7 No Surprises #70days70years

I am learning to remember there once lived a person named Gezela Lorinz nee Noilander. She was born in Oradea Mare, Romania, 1885 and died in Auschwitz, 1944, aged 59. May her memory be for a blessing.

Essay 7 #70days70years

The Rabbi and the Professor

by Rabbi Ari Kahn

To read the essay click on the title above. Here are my thoughts.

Rabbi Kahn tells the moving story of Rabbi Yisroel Zeev Gustman, a survivor of The Shoah and a living link to the lost Jewish world destroyed by the Nazis, and Professor Robert J (Yisrael) Aumann, Nobel Prize winner for economics.

Rabbi Gustman lost his baby son Meir in The Shoah. Professor Aumann's son Shlomo fell defending his country. Rabbi Kahn tells us how Rabbi Gustman lingered at the shiva of Shlomo Aumann, saying that he had not had the chance to sit shiva for his own son, Meir. He said that while Meir is in the congregation of the Holy Departed because he died for being a Jew, Shlomo is a leader of that congregation as he died defending other Jews.

There's more but skipping to the postscript, Rabbi Kahn tells us how he met Rabbi Gustman in the street one day and asked him to bless his young son who was sitting in his buggy. The surprising blessing was, "may he be a boy like all the other boys." In other words, may there be no big differences between him and all the other boys.

Many years ago when I was a single 20-something going to work every day and dreaming of exciting things in the future, I said to my friend Judy Ta'ir, "sometimes I get scared that this is it. Nothing is going to change and this is my life for the next 40 years."

Judy worked as a psychologist in Alyn Hospital - a world leader in pediatric and adolescent rehabilitation. She was at that time also the mother of a small child. Her reply to me was, "Rachel, I pray that nothing changes and that this is my life for the next 40 years."

I didn't understand her at the time. As I got older and wiser I understood it more. When I became a mother, I too started to pray for an ordinary life in which there are few changes. And I still do.