Our first righteous one

Read the story in Yisrael HaYom here

When I was a young teacher, I refused to join a delegation that went on a first trip to Poland. I thought I would go the following year or at the latest the year after. The years passed, trips left, opportunities went by, and I avoided them all. I did not travel with my pupils, nor with my children and not even with my sister. We had planned to go on a joint trip of discovery of our roots however every time I found a different excuse.

Then, last month, the Minister of Education called me and asked me to go to Poland together with him. Immediately, I said yes. This time, as opposed to all the other times, the visit had a purpose that I could not reject.

The visits to Poland have been taking place for twenty five years already and they have become a kind of initiation ceremony for Israeli youth as they prepare to be mobilized into the army. Rabbi Shai Piron decided to open the subject for renewed discussion and organized a trip, guided by him, for three leading directors in his office and for a few of his younger advisors, and he added to this group about ten other people from different professional fields: media, literature, law, society and even music. We were asked not only to experience this trip by ourselves but also to meet with pupils from different schools during our trip and experience it with them.

I set off for Poland as a teacher, a mother and a writer, but most of all as a daughter of the second generation. I set off for the country from which my father had been uprooted seventy years ago in order to see and feel what these visits do to our youth. Do they return home more Zionist? More family oriented? More appreciative of what we have? Or rather more suspicious? More anxiety-ridden? More nationalistic and xenophobic?

“Darkness is driven away with light”

I cried in front of the tresses of hair at Auschwitz, which reminded me of the tresses of my daughter. I was choked up in the gas chamber in Maidanek, in which it is most likely that the sister of my grandfather, whose name I bear, suffocated. However, I did not fall apart. I was stronger than I would have imagined. Perhaps, this was because of the warmth and support of the group. Or perhaps because I had a role to play. Or perhaps because of joy. Yes, during this voyage there was also joy. I was joyful because of the heart wrenching music that was played and sung by Ovadia Hamama and Erez Lev Ari. I was glad to get to know the team of the Ministry of Education and to know that our children are in such sensitive and dedicated hands. And I was happiest when I understood what needs to be done in order that the visits to Poland would inculcate in our pupils not only Zionism and love of the Land of Israel, values that are undoubtedly important, but also social responsibility, love of humanity and the desire to repair a broken world. These words might sound like a babble of slogans but I have no intention of apologizing for them. I am only sorry that I had to go so far away, to Poland, in order to write them.

This understanding pierced my consciousness during a ceremony honoring the Righteous among the Nations. I looked at the pupils who were sitting behind me and I was amazed to discover that their facial expressions were transformed the instant an elderly Polish women ascended the stage. She and her mother had risked their lives, hiding a Jewish girl in their home. The Minister of Education said: “The Righteous among the Nations were small lights that flickered in the darkness. They showed that darkness is not driven away with sticks, darkness is driven away with light. The pupils, many of them religious, stood in front of him, embracing one another and sang songs of love and peace.

When we left the place, I said to one of the members of the delegation that these visits to Poland must include meetings with the Righteous among the Nations. Many meetings. With them, with their children, with their stories, it makes no difference, the main things is that our pupils must know that the Shoah is not just gas and extermination camps. He frowned and said very solemnly that if we emphasize the importance of the Righteous among the Nations too much, we would distort the historical truth. After all, many Poles collaborated with the Germans. I thought to myself that even if the Righteous among the Nations were few and far between, our education system has to give them great importance.

The story that cracks the image of God

There was once an Egyptian princess who went out to the Nile and found a Hebrew baby. At that time, a law had been passed in Egypt that ordered that all Hebrew babies should be murdered. The princess had to obey the law. Both because she was Egyptian, and it was an Egyptian law, and because she was the daughter of the king, and it was her father’s law. However, instead of drowning the baby, she drew him out of the water and adopted him as her son and even gave him the name which proclaimed loud and clear her refusal to abide by the law: “She named him Moses, "because," she said, "I drew him out of the water.” (The name Moses is derived from the verb “to draw out”).

The story is well known and it would seem that nothing new can be said about it. However, the surprise is concealed in the fact that we are told the story. As the story goes on, God rains down plagues on the Egyptians, kills their firstborn and drowns their army. We, the readers of the TaNaKh, are supposed to cheer enthusiastically: Wow, there is no one like You, oh God! But the story about the Egyptian princess upsets our celebration. How can we praise God for the heavy duty plagues, for His strong arm, when among those beaten down there are also Egyptians like her? How can we admire God for the killing of the first born, when only a few chapters earlier, we learnt that even in the home of Pharaoh, the cruelest man in Egypt, a daughter with such a great spirit had grown up? How can we praise God for drowning the Egyptian soldiers, when thanks to one Egyptian woman, who saved our teacher Moses, the people of Israel lives on?

The editors of the TaNaKh were supposed to have rooted out the story of the daughter of Pharaoh and put in its place an alternative story that gives the credit to God. One could tell of a big fish, a wondrous storm, or a miracle that made Moses invisible. How did they let slip the fact that the story of the Egyptian princess wrecks the public relations of God.

The answer is concealed in the question. Or as is customarily said in Talmudic terminology: not at all (adraba), the story of the daughter of Pharaoh is told loud and clear, with a strong voice, just because it is in an irresoluble tension with the main narrative.

The story of the enslavement of our forefathers in Egypt is so dark and terrible, that we are likely to sink into it until the depths of hatred and vengeance. So that we might, rather, develop values of equality and freedom from it, as we indeed did, we must have at least one good Egyptian that will strengthen our faith in humanity. Indeed the image of God might indeed be cracked, but the editors of the TaNaKh are willing to pay that price.

The story about our first woman who is from the Righteous among the Nations gives humanity a resource of hope. Always, even in the most difficult moments, there will be someone who will light up the darkness and teach us how good and loving human beings can be.