Nothing Good Comes Easy

Tonight is the 6th yahrzeit of the passing of my father. It is always a melancholy day for me. I say kaddish and will visit the cemetery. I also take time to reflect on my father and the things I learnt from him. As has been my custom,these past six years, I made a kiddish in shul this shabbat for the yahrzeit. Until now I never really discussed my father with my neighbors here in Israel. Although we have been coming to Herzliyah for the last 14 years, we were really guests. The Israeli equivalent of snowbirds. Since making Aliyah this January things are a bit different. People that we have known for over a decade started to talk to us  and invite us into their homes. We are now neighbors. So I decided to tell the person who makes the weekly Divar Torah something about my father. I said " my father was a Polish holocaust survivor. He was in over 10 camps over a period of five years, yet despite all that I never knew him to despair. This weeks haftorah is נחמו נחמו, comfort comfort, perhaps you could mention something about him when you give your Divar Torah "

The person looked amazed and  responded " 10 camps over 5 years?"

I said "I think it was more".

He did say something very moving in his speech and I felt that for the first time I gave my father the proper honor for his yahrzeit by sharing something of his life.

At the kiddish many people came up to me. Some said that it sounded like my fathers story was amazing ( it was). An older British man invited me to come over for tea.  Some said they now knew why I was a bit messed up.

That night at mincha, a gentleman came up to me and wanted to know if he could ask a question. He did not want to offend me. I said he can ask whatever he wants. He asked me if my father had ever lost his faith? Imagining what my father went through, was it possible for him to still believe in G-d?

I told him it was not an offensive question, it is one I have asked myself many times. I told him that I was the last of three children and that me and my siblings are very spread out in age. I could only tell him what I knew from when I was alive as I never discussed this with my father or my siblings. As far as I knew my father always believed. He may not always have been as observant as he was in his later years but he always believed.

The conversation continued and I spoke more about my father. As I was speaking it dawned on me that I really did not know my father to hate. It is not something I ever thought of before . True he had a lot of reasons to, but he never really expressed it. We were told not to buy German luxury items but he was also able to watch Hogan's Heros and laugh. I am not sure this would be the case if there was true hate in his heart for all Germans ( that said there was no love for them for sure). As far as the Poles, some gave him food during the war, at the risk of their own families. That saved him. He did not hate the Poles ( again he had no great love for them either).

Now this is my perspective and how I want to remember my father. My siblings my remember something else and that is fine. This is my blog.

My favorite saying from my father is " nothing good comes easy". He told me that the first time something bad happened in my business when I was 21 years old but what did it mean to him? I would like to think that with all the death and destruction he witnessed, all the horrors, that he saw us, his family, as the good that came from the not easy ( to put it mildly).

After this conversation I started to think about some of my reactions and posts as of late. We have just finished Tisha B' Av last week and we know that the second temple was destroyed because of baseless hatred. For me that always meant people harassing soldiers or calling Israeli policeman Nazis and surely it does mean that but it also dawned on me that tensing up every time a Hardei man walks into your shul, or calling them all fanatics, is also baseless hatred. The person who hates only sees the other as wrong. That may be OK when it comes to Nazis but not between fellow Jews.

My father never forgave the Nazis and the Poles and he didn't have to, but if I can't remember him spewing hate about them either, how can I say hateful things about other Jews no matter how wrong I think they are.

I know my views won't change but going forward I will try to express them in a different way. This is my goal in honor of the yahrzeit of my father, Avraham Tzvi ben Shlomo Zalman z"l זכרונו לברכה.