When the coat is gone
While listening to Rabbi Dunner’s speech, I heard something so powerful that I knew I had to preserve it until after Shabbat and then pass it on to my readers.
As I have mentioned many times, the Holocaust accompanies me constantly. It lives within my thoughts and shapes the way I see the world.
Rabbi Dunner spoke about the moment when Joseph’s brothers removed his coat of many colors. By stripping him of that garment, they believed they were reducing the great Joseph to nothing special, to an ordinary human being. They thought the coat was what made him extraordinary.
Yet, as we know from the continuation of the Biblical story, Joseph rose wherever he was. Whether in servitude or in prison, he ascended in stature and responsibility. The coat was never the source of his greatness.
When the Nazis began the process of erasing the Jewish people, they followed a chilling progression. First, they burned books written by Jews. Then they set fire to houses of worship. Finally, they transported Jews to Auschwitz and other concentration camps, where everything was stripped from them.
Yes, their coats were taken. Their hair was shaved, for those who were not immediately murdered upon arrival.
But what the Nazis could not destroy was the human mind. And with it, in my father’s case, faith.
Young people often asked my father the same question again and again.
When you were there, did you ever lose your belief in God?
His answer was unwavering.
If I had lost it, I would not have survived.
Did Joseph’s brothers truly believe that by removing his coat, they could erase who he was?
History answered that question for them, just as it answered the Nazis.
Clothes can be stripped away. Names can be replaced by numbers. Bodies can be weakened.
But the essence of a human being, mind, faith, and moral courage, cannot be taken unless it is surrendered.
Joseph rose without his coat.
My father survived without his.
And the Jewish people continue to stand, not because of what we wear, but because of who we are.