Dover Emet: Speaking the Truth

There’s a true story told by Jacques Lusseyran, a member of the French Resistance during World War II who was arrested by the Gestapo and sent to Buchenwald. While there, he was put in Prison block 57, a building meant to hold no more than 400 men, but which housed over a thousand men, literally pressed together with no room even to lie down. It was, of course, a living nightmare—daily beatings, brutal slave labor, and no place even to sleep with decency. Even so, explains Lusseyran, there was one old man in block 57 who managed to move around—all the men instinctively gave him a tiny bit of space, in some kind of gesture of reverence. The old man’s name was Jeremy, but his nickname was ‘Socrates,’ because somehow whenever he opened his mouth, the simplest most beautiful words and stories of wisdom emerged. Unlike all the other men, who often screamed and fought and cried out in anguish, this Jeremy, this ‘Socrates’ was always peaceful. Lusseyran writes, “He observed things o...

There is a Hasidic story told of a great master named Reb Zusya, who lived two centuries ago. Once Rabbi Zusya came to an inn, and when he saw the innkeeper, he looked right into the innkeeper’s soul and saw long years of sin. For a while Zusya neither spoke nor moved as he sensed all the terrible things that this innkeeper had done in his life. But when he was alone in his room which had been assigned to him, the shudder of vicarious experience overcame Zusya in the midst of singing psalms and Zusya cried aloud: “Zusya, Zusya, you wicked man! What have you done! There is no lie that failed to tempt you, and no crime you have not committed. Zusya, foolish, erring man , what will be the end of this?’ Then he enumerated the sins of the innkeeper, giving the time and place of each, as his own, and sobbed. The innkeeper had quietly followed this strange man. He stood at the door and heard him. First he was seized with dull dismay, but then penitence and grace were lit within him,...

We Jews have a funny relationship to counting and numbering ourselves. If you have ever been to a daily minyan, or any service, and it’s not clear if there are ten Jews present (the minimum number of Jews to have a communal service), some people count by NOT counting: they’ll go around the room and number people as ‘not one, not two, not three.’ Why this strange “un-counting?” It seems that we Jews have a kind of superstition about numbering our people. We believe that it will bring on bad consequences for the Jewish people if we directly number ourselves. And this belief is not without good justification: in the book of 1 Chronicles (Chapter 20), we read the story of how King David ordered his troops numbered with a census, and this incurred Divine wrath, and God punished the Israelites for this brazen counting. There are all kinds of theories as to why God was angry that we counted, but the fact remains: counting our people is something that we de...

We all love stories about miracles--not just the parting-of-the-Red-Sea kind of miracles. We love the modern-day miracle stories: the mother who miraculously finds the strength to lift the car to free her child. The miracle cures to seemingly incurable diseases. We love stories of miraculous human perseverance and survival against all odds; the Jewish modern-day miracle in the creation and survival of the State of Israel. Each story gives us pause in the midst of our busy, distracted lives to remember that there may indeed be a dimension of something beyond our ken at work in the world. If I were to go around the room right now, almost every one of us could recount a story of a miracle that we personally experienced in our lives. We might have our doubts, but there’s something tantalizing and renewing in these stories that is irresistible. But, of course, there is also the skeptic in each of us who then notices that there are plenty of times in history and in our lives ...