There are certain stories that are so inspirational, so powerful, that they are forever engraved on my soul.
“Rebbetzin,” people always say, “tell the Rosh Hashanah story.”
The story unfolded more than 70 years ago in the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp. My father, HaRav HaTzaddik Avraham HaLevi Jungreis, zt”l, was confronted by the challenge of observing Rosh Hashanah in that hellhole on earth.
What is the essence of Rosh Hashanah if not the awesome call of the shofar? Every Jew must listen to it. Parents even bring their small children into the sanctuary for that holy moment when the sounds of the shofar reverberate throughout the synagogue.
But in Bergen-Belsen there was no shofar. Only demons. But the demons of Bergen-Belsen did not realize with whom and with what they were contending. There is no power on earth that can silence our shofar – the shofar of the Torah, the shofar of faith, the shofar of Mashiach.
Throughout our long, painful history, every Jew-hating nation that tried to exterminate us failed. We triumphed with shofar in hand, awaiting that final call of our redemption.
Thus in Bergen-Belsen my father and other rabbonim held a secret meeting and concluded that a shofar must be procured. They were determined that Rosh Hashanah not pass without the blowing of the shofar.
A plan was forged: At great sacrifice we would gather cigarettes – a powerful currency in the concentration camps – and have someone with access to the junk pile where our holy items were strewn retrieve a shofar for us.
And so when Rosh Hashanah arrived, the shofar was blown. The sound electrified everyone. It made all who heard it tremble and weep. Adjacent to us was a camp for Polish Jews. The Nazis separated us not only by electrified barbed wire but by nationality as well. Our Polish brethren came running so that they might better hear the call that uniquely belongs to the Jewish people.
The Nazis also came running and beat us with their truncheons and whips, but not before the blessing was proclaimed and we all cried out “Amen!”
We were bleeding and our wounds were deep and raw but we stood erect. We were Jews and no whip could silence our prayer. No threat – not even the gas chambers – could make us relinquish our shofar and give up our faith.
Many years later I was lecturing in Israel in a village in Samaria called Neve Aliza. It was late summer, just before Rosh Hashanah, and I felt a need to tell the story of the shofar of Bergen-Belsen. When I finished, a woman in the audience got up.
“I know exactly what you are talking about,” she said, “because my father was the rabbi in the Polish compound. You may not realize this, but your shofar was smuggled into our camp in the bottom of a large garbage can filled with soup and my father blew the shofar for us.”
I looked at her, momentarily speechless.
“And that’s not all,” she went on to say. “I have the shofar in my house, here in Neve Aliza. When we were liberated, we blew the shofar again and my father took it with him. Today I have it here in Eretz Yisrael.”
With that, she ran home and returned a few minutes later with the shofar in her hands. She was holding it with more care than should have held jewels valued at millions of dollars. We wept and embraced.
Here we were, two little girls from Bergen-Belsen in the hills of Israel. And that little shofar from Bergen-Belsen was also in Eretz Yisrael – in the hands of the Jewish people Hitler was so determined to exterminate.
The entire world had declared us dead. Millions of our people had been slaughtered but the shofar, the symbol of Jewish piety, triumphed over the flames. And G-d had granted me the awesome privilege of rediscovering that shofar in the ancient hills of Samaria to which our people had miraculously returned after more than two thousand years of wandering, darkness, oppression, and Holocaust.
The call of the shofar is eternal. Its magnetic allure cannot be explained. It is not musical. Those who lack understanding might describe its sound as primitive. But when the Jewish people hear the cry, it is familiar. It awakens us. We heard that cry before and we remember it. We heard it at Sinai when it entered our souls and it is forever embedded in our collective memory, in our inner hearts, in our very neshamahs.
Our generation has been blessed to behold that which our zaidies and bubbies only dreamed of. The Jewish people have returned home. We heard and saw the chief rabbi of the Israeli army blow the shofar at the Kotel and in Hebron and Kever Rochel after long centuries of exile. Its sound remains as fresh and inspiring as it was at Sinai.
From Belgen-Belsen to Eretz Yisrael and back to Sinai. That would seem sufficient reason for every Jew to stand in awe and say, “Hineni – here I am, ready to serve my G-d.”
May the sound of the shofar that will summon us to welcome Mashiach be heard speedily in our day.
With a heart full of prayers, blessings, and love I wish my readers and all of Klal Yisrael a kesivah v’chasimah tovah.