The
following story was shared on Facebook. It is a great example and lesson about
TOV.
In Crown Heights, there was a Jew,
Yankel, who owned a bakery. He survived the camps. He once said, “You know why
it is that I’m alive today? I was a kid, just a teenager at the time. We were on the train, in a
boxcar, being taken to Auschwitz. Night came and it was freezing, deathly cold,
in that boxcar. The Germans would leave the cars on the side of the tracks
overnight, sometimes for days on end without any food, and of course, no
blankets to keep us warm,” he said.
“Sitting next to
me was an older Jew – this beloved elderly Jew - from my hometown I recognized,
but I had never seen him like this. He was shivering from head to toe, and
looked terrible. So I wrapped my arms around him and began rubbing him, to warm
him up. I rubbed his arms, his legs, his face, his neck. I begged him to hang
on. All night long; I kept the man warm this way. I was tired, I was freezing
cold myself, my fingers were numb, but I didn’t stop rubbing the heat on to
this man’s body. Hours and hours went by this way.
Finally, night
passed, morning came, and the sun began to shine. There was some warmth in the
cabin, and then I looked around the car to see some of the other Jews in the
car. To my horror, all I could see were frozen bodies, and all I could hear was
a deathly silence.
Nobody else in that cabin made it
through the night – they died from the frost. Only two people survived: the old
man and me… The old man survived because somebody kept him warm; I survived
because I was warming somebody else…”
Let me tell you the secret of Judaism.
When you warm other people’s hearts, you remain warm yourself. When you seek to
support, encourage and inspire others; then you discover support, encouragement
and inspiration in your own life as well. That, my friends, is “Judaism 101”.
