AFTER SERVICES TODAY (one of my students was celebrating their b’mitzvah), I complimented their old grandfather (about my late dad‘s age: north of 85?), on his Ashkenazic (Eastern European) Hebrew accent. We began talking, and he had me stand shoulder-to shoulder with him, each of us facing in the opposite direction.
“In my shul – I must have been 10? 11? – there were these two men who used to stand like this and pray,” he explained.
“Why did they do that?” I asked.
“They were in the camps,” he said. “And they weren’t allowed to talk.”
The thought of two Jews risking their lives in the mist of Hell to pray as Jews, while keeping their eyes open for trouble and torment, suddenly struck me almost speechless.
“Thank you for telling me that,” I eventually said in a hollow voice. “I will never forget this story.”
I hope you won’t either.