Reflections on the 62nd Yahrtzeit of Rav Aharon Kotler Zt”l

Rabbi Aaron Kotler

 

 

1942-1943 stand, tragically unparalleled, as the most terrible, vicious, brutal years for our people.

Though Europe’s crematoria continued to cast ghoulish darkness on mankind well into 1945, by 1944 it was already clear—Hitler had lost the war—allowing a glimmer of hope that humanity might yet survive.

1942–1943 held no such hope.  In those two years, the Nazis murdered 1.7 million Jews from Poland alone in three tiny camps alone; Belzec, Sobibor, and Treblinka, in what they called Operation Reinhard.   Assembly line mass killings started in Belzec in February 1942, with Germany’s first stationary gas chambers, followed by Sobibor in May, and Treblinka in July.

August to October 1942 were the worst.  In that 90-day period, in these three camps, 500,000 Jews were wiped off the face of this earth.  At that rate it would have taken less than five years to eliminate every Jew in Europe.

And the pace accelerated. The Nazis started their industrialized murder of Jews in Auschwitz in March 1942, and in Majdanek in September of that year.

What hope was there, in such a cruel time, for the millions of trapped, forlorn Jews? To where might they run? As the killings ramped up, the world’s borders slammed shut, making the nations of the world complicit in the ruin of the soul of man.

In the United States, cold-blooded apathy raged. As we witness today’s fine dining and parties while northern and southern Eretz Yisrael burn, so in 1943 America, the people danced on. Yes, it is true that 400 Orthodox Rabbis did march, once, on Washington, beseeching Roosevelt to open America’s door to our bereft people.  And yes, Secretary of the Treasury Henry Morgenthau, urbane, sophisticated, polished, yet with a tiny Jewish spark, did share with Roosevelt his “Personal Report to the Secretary on the Acquiescence of This Government in the Murder of the Jews.”

However, outside of such isolated voices and events, American Jewry stood not merely mute, but rather nasty, attacking the handful who were trying to save Europe’s Jews.  The establishment American Jewish Committee devoted its efforts to silencing the Orthodox Vaad Hatzalah and its staunch friends the Bergson group.  As Philip Morris Klutznick, president of Bnai Brith, remembered, it was quite “difficult” to find consensus of major Jewish leaders whether to stand up for those who were being slaughtered.

At a time of so little light, even among Jews, and when the world nodded with false sympathies while locking their doors, what hope might there be for a future?

Even if Hitler could / would be stopped, what might our tattered remnant look like?  A tribe of American middle-class strivers seeking to run as fast as they could from their 3,300-year-old faith?  A cabal of callous organization heads who treasured position over life?  A nation of small-minded souls with even smaller hearts?

There was one spark. One force. One light. One beacon who refused to bow to the Hamanites.

Rav Aharon.

To think of his impact, his leadership, his fiery unmitigated, unlimited, indecipherable love for the Jewish people is to know our redemption.

There is simply no comparable figure in Jewish history.  There is simply no other man who provided such strength and succor to such a devastated people. He fought like a warrior to save every Jew possible, he roared like a lion to awaken his people, and despite his own shattered heart, he galvanized a generation who would restore broken fragments of 2,000 years of Jewry to life.

He did not rest with rescue and rebuilding.  In 1943, he set out to revive our spiritual soul—giving us what to return to—Torah.  He opened Beth Medrash Govoha, with 13 talmidim, and set upon the arduous task for renewal.  He drove the creation of Chinuch Atzmai Torah schools in Israel, Shuvu Banim schools in Argentina, Otzar HaTorah in France, and more, even attempting to open yeshivos in Cairo, Egypt. He filled a generation with his passion; they would go on to create our Torah-centered Yiddishkeit of today.

To him, nothing less than pure and authentic would suffice. Torah for the sake of Hashem, for the sake of our eternal bond to Him—not Torah to live “religiously,” nor Torah to keep comforting tradition alive.

After all, he had seen what the degradation of Torah had wrought, not merely a desensitization of the once magnificent Jewish heart, rather the metastasis of that great spirit into near collaborators in the destruction of our people.

While such might sound farfetched and even preposterous, we think of today, with groups of Jews on campus marching to the drums of Hamas torturers and “beheaders,” and of American Jewish senators seeking to cut off arms to a beleaguered Israel and we understand—this is no exaggeration. Rav Aharon knew: Jews without Torah can deteriorate until they become a Tiberius Julius Alexander turncoat Jew, who became a Roman general and who helped Titus burn the Beis Hamikdash; or a notorious Yagoda, traitor to his Jewish faith, who became our chief persecutor as the first head of the Soviet NKVD.

Rav Aharon returned us to our Father in heaven and His word, no less than King Chizkiyahu did in his time, and Ezra Hasofer did in his.  No different than Rav Yochanan ben Zakai—oh, if only we had more of these giants, surely our crown would never have been so tarnished.

Of humble origins, an impoverished orphan of father of mother, a choice target at an early age for the Maskilim, an escapee of both Hitler and Stalin, he, more than anyone else in our era, was the restorer of our people.  His presence in our lives today may appear muted by time, yet he was the one who wove the Torah fabric that envelops our lives.

After reading this, perhaps turn to your father or mother, son or daughter, spouse or friend, and say to them—How fortunate we are to live in the afterglow of this great angel of Jewish history.

 

Rabbi Aaron Kotler is president emeritus of Beth Medrash Govoha.