Today on the mourner's minyan at My Jewish Learning, the leader shared teachings from the rebbe of the Warsaw ghetto. Some of his teachings centred on how to calm anxiety, which must have been desperately needed at the time.
These teachings survive because he and others buried their archives in a milk can, so they would endure past the liquidation of the ghetto. There were eventually found by a construction worker.
It feels . . . I'm not sure what it feels to benefit from teachings made for such a moment. My personal grief feels trivial in comparison. But he wanted these words to survive. He did not want them to remain only in that particular historical moment. He wanted to make something enduring for future generations.
He said the greatest thing one could do in difficult times was to do a favour for others. He did a favour for us. I hope we can do the favour for others of building a world where the only griefs are the personal griefs for people who died of natural causes.
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