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OHR TZVI ON THE PARSHA: ROSH HASHANA – PARENTS REALLY DO SACRIFICE FOR THEIR CHILDREN
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Vera Bien was two months pregnant when she arrived in the Auschwitz netherworld in 1944.
In that netherworld, pregnant women, like children, the aged and the sick were gassed upon arrival.
In that netherworld, women who survived by concealing their pregnancies, invariably birthed starvation-induced stillborn babies.
Which is why fellow inmates told Vera – whose pregnancy wasn’t detected when she arrived – to abort her child in the latrine, late at night.
But she didn’t do that. Vera, instead, maintained her pregnancy.
So, on December 21, 1944, Vera birthed a baby girl. The emaciated baby attracted no attention because she was too weak to cry. That let her be hidden in an upper bunk while Vera did hard labor. The baby remained in that upper bunk until Auschwitz’s liberation in January of 1945. [1]
The birthing of a child in Auschwitz was extraordinary. But the sentiments that motivated that birth were, actually, quite ordinary.
Because that’s what parental sentiments are all about. They’re about yearning for their children. They’re about agonizing for their children. And they’re about sacrificing for their children.
Those parental sentiments permeate all of life.
And those sentiments most especially permeate Rosh Hashana.
Those sentiments define Rosh Hashana’s first day’s Torah reading about Avraham and Sarah hoping, aching and praying for a child. And they define that day’s haftara about Chana hoping, aching and praying for a child. And they saturate the second day’s Torah reading about the agony of sacrificing a child on the akeida. And they’re there in that day’s haftara’s climax: “Rachel cries for her children.”[2]
And they explain why Rosh Hashan’s davening focuses on the akeida and the agony of sacrificing a child.
The parental motif also colors our shofar blowing.
It explains why we use a ram’s horn for shofar blowing. The ram, which was sacrificed in lieu of Yitzchok at the akeida, also recalls the akeida’s angst.[3]
It also explains why we blow shofar one hundred times on Rosh Hashana. Those one hundred sounds, we’re taught, recall the hundred tears shed by the mother of the Assyrian general, Sisera, when her son battled the Jews.[4]
At first, you wonder: Why are we structuring a mitzva on an enemy’s precedent? Don’t we usually choose role models from within our own world? Then you realize: Yes, we’re referencing an enemy’s mother. But she’s a mother. And we so want to infuse Rosh Hashana with the parental motif that we’ll even access an enemy if it supplies that motif.
Why, though, is it this way?
Why does Rosh Hashem emphasize the parental?
Probably because Rosh Hashana, which is when we were created, is a time for focusing on our creators. That, of course, includes our divine creator. That also includes our humans creators, our parents, who paired with Hashem in creating us.[5]
We remember what those creators did for us.
And we also remember what we’re meant to do for them.
That’s true for our divine creator. That’s why on Rosh Hashana we commit to the mitzva of respecting our divine creator.
That’s also true for our human creators. That’s why on Rosh Hashana we should commit to the mitzva of respecting our human creators.
Sometimes it’s easy to make that commitment. It’s easy to respect parents who are kind, even-keeled people. And it’s easy to respect parents who gave their children blessed childhoods.
And sometimes it’s difficult to make that commitment. It’s difficult to respect parents who are ill-tempered. And it’s difficult to respect parents who gave their children horrible childhoods.
Those difficulties, though, don’t erase the obligation of kibbud av va-em because even difficult mitzvos must be kept. We kept Shabbos when six-day workweeks made it almost impossible to keep Shabbos. And we send our children to yeshiva even though tuition is prohibitive. We must, then, keep kibbud av va-em, even when kibbud av va-em is difficult.
How, though, do we motivate ourselves to keep this hard mitzva?
Perhaps by remembering that there’s a bit of Vera Bien in almost all parents.
A mother may be ill-tempered. But she spent sleepless nights nurturing us.
A father may be self-centered. But he worked endlessly to underwrite our education.
And even many ill-tempered parents would make Vera Bien’s sacrifice, if they’d be in Vera Bien’s situation.
Yes, Vera Bien’s extraordinary sacrifice was really quite ordinary.
Let’s remember that when we next equivocate about kibbud av va-em.
[1] Jeff Heinrich, “Born in Auschwitz,” May 9, 2009, Aish.com
[2] Yirmiya 31:14
[3] Rosh Hashana 16b
[4] Tosafos, Rosh Hashana 33b
[5] Nidda 31a