By Rabbi Scott Hoffman
Scott Hoffman is Rabbi at Congregation Adath Jeshurun
Far and away the most confounding part of the Jewish calendar occurred this past week and the previous one. We observed Yom Ha-shoah, the day of Holocaust Remembrance, and marked the greatest tragedy in the four-thousand-year history of our people last week. And just a few days ago, we marked Yom Ha-atzmaut, Israel’s Independence Day, perhaps the greatest accomplishment in the history of our people. And yet, it is the genius of the Jewish people to pivot seamlessly from the ashes of destruction and rise again to historic heights that has enabled our growth and survival for so many centuries. Allow me to share a personal anecdote which I believe illustrates this better than any complicated analysis ever could.
My mother’s aunt, Vicky Bornstein z’l, was born in Poland and sent along with her family to the concentration camps. Her family was murdered during the Shoah, but she survived. At war’s end, she was a slave laborer for a family who lived just outside Auschwitz. In effect, she had survived the war only to fall victim to a modern-day Pharaoh.
Fortunately, an American Jewish soldier, Simon Chilowitz, had been sent by the U.S. military to help liberate the camps. He found Vicky by chance and decided to intervene. Using his knowledge of the Russian language, which he learned from his parents, he threatened to kill her enslavers unless she was released to his custody. Whether he would have carried out the threat is unknown, but the ploy worked, and my aunt was handed over to Chilowitz.
As they say in the Passover Haggadah, had this been the entirety of the story, we might say “Dayenu.” But in fact, it’s only the beginning. Chilowitz managed to have Vicky admitted to the United States and invited her to live with his family. I hasten to add that, while my aunt was a very beautiful woman, Chilowitz was considerably older and their relationship was platonic. He was motivated exclusively by a desire to assist a fellow Jew in distress.
As luck would have it, Vicky met and married my mother’s uncle, a handsome young doctor named Leo Bornstein. A battlefield surgeon in World War II, he was recruited by the Israeli government to serve in the 1948 War of Independence. Vicky and Leo married the following year and made Aliyah, where they raised three sons and lived a decidedly charmed life until my uncle’s passing in 1980 and Vicky’s many years later. Among his many accomplishments, Leo was one of the founders of what is today Sheba-Tel Hashomer Medical Center in Tel Aviv.
All three of Vicky and Leo’s sons are today doctors themselves, men in their late sixties and early seventies. But it is the oldest son, Elchanan, whom I will highlight here. Elchanan, like his father, works at Sheba-Tel Hashomer Medical Center. He is the chief administrator of a group of medical personnel sent by the State of Israel on missions of mercy. To cite one example which strikes close to home for me, the group was sent to Papua, New Guinea, to perform cataract surgery on 50 adults. I had a cataract removed from my right eye several years ago at the age of 55. Had I lived in an underdeveloped nation like New Guinea, I would by now have lost vision in that eye completely. But thanks to that brief surgery, I have nearly perfect vision in that eye today. The same is no doubt true of these men and women. The lives of 50 people, with no previous connection to Israel or the Jewish people, have been changed dramatically for the better.
Think about that for a moment. The kindness of a Jewish soldier saved the life of a young girl emerging from the devastation of the Shoah. The young girl married a surgeon, and together they raised three sons who spent their entire adult lives enriching the lives of strangers. And all of this happened despite living in Israel where citizens were – and are – often under threat. A young girl stepped out of the Holocaust’s shadow, and in the years and decades that followed, many others stepped out of their own personal “shadows.”
All this stems from a single Jewish soldier’s belief in the maxim that “one who saves a single life is considered to have saved an entire world.” Having just observed these two solemn days, let us vow to make this principle a “light to our feet” going forward. It’s a guiding light we need in these dark and challenging times.
Scott Hoffman is Rabbi at Congregation Adath Jeshurun