NECHAMA'S NOTES
ONE MITZVAH OVERCOMES DARKNESS
B"H, we shared this story in our Beyond Bat Mitzvah online class.
[for girls 8-13 years old.]
(Excerpted from "I Shall Live," by Edith Davidovici)
It was miraculous that while in Auschwitz, I sometimes managed to focus on the spiritual when the physical was so overwhelmingly bleak. But I would not, could not, accept the inevitable fate of becoming just another wretched walking corpse. I was surrounded by women who were unrecognizable compared to their pre-war state. They had clearly lost the will to live. They were half-anticipating death to come and relieve their suffering.
I prayed for Divine deliverance that the flame within all of us, the will to survive, would continue to burn brightly within me. I turned to my sister-in-law with a plan to reinvigorate our spiritual senses.
"Would you be willing to sacrifice a ration of bread so that we can buy shabbos candles?" I asked Eta.
The international currency of the camp was bread. One could buy lots of things if one was willing to give up one's bread. Eta agreed, so I managed to procure a candle for bread. I cut it in half so that I now had two candles. I was quite proud of my bargain for I had been successful in getting this candle for one slice of bread, and not two, which was the "original" price.
After securing the candles, we anxiously waited for Friday to arrive so that we could secretly execute our plan. The work of that week seemed less harsh because we were focused on the arrival of Shabbos. We hardly felt the great pangs of hunger caused by sacrificing our precious bread ration to buy the candle. We were set to beckon in the shabbos queen in all of her splendor and glory. We were ready to revel in the radiance of Shabbos.
That Friday night, Eta and I lit a half of the precious candle. Eta and I each lit one half. We had lit shabbos candles many times in our lives, but our prayers that evening were something special. Our tears flowed like fountains. We cried and cried long into the night. To accomplish this precious mitzvah, this ancient ritual, in the death camps were so very poignant.
The flickering flames were our light of hope for the future. They were affirmation to our religious beliefs and the bright shining lights of our neshomos, which no Nazi, even the cruelest and most brutal, can ever extinguish. My sister-in-law and I could not stop gazing at the flickering flames. They gave us hope that we would escape the confines of the barbed wire and reunite with our families.
May the light of our Shabbos candles transform all darkness into light!
With Blessings & Shabbat Shalom!
Nechama Laber
JGU One More Light Director
P.S. Sign up for Free Creative Online Clubs, This Sunday at 1 PM ET for Shabbos Songs with Chaviva. Share a song or poem for our Open mic!
P.P.S. "Roses to Pearls" for women Thursday, June 22, at 9 PM ET.
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