Stories Tell Powerful Lessons

Life tells stories too powerful for words.  Rabbi  Kalonymus Kalman Shapira, the Piaseczner Rebbe, gives us an example of this.

Known as the Warsaw Rebbe, Rabbi Kalonymus was the glue for his growing community as more and more Jews were crowded into the ghetto.  Throughout the terror, Rabbi Kalonynmus continued to preach and teach and write.  He suffered greatly.   In the first days of the war, his son was fatally wounded in a bombing.  While waiting outside the hospital to hear word of his son, both the Piaseczner’s daughter-in-law and sister-in-law were killed.  All the while, he continued to work and support his desperate people.

In the ensuing bitter months the Rebbe gathered his disciples and urged them to feel courage and not to despair.  In fact Rebbe Kalonymus was so focused and dedicated that he even wrote a book.  Working on the document through 1942 Kalonymus realized that the end was approaching.  He wrote a note asking that anyone who found the document forward it to his brother living in Israel.  The Rabbi then buried the book before he was taken by the Nazis.

After the war, a construction worker found the book and instructions and sent it on to Kalonymus’ brother.

March 14, 1942  “God, blessed be He, is to be found in His inner chambers weeping, so that one who pushes in and comes close by means of studying Torah, weeps together with God and studies Torah alongside the Almighty.  The weeping, the pain an individual undergoes alone, has the potential of breaking him.  But the weeping, which the person does with God, strengthens him.”

A Jew will never dance or weep alone.  On Pesah, God’s Presence will grace the empty chair at the Seder.  The Holy One offers a L’Hayim at our Simchas.  He cries as our hearts are broken with the latest victims of terror.  The Almighty is with us when our senses are open, our emotions bared.