Chesed. This word is supposed to ring sweet in the ears, as it contains within it everything from the simple act of kindness to the first of the emotive faculties in which both we interact with the world and, kabbalistically, also with which H' creates the world at every moment. But in seminary this word means rolling up your sleeves and doing some hard time in the neighbor's house - an hour of free cleaning or childcare provided for families in the Mt. Canaan area of Tzfat. And of course, it is a mandatory part of being in seminary.
My chesed is quite unusual. The family needs not cleaning nor child care - just a friendly chat. It is a sweet elderly woman who would live alone if her granddaughter, in her last year of high school here in Tzfat, hadn't come for the year. Mrs. Breidstein*, the grandmother, is a holocaust survivor. She has a royal look to her, one that comes from good breeding. Even in her old age one can see that her facial bone structure is chiseled and symmetric.
It made sense, then, when she began telling me of her childhood in Europe. People were mostly poor, but her father was a doctor. He had fought in the First World War, getting captured but miraculously escaping the POW camp and returned safely to his home and family. This status of seasoned war veteran meant nothing by the time the Second World War came, as he also had the status of Jewish.
On a moments notice the family was told to pack up a suitcase each, and they were then forcefully transported to a makeshift Jewish ghetto, a (barely) cleaned out horse barn. Each family was assigned to their respective cage, and allowed to remain in the ghetto.
I heard many stories of her time in this ghetto, but the most poignant to me was the story of soap. In wartimes many things are rationed and hard to come by. In this war one such thing was soap. The processing to make soap had ground to a halt with energies being focused on creation of destructive forces. There was no time to gather and process the fats needed. But one day soap made its way back on the shelf of the market. This was a great horror for all those in Mrs. Breidstein's ghetto, as it meant spending the last remaining pennies from each of the families to buy every last bar. The soap was carefully carried to the edges of the ghetto, where a hole had been dug. The body of a person is holy, but in this soap remained the last bit of Jews that had murdered. This was the closest thing they could give to a proper Jewish burial.
After years of living at least partially removed from the terror of the war, Mrs. Breidstein and her siblings knew that something was wrong, as every time the children came close to their parents it became quite. stiff. Mrs. Breidstein and her family were ordered to depart to Aushwitz. It wasn't until years after the war that they knew the truth of their salvation - that the war ended mere days before their date of departure.
Life wasn't easy for Mrs. Breidstein after that, as she moved with her family to a new country. She has had her tests and trials over the time, but has now landed in the safety and serenity of Tzfat.
*name was changed for privacy
