Read ‘Hasidic Tales of the Holocaust’

Eve Levin, member of An Interfaith Dialogue and the Lawrence Jewish Community Center, 917 Highland Drive:

I return repeatedly to Yaffa Eliach’s “Hasidic Tales of the Holocaust.” Although I am not a Hasidic Jew, I find inspiration in this book about how to retain faith when faced with the evil in the world.

The Hasidim (literally “pious ones”) were Jewish traditionalists, preserving a lifestyle and world view rooted in 18th century Eastern Europe. Religion framed their world, which revolved around community, Torah study, joyful prayer and the sanctification of the ordinary activities that fill people’s lives. How could such people cope with the brutality of the Nazis, whose goal was the eradication of Judaism and the Jewish people?

Among Hasidim, story-telling became a vehicle for imparting moral values and spiritual truth. In keeping with this tradition, Eliach devotes the largest part of her book to reproducing the stories themselves as she heard them from Holocaust survivors.

While the tales necessarily recount much horror, they focus on how individual Jews — women, men and young children — retained their faith in God and their belief in the goodness of the world. Even in the depths of suffering, they could see evidence of God’s love for the Jewish people in miraculous escapes from death, visions of family members bearing messages of encouragement and in prosaic acts of kindness. These spiritual resources aided them in maintaining their human decency and their will to live, or too often, in meeting death with dignity.

As a professional historian, I appreciate Eliach’s meticulous scholarship. She tells readers how she collected the material and recast it for presentation. Insofar as possible, she has verified the accuracy of the accounts, while acknowledging that there can be no historical proof of spiritual experience. Thus this book appeals to me both as an academic and as a religious person.

— Send e-mail to Eve Levin at evelevin@att.net.

‘Buddenbrooks’ has thoughtful message

The Rev. Paul McLain, curate, Trinity Episcopal Church, 1011 Vt.:

The best religious books have the power to change the way we think and live.

While it is not overtly religious, the novel “Buddenbrooks” by Thomas Mann does that for me. On its surface, “Buddenbrooks” is a history depicting four generations of a wealthy family tied to a successful business in northern Germany. But much is happening beneath the surface. As the family business declines, the Buddenbrooks maintain the appearance of respectability. An inner transformation is also taking place. Each generation discovers a deeper artistic sensitivity and a passion for life that is crying to break out of the mold in which they feel trapped.

The Buddenbrooks first see religion as a means to an end. The early generations see faith as a way for their business to be blessed, even if their actions do not always integrate with what they profess. The pivotal character in the novel is Thomas Buddenbrook, the leader of the third generation. As Thomas approaches death, Mann describes his mystical experience: “Suddenly the darkness seemed to split open before his eyes, as if the velvet wall of night parted to reveal an immeasurably deep, eternal vista of light. ‘I’m going to live!’ Thomas Buddenbrook said half-aloud and felt his chest jolted by sobs somewhere deep inside. ‘That’s it — I’m going to live. It is going to live … and thinking that it and I are separated instead of one and the same — that is the illusion that death will set right.'”

Thomas’ “resurrection” awakens him to seeing life as a unity with the life-force that is both beyond us and within us. This is how reading and re-reading “Buddenbrooks” calls me into the way Christ unites our life to his such that the true “end” of life is also its new beginning.

— Send e-mail to Paul McLain at pkm@trinitylawrence.org.