By: Renée Rockford
President & CEO
I was doing chores last Sunday and listening to a “Sunday Read” podcast about a Jewish man, Jack Teich, who was kidnapped- taken at gunpoint from his home in Westchester County, N.Y. some 50 years ago. The story is written by Taffy Brodesser-Akner, the daughter of the man’s long-time friend.
The author delves into the still-unsolved crime and wrestles not so much with who got the ransom money and where it is today, but with Teich’s release from his kidnappers, his reunion with his family, and the seeming unfettered return to his happy-go-lucky life.
She related to an incident of her own that had caused untold pain, post-traumatic stress, and decades-long disruptions in her life. She wondered what made one person seem so unaffected by trauma, while others seem to be completely arrested.
Besides being an intriguing listen that kept me on task, the podcast reminded me of an episode in my life when I wondered the same thing. I often speak about growing up as a child of a Holocaust survivor, and I share the story of how a few years ago, I met the famed author and survivor Elie Wiesel, z”l. At the time, he was still a professor at Boston University and the author of 45 books – he still spoke and lectured with urgency and conviction about the Holocaust and human rights.
When I met him, I asked Wiesel about his writing and his teaching. And then, I asked a question that had burned inside me for a long time. “Mr. Wiesel,” I said, “You, who survived some of the unspeakable horrors of the Holocaust, how is it that you maintain your belief in humanity? That your soul is intact, that you can continue to speak with hope about tomorrow?” I wanted him to tell me, that there was reason to believe in our future – that there would be no more Holocausts, that we had seen mankind at his worst, and that as a human race, we would rise up. Wiesel looked into my eyes, “I do not believe,” he said, “but I must continue to speak.”
What I know is that just about everyone we meet has wrestled with pain and trauma, sorrow and tragedy. For some, it is a garment that they wear; for others, it is hidden rituals that bring comfort or relief. David Brooks, in his bestselling book, The Road to Character, says the right response to existential pain is not pleasure but holiness, by which he means, “seeing the pain as part of a moral narrative and trying to redeem something bad by turning it into something sacred, some act of sacrificial service that will put oneself in fraternity with the wider community and with eternal moral demands.” May this period of mourning, and of intense pain for Israel and the broader world move all of us from self- to other-directedness and from the vulnerability of the “I” to the humility of “we.”
Shabbat Shalom.
Please email Renée Rockford at rrockford@jewishcolorado.org with questions or comments.