OF MATZA AND TRULY BITTER HERBS

The following installment is a testament to the indomitable Jewish spirit that managed to survive the smokestacks of the Nazi crematoria. * Part 2 

FATHER, I WON’T ASK ANY QUESTIONS

R’ Dodya was someone I considered very dear to me and I was also afraid of him. I loved listening to the stories that he told so well and yet, his stories left a leaden feeling in the heart. There was a duality about R’ Dodya in that he was amiable and irascible, happy and deeply sad.

They said he was a scholar and yet he sat day and night in shul and murmured – T’hillim by day and Mishnayos at night. It seemed to me that one eye of his shed tears. It was always teary, while the other eye smiled with a glint of mockery. Perhaps this was all because R’ Dodya remained alone, having lost his entire family in the war, half of them in the German crematoria and the rest to starvation in Russia.

R’ Dodya once recounted the following to me:

Do you want to hear how I once held a peculiar seder? How we got stuck on the questions of the Mah Nishtana? It happened after it was all over, after my Moshe’le, the last one, said his final words with the last of his strength, “Father, it’s really true that up until twenty years of age … nu, they do not punish over there … forgive me Father.” I heard not another word from him. He mumbled something silently in his exhaustion. I heard nothing further from him and did not see him again except in long dreams, in heavy nightmares.

It was hard to live alone … The term “living” is a borrowed term. I understood what the meaning of “against your will you live” means, what it means to be compelled to live each minute, every second. We are not in charge of our own lives! Go and understand the ways of the Creator, why he wanted to take Moshe’le, and me – not. You, Dodya, must live.

But that is not what I wanted to tell you. The chiddush is how, despite all this, I managed to prevail. Despite the tremendous hunger, I had no desire to take something into my mouth. Absolutely not! Each piece of bread twisted my insides, arousing a feeling of disgust, almost complete revulsion. The bread simply stuck in my throat, but also cried out “live and survive!” If the One in heaven wants you to continue to wander this world, deliberately stopping to eat is forbidden, it smacks of a very serious sin. As if in spite, it was when I remained without anyone that I more frequently happened upon food.

A month went by and another month, and then it was Pesach. It was on Pesach that something moved and burst forth within me. Just as up until that time I had been like a stone, with my life perceived by me as a burden, with a fistful of dust in my heart and thoughts churning through my mind like sludge; even a chapter of T’hillim did not help, and the holy, sweet words did not wring even a teardrop from the frozen wellspring of tears; it was as though I was left forever with that mute silence that settled on the darkened room after Moshe’le’s final words. 

Similarly, when Pesach arrived something erupted inside me, roiling and seething. I ran around as if in a daze and looked to see where I could obtain some matza. I rooted around and begged for a bottle of wine for the four cups and a bare minimum of maror. 

From somewhere, there came forth a shadow of a glimmer of the enthusiasm from some previous sweet Erev Pesach. Oy, our good Father, it is Erev Pesach for Yidden! The luminous, the holy, Jewish soulful Pesach! … But soon after, a terrible anger and shuddering fear began to build: how would I, a survivor, blackened, extinguished, a brand saved from the fire, be able to celebrate the holiday?!

I am recounting my sins. For a moment I walked around my house like a madman. I wanted to break out of the house and run to where my eyes might take me. But then I immediately thought, where would I run? Why should I run? You cannot run from G-d, not from His will and not from His Pesach. I suddenly recalled Moshe’le’s final words and shame overcame me.

Then I said out loud… nu. You [Heishke] are looking at me as if I were a madman? Right? Perhaps at that time I was actually unhinged, or perhaps not “actually” … but in a strange way I felt that “He,” boruch Hashem, was with me here, “close,” just like the first seder upon the Exodus from Egypt – “The Holy One blessed be He in His Glory and Essence.” I prepared the “seder” and with perhaps a bit more emotion I unleashed my foolish tongue and I said, “Nu, dear Father, the seder is ready; we are about to carry out the seder.” Did you ever hear such wording before in your life like that, “we?”

Yes, it was some sort of attack. Madness, I suppose; if only not worse than that. I had no desire to go to shul, as though I did not want to lose the closeness I felt to Hashem in my dark room.

The davening was full of flavor. It wasn’t only that my voice reverberated; my thoughts shouted out during the prayer. Yes, thoughts of the deep, inner meaning of Pesach, like it says in the holy books. It all stood out so starkly, so palpably. During t’filla, one is allowed to permit oneself something higher; not merely what is seen by eyes of flesh and what can be touched by human hands.

Earlier, I told you that it is possible it was worse than just madness. It is possible that it contained a trick by the kluginker (lit. clever one, i.e. the Evil Inclination), that ancient familiar beguiler. He is a master at inserting himself cleverly into every situation, even a state of madness, and even when it comes to someone who is a starved and broken pottery shard. Have you heard?

I finished davening and said out loud, “Gut Yom Tov to You, dear Father.” I even made Kiddush with great pomp and somewhere in my imagination I thought or expected to hear a response of “amen.”

Then I began reciting the Hagada and reached the Mah Nishtana and here, it seems, the kluginker got me. Out loud, very loudly, I shouted, “Tatte, Tatte, I will ask You, ask …” And something flipped in my mind; my mind grew confused and my throat choked on a huge knot. I looked up from my torn Hagada. I could not say any more of the “Four Questions” from the Hagada. I felt the urge to ask many questions, to ask and ask.

“Tatte, I want to ask You … why? Why? Why without an end. If Moshe’le can no longer ask me the Four Questions, I will ask many more than four questions … No. Just one big question, WHY?”

Ach, you look at me like a sinner too. I wrestled with the one posing my questions, with the kluginker within me. I felt that I was going to burst, that something had torn inside me. Two forces, two Dodyas wrestled. The first feeling that my Father in heaven was “palling around” here with me, suddenly dissipated. I was left with a cold fog around me and some sort of abrasion within me.

Gevald, during the worst times I did not ask the smallest question! No matter what will be, but no questions on the Creator! Why now, at this loftiest of times? That is what I asked “Him.”

I forced my eyes open and looked into the Hagada. “What does the Wise one say – what are these testimonies …” Oy vey! “Someone” evoked an idea inside me: Today at the seder all the Jewish children ask, even the Wise son. I will definitely not ask questions, I will not, G-d forbid, ask any “treife” question. I will just search a bit and try to grasp something of the intent; I will ask as the Wise Son of the Hagada does. Perhaps now is the right time for something of the hidden, heavenly ways to be illuminated in my paltry intellect. Something … a little bit.

Some small merit stood by me. Maybe it was the merit of my Moshe’le. Once again, his final words floated to the surface. Who knows, maybe Father in heaven, who had already become a ben bayis (member of the family) helped me withstand the pressure.

I wrestled with each of the Four Sons and I debated (silently, internally): The Wise Son asked? – Then he is wise and knows what to ask. Sha … I don’t want to be a Wise Son and ask questions! Then the thought came to me – why does the Wicked Son come right after the Wise Son? Because even from intelligent questions can sometimes sprout the questioning of the Wicked Son.

No, no, I will not ask any questions, unlike the Wicked Son and not even like the Wise Son!

When, in my mind, I settled with the Wise Son and the Wicked Son, it became a bit easier. Once again, I considered and then argued that I did not even want to ask like the Simple Son who asks, “What is this?” Help me, Father in heaven, so that I have no desire to ask. If I must be one of the Four Sons, then I will be like the One Who Does Not Know How to Ask.

Yes, the One Who Does Not Know How to Ask; and the turmoil in my heart quieted down. The kluginker hid somewhere and it was quiet and calm in the room. I quietly began to say again, “Tatte, I will ask You the Four Questions, why is this night different …”

***

R’ Dodya fell silent, his gaze focused on the ner tamid near the Aron Kodesh in shul, and this time both his eyes were moist with big tears.