An old find: Some Tisha b’Av reading for adults

The upcoming fast of Tisha b’Av gives us an opportunity to re-learn and relive past tragedies of our people in a depth of scholarship that would benefit all. Learning from past error and tragedy serves to help prevent repetition of same, or so we hope and pray.

This essay is devoted to a brief summary of “Hasidic Responses to the Holocaust in the Light of Hasidic Thought” (Ktav, 1990) by Rabbi Pesach Schindler, one of Israel’s premier historians of the Holocaust.

This unique volume deftly brings together the theology, sociology, and history of the Hasidic world and thought to help the reader better appreciate the horrible sacrifice that East European chasidus sustained during the Holocaust experience.

Schindler accurately demonstrates how, for the most part, the chasidic response thwarted the de-humanizing of these Jews by the Nazis, and further explains the actions many took in a spiritual realm to resist Nazi blandishments under the cruelest conditions.

Detailed herein are chasidic doctrine, the concept of evil in Jewish theology, and chasidic hashkafah, kiddush Hashem and kiddush hachayim, the relationships between the tzadik and the chasid and chasidic concepts related to  resistance. Rabbi Schindler demonstrates great respect for his reader. This book is written in a dignified and scholarly manner, and is fully footnoted and annotated for future reference by the reader.

Most intriguing to me was the chapter dealing with exile and redemption, especially with the teachings of Rav Teichthal and the Piazesner Rebbe, both of martyred and blessed memory, Hy’d. This particular chapter is a must-read by everyone if they, we, are to better understand current events both here in our relationships with the regime in Washington, and with events as they unfold on the streets of Jerusalem.

These two martyred rabbis, through the teachings that survived them, have a lot to teach us so as to better appreciate the great sacrifices of our brothers and sisters in Israel. In addition, their example, taken together with the many other Jewish leaders of that time who gave of their last full measure, “al Kiddush Hashem,” aptly serve as role models for our contemporary Jewish leadership here on these blessed shores to emulate in the face of the adversary in our nation’s capital.

A version of this column was published in 2009.