Finding myself in the words…

A number of  years ago, I bumped into a former Rondebosch High School student of mine, Brian, in a department store in Cape Town. If I recall correctly, he was at the time a lecturer at the University of Cape Town. We began chatting about this and that and one of the things he said that stays with me to this day is the following, and I quote, “Solly, thank you for giving me the words.” He had had seen my poetry in print and told me that what I had written, cleared up some of his jumbled and confused thoughts about the Holocaust and that he now could shed a bit more light on his understanding of the Shoah. Let me explain. In 1992, I participated in the very first March of the Living as co teacher in charge of about 80 South African Jewish Day School students who were visiting Poland and more specifically, marching together from Auschwitz to Birkenau on Holocaust Remembrance Day – Yom Hashoah, with thousands of youngsters from all over the world. And then capping it off with a few days in Israel to celebrate Yom Haatzmaut. This now annual educational program focuses on studying the history of the Holocaust and examining the roots of prejudice, intolerance, and hatred.

For me being a child of Holocaust survivors, it was especially stressful having to worry, care for and protect our young students who were exposed on a daily basis to the horrors of the Shoah – and to deal with my own emotional turbulence. And how I coped was to scribble and document my thoughts and feelings, sometimes furiously,  as the need arose – and then to somehow cohere them into something meaningful which could sustain me. What resulted eventually, about a year after we returned from Poland, was a book of poetry: Lost and Found, A Second-Generation Response to the Holocaust. The words, not a work of literary art I may add, were straight from the heart, from the kishkes, from the gut. Oxford University Press published 2 of my poems in A New University Anthology of English Poetry (1993), In the shoe shop and Lublin – 4^th November 1943- 2.30pm. I don’t know what words Brian was thanking me for. Perhaps the following?

I went to a shoe shop today in Majdanek (the concentration camp)

800,000 pairs on display

But no

body to fill them

How easy it must’ve been to be ambitious.

in

those days

It didn’t take long

to fill a dead man’s shoes

At any rate, I expressed my appreciation to Brian, and I must say I felt chuffed to be sandwiched in the book between Emily Dickinson and Shakespeare – please forgive the digression!

Changing gears, Brian’s comments those so many years ago came back to me as I read the words and emotions that poured out in sorrow, pain and grief over the brutal murder of 6 of our citizens in the tunnels of Gaza by what can only be described as pure evil.

Knowing E, my former boss at JDC – and a family member of Hersh, brought the tragedy closer to me. But I must admit, I struggled to write a few sentences that could somehow show empathy and be comforting to E in the deep depths of his personal grief and that of his family.

I am on a WhatsApp group of former colleagues and there was a gush of words of condolences and support for E.

As I scrolled through the responses, S.’s words in particular touched a chord:

“E, I haven’t stopped thinking about you and all your family. Everything seemed trite to write. Nothing seems ok right now. So, I will echo what I’ve read from the very many who are equally as heartbroken that we feel this way – not just because we have compassion for a true young soul who was made to suffer unimaginably. But because Rachel and Jon – and for us in this group at least, you too – made us love Hersh. You made us feel he was our kid, our family. And you did that by being the best parents – going to the ends of the earth to help him and to share his truth, his essence and his neshama. We are so so sorry for your loss – and what is our loss too.  Baruch Dayan Ha’emet”

In fact, S’s words touched me deeply, entered straight into my heart, and summed up what I had been feeling but did not have the emotional capacity or bandwidth to articulate. And I responded accordingly:

“S, thanks for giving us the words to express what we all feel and what is in our hearts. E, you, and the family are uppermost in our thoughts at this so sad and very difficult time, and we are sending you all a collective embrace and our love.”

Of course, the always so powerful, compelling  words so meaningfully articulated, and the pleas, and emotions of Rachel and Jon tugged tight at our heart strings, keeping Hersh, the other hostages – and us, alive with glimmers of hope, a few rays of sunshine, and prayer. And their unbelievable emotional strength, fortitude and  dignity and not falling apart  – at least not on the surface, kept us, through our torrent of tears, forever hoping for a happy ending to a painfully tragic and on-going story.

Alas, it was not to be, but it is in the words and through the never – ending tears of others in their sorrow and mourning, that we find meaning and define ourselves, that we, Am Yisrael, both in Israel, around the world and across the ether, collectively wrap and hold ourselves together through our emotions – and through a sense of ownership of those who could have been our children and grandchildren, in a never ending shawl, a tapestry, a protective tallit. And we take a measure of comfort and sustenance in feeling so strongly connected to the bereaved amongst us who while they may be unknown on a personal level, bind us as never before, as a people, and as a country. And united in our grief, make us ever more determined to protect that which is so precious to us – our wounded and scarred and damaged country which we so dearly love and cherish, and which we swear to restore at all costs.