Take an unusual
trip through
Jewish history.

Maybe your Sunday school
class consisted of little
beyond Theodor Herzl and
King David. But Jewish his-
tory is filled with curious
characters, unforgettable
love stories and remarkable
adventures that rival any
Jackie Collins novel.
Take this quick quiz and

see if you know about these
fascinating figures from
Jewish history:
a) Dr. C.H. Lieberman
b) The Golem
c) Jacob Philadelphia
d) Edward Kanter
e) Kaufmann Kohler
ANSWERS:
a) A native of Riga, he was
reportedly one of the nine
physicians at Lincoln's
deathbed. Lieberman is pic-
tured in the 1967 painting
"The Last Hours of Lincoln"
by Alphonzo Chapel.
b) The mythical man of
legend created, by magic, in
16th-century Prague to
defend the Jewish ghetto.
Legend has it that when the
Nazis stormed Prague, they

refused to enter the Altneu
Synagogue because the
Golem reportedly was stored
in its attic (and is said to be
there to this day).
c) An 18th-century Jewish
mystic from Pennsylvania, a
magician and scholar who
was friends with Frederick
the Great.
d) A Detroit native, one of
nine Jews active in the
founding of the Republican
Party in 1856.
e) Kohler, born in 1843,
was called "the most power-
ful intellectual force in
Reform
Judaism
in

America." He once served at
Temple Beth El in Detroit,
and succeeded Isaac M. Wise
as president of Hebrew
Union College until 1921.

Put gossip
on hold.

Jewish writings are replete
with warnings against
speaking ill of others. Among
the insights:
"He who overlooks an
offense promotes good will;
he who repeats a tale sepa-
rates friends." (Book of
Proverbs)
"Men's eyes and ears don't
always depend on will-

power, but a man's tongue
always is subject to his will."
(Zohar)
The Chofetz Chaim
warned that "He who speaks
ill of his fellow man cause
the angels to speak ill of him
before God. He who speaks
well of his fellow man
encourages the angels to do
the same for him."

Remember your
ancestors: look at
family albums and
tell stories of
family heirlooms,
from your mother's
Shabbat
candlesticks to
your father's
Hebrew books.

In A Day of Pleasure: Stories
of a Boy Growing Up in
Warsaw, Isaac Bashevis
Singer describes the boyhood
home that would have a pro-
found effect both on his writ-
ing and his life. It was a
world, he said, "rich in come-
dy and tragedy; rich in its
individuality, wisdom, fool-
ishness, wildness and good-
ness."
Singer speaks with ten-
derness of his father (a
"highly religious man [with]
a long red beard, long black
sidelocks and blue eyes"), of
his home ("The tenement
building where I grew up
would be called a slum in
America, but in those days
we did not think it was so
bad") and of his neighbor-
hood ("There were revolu-
tionaries on our street who
wanted to get rid of the Tsar
of Russia. They dreamed
about creating a state where
all worked and there were no
rich or poor. But how could
anyone dethrone the Tsar
when he had so many sol-
diers with swords and rifles?
And how could there be no
rich or poor?").
In his short story
"Shosha," Singer writes of
his neighbor Basha and her
three daughters Shosha,
Ippa and Teibele. Young
Isaac spent many hours with
Shosha, where a cricket
chirped all night long. They
played with old buttons and
wooden spools. They
exchanged stories about she-
devils and demons.
Then the Singer family
moved, and it was years
before Isaac would return
again to Shosha's home.
Here he meets not with
Shosha but with her young
daughter, Basha. The two
speak of demons and angels
and saintly rabbis.

Suddenly, Isaac hears the
familiar chirping of a cricket.
"Could it be the cricket of my
childhood? Certainly not.
Perhaps her great-great-
great-granddaughter. But
she was telling the same
story, as ancient as time, as
puzzling as the world, and as
long as the dark winter
nights of Warsaw."

01)
Learn what
Judaism really has
to say about
off-the-beaten-
track subjects, like
the afterlife and
angels.

Judaism places key impor-
tance on how one behaves in
this life — but this certainly
does not mean it says noth-
ing about the afterworld.
Many Jews believe in rein-
carnation (for a really spicy
afternoon look into the dyb-
buk, the [usually evil] soul of
a deceased man or woman
which enters a living per-
son).
Judaism also speaks at
length about angels,
accounts of which can be
found in Isaiah (where they
are described as having six
wings) and Ezekiel. Angels
are said to be strong and
wise, and exist to fulfill God's
commandments. Angels
appeared before Abraham to
tell him of the birth of his
son, and also to Lot to tell
him of the impending
destruction of Sodom. Both
Talmudic and Midrashic lit-
erature offer names for
numerous angels.

Do something about
an issue that
troubles you.

Judaism is a religion of
action and deeds, and the
Torah commands us to pur-
sue justice. It's nice if some-
one "really feels in his heart"
for poor widows, but how
does this help the destitute
woman who fears she'll have
no food for her children?
In the Aleinu prayer we
hope for the "perfection of
the world through God's sov-
ereignty." Pursuit of tikkun
olam can bring us higher lev-
els of spirituality.

Study the lives of
Righteous Gentiles.

The name Raoul Wallenberg
is familiar to just about
everyone. Yet Israel has rec-

ognized hundreds of
Righteous Gentiles — men
and women who risked their
own lives, and the lives of
their families — to save
Jews during the Holocaust.

)
Pray.

"Prayer," the Talmud states,
"is the service of the heart."

Remember the
Sabbath.

"The children of Israel shall
keep Shabbat, to make it an
eternal covenant throughout
their generations," it says in
Exodus 31:16-17. "For it is
an eternal sign between Me
and the children of Israel
that in six days God created
the heavens and the earth,
and He rested on the sev-
enth day."
Observing the Sabbath is
such an important mitzvah
that, "Even if a person trans-
gresses any other mitzvah,
as long as Shabbos is intact,
there is still a relationship
between man and God,"
Rabbi Abraham J. Twerski
writes in Living Each Day,
published by ArtScroll.
In Hasidic Tales of the
Holocaust, a collection of
true stories, author Yaffa
Eliach tells of a Czech Jew,
Ignac, who was imprisoned
at Mauthausen.
One night, Ignac dreamed
of visiting his grandparents'
home. It was before the war,
and the house was filled with
warmth and song and good
food, as the family, prepared
to eat shalosh seudah, the
third Sabbath meal. His
grandfather told Ignac,
"Remember what our sages
say, 'Whoever observes the
three Sabbath meals will be
saved from the suffering to
precede the coming of the
Messiah, the rule of
Purgatory.'
"You will grow up, my
child, and will survive the
suffering that precedes the
coming of the Messiah and
the rule of Gehinnom
(Purgatory). But you must
always attempt to observe
the third Sabbath meal, for
its merit will protect you."
Ignac dreamed the same
dream for weeks. Then he
began to heed its message.
From each scrap of bread,
Ignac saved a few crumbs.
Even when he was certain
he would starve to death, he
would not touch the crumbs.
Then on Shabbat Ignac
would find a private corner,
wash his hands, and'eat the
crumbs he had saved all
week for shalosh se'udah.
Mauthausen was liberated
in May 1945. Among those
freed that day was Ignac. ❑

u__,
up

