This Shabbat is the yahrtzeit of my cousin, Menashe Simcha Davidovits, who died last year on Yom HaShoah. When I moved to Israel in 1992 to begin my rabbinical studies, my mother (of blessed memory) gave me Menashe’s phone number and asked me to meet him. At the end of my first visit with Menashe, he gave me a book that he had just published, filled with the Torah commentaries of his grandfather, Rabbi Eliezer Davidovits, based on a manuscript that his aunt had rescued after World War II from the attic of the family home in Michalovce, Slovakia. That book became the focus of my rabbinic thesis and I have been blessed to spend hundreds of hours studying and translating Rabbi Davidovits’ teachings.
In June of 1944, Menashe, along with his mother, three sisters, and little brother, were sent to Auschwitz. (His father had already been sent to a work camp in Hungary.) Menashe, the oldest and tallest, was sent to Dachau to work. The others were sent to the gas chambers that very day.
Menashe survived, reunited with his aunt and his father, and eventually moved to Vienna, where—in part because of the many languages he had mastered—he worked for the Jewish Agency, helping refugees and survivors fill out the paperwork required to immigrate to Israel. In 1949, Menashe himself made aliyah. He lived on a kibbutz for a while, served in the IDF, graduated from the Technion, met Miriam—who would become his wife—and together, they raised two children. The oldest, Yehudah, was named for Menashe’s little brother. The youngest, Eliezer, was named for his grandfather.
Menashe’s story is one that, tragically, we can all relate to. It’s especially personal for me, but it is ultimately a story that all Jews share. Whether our family came here out of the ashes of Europe or fleeing the revolution in Iran, we all have our stories of darkness and loss, but also of light, hope, and life as well.
It’s a story embedded in the very fabric of our Jewish calendar as we remember the horrors of the Shoah this week, the sacrifice of Yom HaZikaron (Memorial Day) next Wednesday, and then on Thursday, our joyous celebration of our return to sovereignty with Yom Ha’atzmaut (Independence Day).
It is our sacred duty to remember the collective loss and terrible sacrifice and to learn the stories of our own families, as well as the shared stories of our people. It is also our responsibility—despite it all—to hold on to hope, to celebrate moments of joy and laughter, and to never stop believing that goodness, redemption, peace, and harmony are possible.
יהי זכרם ברוך
May their memories be for a blessing.
Shabbat Shalom,
Rabbi Yoshi Zweiback
