[Leica] OT - Jeff Jacoby Article

[jerryleh at pacbell.net (Jerry Lehrer)]

Sam

BD is well known for being a Sweet Old Boy.  His best weapon is the
throwing of cold water.

Jerry

Sam wrote:

> If I must explain it to you, you do not have the ability to understand.
> So I won't.
>
> Sam S
>
> B. D. Colen wrote:
>
> >Why?
> >
> >-----Original Message-----
> >From: lug-bounces+bdcolen=earthlink.net@leica-users.org
> >[mailto:lug-bounces+bdcolen=earthlink.net@leica-users.org] On Behalf Of
> >Sam
> >Sent: Monday, April 19, 2004 1:11 AM
> >To: Leica Users Group
> >Subject: Re: [Leica] OT - Jeff Jacoby Article
> >
> >
> >The following is off topic, but is worth reading--
> >
> >Sam S
> >
> >
> >*Faith in the depths of Hell*
> >Jeff Jacoby
> >
> >   The order to kill every pregnant Jewish woman had been issued that
> >morning.  So when a Nazi guard patrolling the Jewish ghetto in Kovno
> >noticed a pregnant Jew walking past the local hospital, he shot her at
> >point-blank range. She died on the spot.
> >
> >    Hoping to save the baby, some passersby rushed the dead woman into
> >the hospital. An obstetrician determined that she had been in her last
> >weeks of pregnancy, and said that if surgery were performed immediately,
> >
> >her baby might be rescued.
> >
> >    But could such surgery be squared with Jewish law, which is
> >stringent in its concern for the dignity of the dead?  If the baby
> >didn't make it, the mother's body would have been mutilated for nothing.
> >
> >    The question was put to Rabbi Ephraim Oshry, a young rabbinical
> >scholar.  He didn't hesitate.  "When saving a life is involved, we are
> >not concerned with the desecration of the dead," he ruled.  Besides, if
> >the murdered mother could speak, wouldn't she welcome the "desecration"
> >of her body if it would assure her baby's survival?  He ordered the
> >operation to proceed at once, and the baby was born alive.
> >
> >    Then came a horrifying postscript.  "The cruel murderers . . . came
> >into the hospital to write down the name of the murdered woman. . . .
> >When they found the baby alive, their savage fury was unleashed.  One of
> >
> >the Germans grabbed the infant and cracked its skull against the wall of
> >
> >the hospital room.  Woe unto the eyes that saw this!"
> >
> >    This case from May 1942 was one of many that Rabbi Oshry was called
> >upon to decide during the Nazi occupation of Kovno, Lithuania's
> >second-largest city.  He recorded the heart-rending questions that were
> >brought to him in brief notes on scraps of paper, then buried the scraps
> >
> >in tin cans.  Someday, he hoped, those scraps might be found -- evidence
> >
> >that even in the midst of the Nazi inferno there were Jews who clung to
> >their God and His law, refusing to abandon Him even as they must have
> >wondered whether He had abandoned them.
> >
> >    More than 90 percent of Kovno's 40,000 Jews were killed in the
> >Holocaust -- either by the Germans or by their Lithuanian
> >collaborators.  Rabbi Oshry was one of those who survived. After the war
> >
> >he retrieved his notes and began writing them out as full-length
> >rabbinical rulings, or responsa.  These were ultimately published in
> >five Hebrew volumes; in 1983 a book of excerpts in English -- /Responsa
> >from the Holocaust
> ><http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1880582716/townhallcom/>/ -- was
> >
> >published by Judaica Press.
> >
> >    I read /Responsa from the Holocaust/ soon after it came out, and
> >found it deeply moving.  With the approach of Holocaust Remembrance Day,
> >
> >which occurs this year on April 19, I took it down from the bookshelf
> >last week -- and again found it powerful and affecting.  The questions
> >laid before Rabbi Oshry can reduce you to tears, but what is really
> >extraordinary, I saw now, was that anyone would care enough to ask such
> >questions in the first place.
> >
> >    In October 1941, "one of the respected members of the community"
> >asked Rabbi Oshry if he could commit suicide.  His wife and children had
> >
> >been seized by the Nazis, and he knew that their murder was imminent.
> >He feared that the Nazis would force him to watch as his family was
> >killed, and the prospect of witnessing their deaths was a horror he
> >couldn't bear to face.  He begged for permission to take his own life
> >and avoid seeing his loved ones die.
> >
> >    Later that month, the head of another household came to Rabbi Oshry
> >"with tears of anguish on his face."  His children were starving to
> >death and he was desperate to find food for them.  His query was about a
> >
> >bit of property that had been left behind by the family in the next
> >apartment.  The entire family had been butchered a few days earlier, and
> >
> >there were no surviving relatives.  Under Jewish law, could he take what
> >
> >remained of their belongings and sell them to raise cash for food?
> >
> >    Next to such questions, answers seem almost superfluous.  (The rabbi
> >
> >did not permit the suicide; he allowed the neighbors' property to be
> >taken.)  What is stunning is that men and women in the throes of such
> >hideous suffering and brutality were still concerned about adhering to
> >Jewish law.  In the lowest depths of the Nazi hell, in a place of terror
> >
> >and savagery that most of us cannot fathom, here were human beings who
> >refused to relinquish their faith -- who refused even to violate a
> >religious precept without first asking if it was allowed.
> >
> >    Violence, humiliation, and hunger will reduce some people to animals
> >
> >willing to do anything to survive.  The Jews who sought out Rabbi Oshry
> >-- like Jews in so many other corners of Nazi Europe -- were not reduced
> >
> >but elevated, reinforced in their belief, determined against crushing
> >odds to walk in the ways of their fathers.
> >
> >    Some Jews fought the Nazis with guns and sabotage, Rabbi Oshry would
> >
> >later say; others fought by persisting in Jewish life.  In the end,
> >/Responsa from the Holocaust
> ><http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1880582716/townhallcom/>/ is a
> >chronicle of courage and resistance -- and a profound inspiration to
> >believers of every faith.
> >_______________________________________________
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> >
> >
> >
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