Death and Talmud and eternal life

T

here it is, on the front page of the Israeli newspaper, something I did not want to see again: a full color photo of the barbed wire fence, the fields, the distant buildings, the watchtowers, the browning winter grass of the German death camp, Maidanek. This notorious place, adjacent to the Polish town of Lublin, was the most primitive of all the camps, and ultimately contained over 150,000 inmates and slave laborers, primarily Jews. Most of them were killed by systematic extermination, or raging typhus, or starvation, or from brutal treatment by the sadistic guards.

The high barbed wire is held in place by tall wooden poles. At the very top of one of those poles, just above the barbed wire is perched a little bird, its graceful oval shape, its round little head, and its pristine loveliness quite incongruous in this ugly place. Its tiny beak is slightly open, tilted upward toward the blue sky. I can almost hear it chirping out a song.

What are you singing, sweet little bird? Is it a dirge, an elegy to the ones who perished here, a sad song for those who were exterminated? Of course not. How would you know what took place beyond these twisted wires, within those wooden buildings and the torture chambers, you who has never seen the mass graves now covered with grass?

Sing away, little bird, chirp and warble. In an instant you will fly away, oblivious to the degradations and the brutishness that existed here. Fly away, glide above it all, and find a lofty branch on which to rest your wings, a high rooftop from which to pipe out your merry little melodies. But I cannot fly away. I stare again at Maidanek. The brown grassy stubble will turn green in the springtime. Would that it could remain brown all year long.

In the adjacent town of Lublin there stands the Maidanek museum. Available for the curious are the gruesome prisoners’ barracks, the comfortable homes of the camp commandants, the so-called infirmary where inmates underwent “medical experiments,” and where, instead of being offered healing, they were offered death.

The museum is a quiet place; visitors walk through the exhibits, no one talks. Which is appropriate. What took place here occurred in a realm beyond words, beyond human expression. Most fitting is stillness, tomblike silence. Human chatter would only demean that which is remembered here. The kol demamah dakah, the “thin small voice” precedes the Divine Presence (I Melachim, 19:12). Perhaps the only sound should be that of a little bird chirping.

Maidanek is on the outskirts of the town of Lublin. During the Holocaust years, while the chimneys of Maidanek spewed out their black smoke, the citizens of Lublin went about their daily business: work, meals, beer, birthdays, anniversaries, picnics, Sunday church, and genuflection before their gods. Were they aware of what was taking place in that nearby camp? Yes, there was a camp next door, a camp for criminals, they heard, but life goes on, does it not? Do today’s Lubliners visit the museum? Are they shocked to learn what transpired in their neighborhood?

Lublin. Knowledgeable Jews recognize it as the home of a famous yeshivah and its rabbinic luminary, Rav Meir Shapiro, known as the Lubliner Rav. In 1923 he first suggested that Jews around the world should study the same designated page of Talmud every single day, seven days a week, and thereby complete the entire Talmud — 2,711 folios — every seven years. Not only would they become more learned, but their unified study program would connect them with fellow Jews everywhere. Thus was born the idea of the daf yomi, the daily folio. The idea caught on — so much so that at the most recent completion of the latest seven-year cycle — the 12th since 1923 — over 250,000 Jews filled stadiums and conference centers around the world to celebrate their personal, disciplined seven-year journey through the Talmud — and to begin a new cycle once again.

The paradoxes bewilder:

When one thinks of Lublin, one thinks of the most successful mass learning program in human history.

When one thinks of Lublin, one thinks of Maidanek, the most successful mass murder program in human history.

Is Lublin the suburb of Maidanek, or is Maidanek the suburb of Lublin?

Lublin, Talmud.

Talmud, barbed wire.

Barbed wire, sweet little birds warbling.

Birds warbling, brutality, death.

Death and Talmud and eternal life.

(Originally featured in Mishpacha, Issue 704)