yeshiva boy from the kolchoz, Herschel Tishivitzer, before me, half frozen and staring, incredulous, at me. His feet were wrapped in layers and layers of rags – the best one could manage to try to cope with the Arctic cold, without proper boots.  I couldn’t believe my eyes – Herschel had actually walked the frigid miles from the kolchoz!

“Herschel,” I cried, “what are you doing here?

I’ll never forget his answer.      

“Yesterday,” he said, “someone came from Parabek, and told us ‘Simcha umar,’ that Simcha had died.  And so I volunteered to bury you.”

The narrator paused to collect himself, and the reflected on his memory:

The dedication to another Jew, the dedication… Had the rumor been true there was no way he could have helped me. He had immediately made the perilous journey – just to see to my funeral! The dedication to another Jew …such an example!…

As a shiver subsided and the story sank in, I wondered: Would I have even considered such a journey, felt such a responsibility to a fellow Jew? In such a place, at such a time? Or would I have justified inaction with the ample justification available? Would I have been able to maintain even my humanity in the face of so doubtful a future, not to mention my faith in G-d, my very Jewishness…?

A wholly unremarkable story in a way, I realize. None of the violence, the tragedy, the horrors, the evil of so many tales of the war years. Just a short conversation, really. Yet I found so valuable a lesson in the story of Herschel Tishivitzer’s selflesness, unhesitating concern for little Simcha Ruzhaner, as the narrator had been called in those days: what it means to be part of a holy people.

The narrator concluded his story, describing how Hershel Tishivitzer, thank G-d, had eventually made his way to America and settled in New York under his family name, Nudel. And how he, the narrator himself, had ended up in Baltimore, where he married the virtuous daughter of a respected Jewish scholar, Rabbi Noach Kahn.  And how he himself had became a rabbi (changing many lives for the better, I know, though he didn’t say so) and how he and his rebbetzin had raised their children in their Jewish religious heritage, children who were continuing to frustrate the enemies of the Jewish people by raising strong Jewish families of their own.

And I wondered – actually, I still do – if the slice of Simcha Ruzhaner’s life had so affected me only because of its radiant, blindingly beautiful message – or if perhaps some part was played by the fact that he too, had taken on a shortened form of his family name, Shafranowitz, and had named his second child Avrohom Yitzchok, although everyone calls me Avi.

© 2006 Rabbi Avi Shafran

Fighting Iron With Irony

On a beautiful clear night in 1924 at Landsberg am Lech, where he was imprisoned by the Bavarian government, Adolf Hitler remarked to Rudolf Hess: “You know… it’s only the moon I hate.  For it is something dead and terrible and inhuman… It is as if there still lives in the moon a part of the terror it once sent down to earth… I hate it!”

A chill accompanied my first encounter with that quote.  Because the Jewish religious tradition sees the ever-rejuvenating, shining disk of the moon as a symbol of the Jewish people.  Indeed, the very first commandment we Jews were given as a people, while still awaiting the Exodus in Egypt, was to identify ourselves through our calendar with the moon. The moon Hitler feared.

There is much other oddness about Hitler with connections to ancient Jewish tradition, things like his fondness for ravens, in Jewish lore associated with cruelty; he went so far as to issue special orders protecting the birds.  And like his fascination with the art of Franz von Stuck (the artist who had the “greatest impact” on his life, he once said), whose major themes are snakes and sinister women.  In the Jewish mystical tradition, snakes evoke evil and its embodiment, Amalek; and there are hints of an antithetical relationship between the irredeemable wickedness of Amalek and women.

And then there is the matter of the most loathsome of Hitler’s henchmen, Julius Streicher, the editor of Der Sturmer, the premier journal of Jew-baiting.

At its peak in 1938, print runs of Streicher’s vile tabloid ran as high as 2,000,000.  A typical offering included a close-up of the face of a deformed Jew above the legend “The Scum of Humanity: This Jew says that he is a member of God’s chosen people.”  Another displayed a cartoon of a vampire bat with a grotesquely exaggerated nose and a Jewish star on its chest.  In yet another, a Jewish butcher was depicted snidely dropping a rat into his meat grinder and, elsewhere in the issue, the punctured necks of handsome German youths were shown bleeding into a bowl held by a Jew more gargoyle than human.

In 1935, speaking to a closed meeting of a Nazi student organization, Streicher, displaying an unarguably Amalekian approach, declared:

“All our struggles are in vain if the battle against the Jews is not fought to the finish.  It is not enough to get the Jews out of Germany. No, they must be destroyed throughout the entire world so that humanity will be free of them.

The suspicion that in Streicher’s blind, baseless, and absolute hatred of the Jews lay the legacy of Amalek makes the story of his capture and death nothing short of chilling.

Purim is the only Jewish holiday that celebrates the defeat of an Amalekite, Haman.  Even a passing familiarity with the Purim story is sufficient to know that the downfall of its villain is saturated with what seem to be chance ironies; he turns up at the wrong place at the wrong time, and all that he so carefully plans eventually comes to backfire on him in an almost comical way – a theme The Book of Esther characterizes with the words v’nahafoch hu, “ and it was turned upside down!”

Such “chance” happenings are the very hallmark, of Amalek’s defeat – a fact reflected in the “casting of lots” from which Purim takes its name.  Chance, Esther teaches us, is an illusion; God is in charge.  Amalek may fight with iron but he is defeated with irony.

As was Streicher.  In the days after Germany’s final defeat, an American major, Henry Plitt, received a tip about a high-ranking Nazi living in an Austrian town.  He accosted a short, bearded artist, who he though might be SS Chief Heinrich Himmler, and asked him his name.

“Joseph Sailer,” came the reply from the man, who was painting a canvas on an easel.

Plitt later recounted: “I don’t know why I said [it, but] I said, ‘And what about Julius Streicher?’”

“Ya, der bin ich,” the man with the paintbrush responded.  “Yes, that is me.”

When Major Plitt brought his serendipitous catch to Berchtesgaden, he later recounted, a reporter told him that he had “killed the greatest story of the war.”  When he asked how, the reporter responded “Can you imagine if a guy named Cohen or Goldberg or Levy had captured this arch-anti-Semite, what a great story it would be?”

Major Plitt recalled telling the reporter “I’m Jewish” and how “that’s when the microphones came into my face and the cameras started clicking.

Another happy irony in Streicher’s life involved the fate of his considerable estate.  As reported in Stars and Stripes in late 1945, his considerable possessions were converted to cash and used to create an agricultural training school for Jews intending to settle in Palestine.  Just as Haman’s riches, as recorded in the Book of Esther, were bestowed upon his nemesis Mordechai.

There is a good deal more of interest in the life of Julius Streicher to associate him with Jewish traditions about Amalek.  But one of the most shocking narratives about him is the one concerning his death.  Streicher was of one of the Nazis tried, convicted, and hanged at Nuremberg in 1946.

During the trial, Streicher remained disgustingly true to form.  When the prosecution showed a film of the concentration camps as they had been found by the Allies, a spotlight was left on the defendants’ box for security reasons. Many present preferred to watch the defendants’ reactions rather than the mounds of bodies, matchstick limbs and common graves.  Few of the defendants could bear to watch the film for long.  Goering seemed calm at first, but eventually began to nervously wipe his sweaty palms.  Schacht turned away; Ribbentrop buried his face in his hands. Keitel wiped his reddened eyes with a handkerchief.  Only Streicher leaned forward throughout, looking anxiously at the film and excitedly nodding his head.

While no proof was found that Streicher had ever killed a Jew by his own hand, the tribunal nevertheless decided that his clear-cut incitement of others to the task constituted the act of a war criminal; and so he was sentenced, along with ten other defendants, to hang

And hang he did.  But not before taking the opportunity to share a few final words with the journalists present at the gallows.  “Heil Hitler. Now I go to God,” he announced.  And then, just before the trap sprang open, he blurted out most clearly: “Purim Feast 1946!” – an odd thing to say in any event, but especially so on an October morning.

The “Amalek-irony” of the Nuremberg executions doesn’t end there, either.  The Book of Esther recounts how Haman’s ten sons were hanged in Shushan. An eleventh child, a daughter, committed suicide earlier, according to an account in the Talmud.  At Nuremberg, while eleven men were condemned to execution by hanging, only ten were actually hanged.  The eleventh, the foppish, effeminate Goering, died in his cell only hours before the execution; he had crushed a hidden cyanide capsule between his teeth.

Something even more striking was noted by the late Belzer Rebbe. In scrolls of the Book of Esther, the names of the ten sons of Haman are unusually prominent; they are written in two parallel columns, a highly unusual configuration.  Odder still is the fact that three letters in the list, following an unexplained halachic tradition, are written very small, and one very large.  The large letter is the Hebrew character for the number six (Hebrew letters all have numeric values); the small letters, added together, yield the number 707.  If the large letter is taken to refer to the millennium and 707 to the year in the millennium, something fascinating emerges.  According to Jewish reckoning, the present year is 5762.  The year 5707 – the 707th year in the sixth millennium – was the year we know as 1946, when ten sworn enemies of the Jewish people were hanged in Nuremberg, just as ten others had been in Shushan more than two thousand years earlier.

The Book of Esther, (9:13), moreover, refers to the hanging of Haman’s sons in the future tense, after the event had been recounted, presaging, it might seem, some hanging yet to happen.

To believing Jews, the Holocaust was the tip of an unimaginable iceberg of evil, stretching far and deep into the past even as one of its ugly tips punctured the relative peace of the modern world.

And so, as we prepare to celebrate Purim and the downfall of the Amalekite Haman, especially these days, when Jew-hatred has once again made itself manifest in the world, we would do well to ponder that the evil he represents may have been defeated at times throughout history but it has not yet been vanquished.

© 2005 AM ECHAD RESOURCES

 

[Rabbi Avi Shafran serves as public affairs director for Agudath Israel of America]

My Auschwitz Spoon Chanukah

 R’ Yisroel Yitzchok Cohen is my beloved father-in-law. He is a Polish-born survivor of three concentration camps, and y lives in Toronto.   His book,”Destined to Survive,”  from which the below is adapted, is published by ArtScroll/Mesorah – mesorah.com

 

One of the items I smuggled out of Auschwitz, when the Nazis moved me into “Camp Number Eight” – a quarantine camp, for those suspected of carrying typhus – was my spoon.  It wasn’t much, but it was mine – and it would come to play an important role in my Jewish life and in those of some of the 500 or so other prisoners there.

There were no labor details in this new camp, but we inmates were ordered to help in its construction, which was still underway.  Having had some experience in the Lodz ghetto as a mechanic, I helped the electrical technician install the camp’s lighting.

With my new access to tools, I brought my spoon to work and filed down its handle, making it into a sharp knife.  Now I could use it both to eat my soup and to cut my bread. This was useful because we would often receive one chunk of bread to divide among two or three people, and without a knife it was difficult to apportion the bread fairly.  Now I was regularly called upon to use my spoon-knife to help avoid disputes and maintain relative peace among the prisoners.

When winter came, though, my spoon became involved in an additional mitzvah. By then, we had been transferred to “Camp Number Four” in Kaufering, a camp more similar to Auschwitz in its daily ordeals.  Despite the horrendous hardships we suffered daily, however, we tried whenever possible to remember to do a mitzvah and to maintain a self-image as G-d-fearing Jews, despite all the dangers that involved.

Having always kept mental track of the calendar, I knew when Chanukah had arrived. During a few minutes’ rest break, a group of inmates and I began to reminisce about how, back home before the war, our fathers would light their menorahs with such fervor and joy. We remembered how we could never seem to get our fill of watching the flames sparkling like stars, how we basked in their warm, special glow, how they seemed to imbue us with a special sanctity.

And then we got to thinking about the origins of Chanukah, about the war of the Hasmoneans against their Seleucid Greek tormentors, who were intent on erasing Judaism from Jewish hearts.  We recalled the great heroism of the Jews at the time who risked their lives in order to keep the Sabbath, practice circumcision and study Torah.  And we remembered how G-d helped them resist and rout their enemy, enabling Jews to freely observe the Torah and mitzvos once again.

And then we looked around ourselves.  Here we were, in a camp where our lives were constantly in danger, where we were considered sub-human and where it was virtually impossible to observe the most basic practices of Judaism.  How happy we would be, we mused, if only we could light Chanukah candles.

While we talked and dreamed, we were all suddenly struck, as if at once, by the same resolution: We simply must discover a way of doing the seasonal mitzvah.  One fellow offered a small bit of margarine he had saved from his daily ration. That could serve as our oil. And wicks?  We began to unravel threads from our uniforms…

What, though, could be our menorah? I took out my spoon, and within moments, we were lighting the Chanukah “candle”, reciting the blessings of “Lehadlik ner”, She’oso nissim” and “Shehecheyonu”.  We all stood around entranced, transfixed, each immersed in his own thoughts…of Chanukahs gone by…of latkes, of dreidels, of Chanukah gelt we had received as children.

And our unusual Chanukah menorah kindled in us a glimmer of hope. As we recited the blessing about the miracles G-d had performed for our forefathers “in those days”, but also “at this time”, we well understood that the only thing that could save us would be a miracle.  A “nes gadol” – “great miracle” – like the one hinted at on the dreidle’s acrostic.

Even non-religious Jews stood near us watching the flame of the Chanukah candle.  I am certain that none of us who survived will ever be able to forget that luminous moment in the darkness of our concentration camp lives.

The celebrated Viennese psychiatrist Dr. Viktor Frankl, who was himself, incidentally,  an inmate of Kaufering, asserted in his book “Man’s Search for Meaning” that, to survive the concentration camps, a person had to have something larger to live for.  Those with goals had a better chance to remain alive.  We religious Jews in the camps were certainly good examples of that phenomenon, living for our Sabbaths, our Jewish holidays and our daily recognition that there is an Almighty, whether or not we could ever fathom His ways.  And I often felt that our convictions helped us cling to life when others sank to the depths of despair.

And today, I am overwhelmed at times with gratitude to G-d for my personal miracle, my survival, especially when I am surrounded by the children and grandchildren He has granted me, all of whom are committed to the observance and study of the Torah.  And the gratitude comes rushing in as well every winter, when I light my menorah – a real one today –  and, as always I do, I remember my Auschwitz spoon Chanukah.

 

Pesach Sheni, 1945

 [I.I. Cohen is a Polish-born survivor of three concentration camps living in Toronto, and my beloved father-in-law.  The below is adapted from his book “Destined to Survive” ArtScroll/Mesorah)]

 

On Wednesday, April 25, 1945, the SS guards in Kaufering’s watchtowers suddenly disappeared.

The block supervisors in our camp – a satellite of Dachau – stopped beating and cursing; they knew that the explosives that had grown louder each day signaled the death throes of the Third Reich.  Those of us whose legs could still carry them broke into the camp kitchen and hauled away potatoes, flour, cabbage and pieces of bread.  A day earlier we would have been shot on sight for lesser sins, but now, several days since we had been given any food, our hunger overpowered our fright. We stuffed both our bellies and our pockets.

Suddenly the silence was broken by the familiar murderous voices of our German captors.

“Everyone in a row! Roll call!” In a flash, the thugs were once again running about with clubs and revolvers in hand, mercilessly chasing and dragging everyone out of the barracks. , Having already experienced several years together in the ghetto, our small group of young Gerer Chasidim from Lodz tried to stick together. We discussed the situation. It was quite clear that the Allied forces were close by.  Rumor had it that the SS command had ordered camp commanders to exterminate all inmates, so that no living testimony would be available to the Allied armies. We found it hard to believe in such a diabolical scheme, but six years under Nazi rule had taught us that bleak prophecies had a tendency to materialize.

We debated our alternatives. Should we follow orders and evacuate the camp, or risk trying to stay behind and await the Allies? We decided to stay and, one by one, stole into the dysentery block, where only the hopelessly ill lay. We hoped that the guards would choose not to enter the contaminated area.

But our hopes were dashed soon enough when our block door crashed open and an SS officer, his machine gun crackling, shouted “Everyone out! The camp is to be blown up!”  Silence. We didn’t stir, the Nazi left and night fell.

Suddenly the air shook with the wailing of sirens. The Allies were bombing the German defenses! We prayed that the thunderous explosions would go on forever, and eventually fell asleep to the beautiful sound of the bombs.

The next morning we awoke to an ominous silence, broken only by the moans of the dying. We arose cautiously and went outside the block. There was desolation everywhere, and a gaping hole in the barbed wire.  Had it been torn open by the fleeing Germans?  Were we free?

We went to the other barracks, and shared our discover with their frightened inhabitants – mostly “musselmen”, or emaciated “skeletons”.  Soon enough we heard the unmistakable rumble of an approaching convoy.  We sat and waited, our fear leavened with excitement.

The fear proved more prescient, and soon enough melted into acute disappointment, when the all too familiar SS uniforms came once again into view. The Nazis had returned, bringing an entire detachment of prisoners from other camps with them to help them finish their work.  Amid the fiendish din of screams and obscenities, we hurriedly hid in one of the blocks, covered ourselves with straw and rags and lay still, our hearts pounding with terror. Soon we heard footsteps in the block and I felt a hand on my head.  We had been discovered, by non-Jewish inmates of other labor and POW camps.

We pleaded with them to ignore us, and offered them our potatoes but just as the invaders had agreed, an SS officer came stomping in, swinging his club, which he then efficiently and heartlessly used on our heads. A boot on the behind, and we were on our way to the trucks, accompanied by the commandos and the SS.

We were picked up by our arms and legs and thrown onto a wagon piled with barely human-looking bodies; the moaning of the sick was replaced by the silence of the dead.  By a stroke of luck, though, while the guards were busy with another wagon, my friend Yossel Carmel and I managed to roll out of the truck and found refuge in a nearby latrine.  Though our hearts had long since turned to stone, our stomachs were convulsing.

Eventually the wagons left, and we crept back into the very block we had occupied earlier. I tore down the light hanging from the ceiling, and we posed, not unconvincingly, as corpses.  Every so often the door would open, and we would hear a shout of “Everyone out!” but we just lay perfectly still.  Darkness fell, motors rumbled, and then there was quiet.

Friday, April 27, 1945, brought a cold morning.  White clouds chased each other across the bright blue sky as a frigid wind blew through the barracks, chilling our bones. Periodically, the earth trembled with an explosion; we sat quietly, each engrossed in his own thoughts. Suddenly, we heard motorcycles rumbling and dogs barking.  Our hearts fell.  Once again, the Germans were back.

We soon heard footsteps in the block, and then a frenzied voice, “Swine! You are waiting for the Americans? Come with me!” There followed a commotion, the sound of running, the shattering of glass, and then, a burst of machine gun fire. I peeked and saw that those who had been hiding near the window had tried to escape. Yossel and I had not been detected but were paralyzed with fright. Footsteps approached and then we heard the rustling of straw.  When we felt tapping on the piles in which we were hiding, our terrified souls almost departed us.

We held our breath in fear as the footsteps moved away.  Peeking through a hole in the straw that covered me, I felt smoke burning my eyes.  Frantically, we ripped off the straw and rags and saw flames all around us. Hand in hand, Yossel and I fumbled toward the door, suffocating from the smoke, our heads spinning.  In a moment that seemed an eternity, we found ourselves outside.  Just a few yards from us stood the German murderers, fortunately, with their backs to us.

The entire camp was ablaze. We threw ourselves on the first pile of corpses that we saw and lay still; we no doubt resembled our camouflage.  Around us we heard heavy footsteps, screams and the moaning of the fatally wounded.  And what we saw was blood, fire, and clouds of smoke – hell on earth, complete with demons.

When silence finally fell again, I mumbled to Yossel that we ought to say vidui, the confession of sins a Jew makes periodically but especially when facing death.  He chided me to remember what I had told him when we arrived in Auschwitz, our first concentration camp.  The Sages of the Talmud, he reminded me, had admonished that “Even if the sword is braced on your neck, never despair of Divine mercy.”   Yossel recalled, too, the Sages’ admonition that in times of danger Jews should renew their commitment to their faith.

We crawled to a nearby pit, shivering with cold. Through my smoke-filled eyes and fear-ridden senses, I thought I saw SS guards everywhere, with weapons poised.  Yossel, however, finally managed to convince me that there was no one in sight; for an hour or more we lay in that pit. Every few minutes bombs whistled overhead, followed by fearsome explosions nearby. The earth shook, but each blast pumped new hope into our hearts. Slowly, we crept out of the pit and made our way to the only building still standing – the camp kitchen.  There we found a few more frightened souls.

Together we discovered a sack of flour, mixed it with water, started the ovens and baked flat breads.  I noted the irony; it was Pesach Sheini – the biblical “Second Passover” a month after the first – and we were baking matzohs.

Suddenly, the door flew open and a Jewish inmate came running in breathlessly, crying out: “Yidden! Fellow Jews! The Americans are here!” We were free!

We wanted to cry, sing, dance, but our petrified hearts would not let us.  I wanted to rush outside, but my strength seemed to have left me.

When I finally did manage to move outside, I saw a long convoy of tanks and jeeps roaring through the camp. A handful of American soldiers approached the barracks.  One of them, an officer, looked around him, tears streaming down his face. Only then did I fully grasp the extent of the horror around us. The barracks were nearly completely incinerated.  In front of each block lay a pile of blackened, smoldering skeletons.

And we, the living, were a group of ghouls, walking corpses.  Along with the American soldiers, we wept.

Among the supplies the Americans had brought with them was a bottle of wine.  An inmate picked it up and announced: “For years I have not recited the Kiddush. Today, I feel that I must.” He then recited the words of the blessing on wine aloud.

And then he recited the “Shehecheyanu”, the blessing of gratitude to God for having “kept us alive until this time.”

© 2004 AM ECHAD RESOURCES

Recidivist Parents

A number of well-known international groups are very unhappy with my wife and me.

We are, you see, “multi-children” parents, violators of both the law of averages and the sensibilities of folks like those at Zero Population Growth and other such organizations.  Yes, my wife and I helped contribute, even more than most American parents, to the world population’s recent passing of the six billion mark.

Many of our friends, for the most part Orthodox Jews like us, have similarly chosen to raise large families, sometimes with six, seven, even ten or more children.  To others, we must seem at best unbalanced, at worst irresponsible, for our choices – choices we regarded, and still regard, as entirely wise and proper.

The disapprovers are entitled to their opinion, of course.  But it can become irksome when strangers, confronted with the sight of my beloved family, offer unsolicited judgments.

The smiles and even the pointing fingers don’t bother me; I try to follow the Talmud’s dictum to judge others favorably, to assume the best: here, that the smilers and pointers are happy for us.  But commentators like the fellow in the airport who snidely query-editorialized, “Catholic or careless?” leave very little room for good will.  (“Jewish and caring,” I responded; it was all I could summon at the moment.)

And then there was what was probably my personal nadir of incivility, years ago in a California supermarket, when a severe-looking lady with an unmistakably Teutonic accent scolded a much younger and brasher me – wheeling a daughter-filled double stroller – with a humorless comment, something like, “Well YOU certainly don’t believe in population control!”

On that occasion, I must admit, I was inexcusably rude.  My Polish-born father and father-in-law each had siblings who never managed to make it out of young adulthood, thanks to some folks’ efficient determination to starve, shoot, gas or burn them.  Several of my children carry the names of those unmet great-aunts and great-uncles.

Maybe it was the matron’s accent that sent me, relatively speaking, over the edge.  “When I reach six million,” I heard myself intone through clenched teeth, “I’ll consider stopping.”

Though I think that, over the years, I have become more understanding of others’ dismay at large families, I haven’t quite managed to bring myself to regret that particular retort, graceless though it was.

As it happens, though, the Fraulein was quite right.  My wife and I are unrepentant infidels when it comes to the ZPG movement.  The “expert” predictions in the 1960s about a world swarming with wall-to-wall humanity within a decade or two have proven silly.  And although new claims have emerged about a future “population crisis”, they, like their predecessors, are impelled more by ideology than by empirical evidence.  One need do no more than take a drive across the vast empty spaces even within our own relatively crowded country to realize how lightly populated the planet really is.

And, if that doesn’t do the trick, return across Canada.

A subsequent stroll, moreover, down any Manhattan, Chicago or Los Angeles restaurant-row, taking note of the prodigious amounts of food daily discarded in modern cities, would be an equally eye-opening experience.  Human malnutrition, informed folk know, is the result not of new babies but of old problems.  Humans still starve, tragically, even in the new millennium, not because there is too little food but because of poor management, inefficient distribution and – perhaps primarily – because of the unconcern (or worse) of other humans.

In any event, much more than disbelief in doomsday scenarios or determination to re-establish truncated genealogies figures in my wife’s and my choice of a large family.  We would have endeavored no less even if Canada resembled Calcutta, even if the Holocaust had been only a bad horror film instead of history, even if we had needed to pull names for our children from the void.

For our faith-system, that of all Jews’ ancestors over millennia, views procreation in and of itself as the holiest of endeavors, and children as the greatest of blessings.  And when it comes to blessings, as most folk seem to naturally (though less aptly, to my lights) understand with regard to the monetary sort – the more, the merrier.  How ironic, I often reflect: Were children shares of blue-chip stocks, my wife and I would be regarded with neither disapproval nor curiosity but envy.

Which is not to say that having children is, in the end, a self-serving vocation.  It is true that life offers no joy remotely approaching the resplendent sight, at the end of a long, hard day, of a joyous, squeaking two-year-old face one has loved since its appearance on earth bobbing above a pair of little arms opened wide.  But the challenges of raising children, especially several times the average number of children per family, are considerable.  Barring a lottery-win, my family won’t ever retain a housekeeper or own a boat – or, for that matter, a road vehicle that someone else hasn’t driven for 50,000 or 60,000 miles first.  And any disposable income we manage to amass is quickly absorbed by one or another worthy but costly educational institution.

At the same time, though, and above all else, we believe with our hearts and souls that our children are gifts beyond all earthly value.  And my wife and I are doing all in our power to help ensure that our progeny will use their precious lives for the good of their fellow Jews and of humanity.

So if you should find yourself at a playground or highway rest stop and spy a group of Jewish kids of various ages who seem to resemble one another, please don’t think their parents irresponsible.  Try to remember that a profound commitment and deep love likely lie behind the striking sight.

And if it should happen to be any of my children or grandchildren, we’ll all do our part, and try to interpret any smiles we elicit as expressions of delight.

© 2003 Rabbi Avi Shafran