About eighteen years ago, Mendel Ostro, of blessed memory, spent Simchat Torah with me.
Mendel Ostro was a chassid of the Rebbe of Ostrowiec. He grew up in the town of Szydlowiec in Poland and, at a young age, survived the Holocaust alone. We had met many times before, but that holiday he actually stayed in our home. He was our guest for two full and wonderful days.
Mendel spoke only briefly about his personal suffering in the Holocaust. Mostly, he spoke with heartfelt yearning about his Rebbe, Rabbi Yechezkel of Ostrowiec, הי״ד. His longing for his Rebbe was alive and palpable, and he would often recount how the Rebbe had asked him to put on tefillin and keep Shabbat even when it was difficult. Mendel would quietly add, “I do it because I promised the Rebbe.”
He told many stories about his town of Szydlowiec and also about its terrible destruction when the Germans came. That Simchat Torah, we walked slowly together to pray at the Agudas Achim synagogue, as he described the Simchat Torah celebrations in Szydlowiec before the war.
In the middle of the hakafot dancing, Mendel suddenly grabbed my hand and said, “Nem mir a heim – Take me home. I can’t stay here. I can’t bear to see Jews so joyful. In Szydlowiec, Simchat Torah was celebrated the right way. Now it’s no longer permitted to rejoice like that.”
I said nothing. I didn’t try to argue. I just looked into his eyes and stayed silent. I saw that he wasn’t seeing me or the dancing crowd. He was seeing Szydlowiec. He was looking at his Rebbe. Mendel placed his arm in mine, and we quietly walked back home.
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There is a story in the Haggadah about Rabbi Eliezer, Rabbi Yehoshua, Rabbi Elazar ben Azaryah, Rabbi Akiva, and Rabbi Tarfon, who were reclining together in Bnei Brak. But why Bnei Brak?
Four of the five sages did not live in Bnei Brak. Why then did they all come there to celebrate the Seder night?
My favorite interpretation explains that those were days of recent and searing destruction. Some of them even personally remembered the Beit HaMikdash. Rabbi Yehoshua had the privilege of playing the Levi’s musical instruments in the Temple. Rabbi Tarfon testified that he had heard the Kohen Gadol pronounce the Ineffable Name on Yom Kippur. Rabbi Eliezer was among those who smuggled Rabbi Yochanan ben Zakkai out to Yavne before the destruction.
For them, it was all still fresh — like Szydlowiec for Mendel Ostro. The destruction was real and tangible. To sit at a Seder table, an evening so deeply connected to the memory of the Temple, was a deeply painful experience — perhaps like Simchat Torah was for my friend Mendel.
So they came to Rabbi Akiva because they were searching for hope, for optimism, for a positive outlook. They came to the incurable optimist — not only someone who could rise from the rubble, but who could see the building within the ruins.
When 24,000 of his students died in a short time and "the world was desolate," it was Rabbi Akiva who gathered five remaining students — and from them, Torah flourished.
They remembered how, when they walked with him and heard the sounds of Roman dominance and wept, he laughed — because he saw in his mind’s eye the sounds of Jerusalem that would surely come.
When they saw the Temple Mount destroyed and foxes walking through it and they cried, “Rabbi Akiva was laughing,” because he saw in the depth of the destruction the depth of the rebuilding, in the depth of exile the depth of redemption.
And they themselves acknowledged him and said, “Akiva, you have comforted us. Akiva, you have comforted us.”
So they came to Rabbi Akiva in Bnei Brak because there, with him, they could find the strength to truly celebrate the Seder night. With him, as they placed the ׳zeroa׳ on the Seder plate — a symbol of the Temple that had just been destroyed — they would surely cry, but then look at Rabbi Akiva, who saw the future, and they too would be able to laugh.
This Shabbat is Shabbat Nachamu.
"Nachamu, nachamu ami" – Comfort, comfort My people, the prophet will tell us tomorrow. It’s not always easy. Perhaps it never is. But it is certainly possible — to look into exile and destruction and see redemption and rebuilding.
Shabbat Shalom,
Rabbi Zalman Wishedski