Dear [first_name],

This week we read one of the most paradoxical passages in the entire Torah - the parasha of the Red Heffer, the Para Aduma. If you come into contact with a dead body, the Torah mandates that you be sprinkled with the ashes of a completely red cow, mixed with “living” spring water (mayim chaim), before you are permitted to enter the Temple.

Moses couldn’t understand how this worked. How could ashes and water bring about purity?

The Lubavitcher Rebbe explains that on a deeper level Moses was posing the ultimate question: Death. Death leaves us flattened by its finality, causing us to question the very purpose of lives which end so soon. Moses’ question to G-d was: What is the reason for death? How do we continue after death? G-d replies that while an understanding of death is beyond us, our response to death must be red-hot fire and living water. A total and absolute passion to living life to its fullest.

No one had the right to ask the question of death more than the survivors of the greatest tragedy in Jewish history – the Holocaust. Some asked and were paralysed by the silence and who can blame them? Others responded with the fire and water, the passion for life, of the Para Aduma. Mr Gus Freiberg, ,ע״ה one of our longest standing and most regular members, was one of the heroes among them.

Below is the tribute that I delivered at South Head this week in honour of this wonderfully inspirational man, devoted congregant and good friend.

Gus Freiberg - Eliyokum Getzel ben Shmuel Dov - but best known to his friends and close family as Getzel, was born in Krakow in 1925, to his parents, father Shmuel Dov and mother Chava. He was a scion of an illustrious Rabbinic family - a descendent of the famous Rav Getzel Rakover, the Rosh Beis Din of Krakow.

The first years of Getzel’s life were truly happy. Brought up in a warm, religious, Chassidishe home, Getzel was the firstborn of three children in a tightly knit family and very warm extended family. He was much loved, and in turn loved, both his parents and his younger siblings Fryda and Eliezer.

He was educated in Krakow’s Agudas Yisroel school, Yesodei HaTorah - the same school where his good friend and fellow survivor, Menachem Biggs, was educated. There he imbibed not only a deep knowledge of Yiddishkeit, but a tremendous thirst for Jewish learning and practice, which inspired him until his dying day. Although physically ripped from this environment while still a young teen, his love for Yiddishkeit and his family, were and remained the centrepieces of his life. Getzel could easily open a sefer, understanding and deeply enjoying its contents.

Unfortunately, the happy times were not to last. As a young teen he witnessed the brutal murder of his grandparents who he loved and respected dearly - and tragically lost his beloved father and younger brother Eliezer who he never forgot.

Over the years I had many opportunities to talk to Getzel about his life during this most tragic period in Jewish history. Allow me to share a few stories and anecdotes with you, which I think will give you an understanding of who he was, and the deep spirituality that he embodied.

Getzel’s family were Gerer Chassidim. After the Nazi invasion of Germany, the Chassidim managed to smuggle out the then Gerer Rebbe, Rabbi Avrohom Mordechai Alter, from Poland. Miraculously, he was able to get to Eretz Yisrael, Palestine in those days, where he was able to rebuild the famous Gerer Chassidus, one of the greatest Chassidic movements today. As the Rebbe was travelling from Warsaw, his father got word that the train would stop at the train-station at Krakow. He told Getzel to come with him, warning him not to say anything to anyone. They arrived at the train station where a very small group of Chassidim had gathered and were able to see the Gerer Rebbe during the few minutes that he was at the station. Getzel told me that seeing the Rebbe’s shining face gave him enormous encouragement - something which Chassidim will fully understand and appreciate.

After the Nazi invasion of Krakow, the Yeshivas no longer operated. There was, however, one exception. It was a group of people led by a Vienese young man of 21 whose name was Mattisyahu Gelman. He gathered a group of about thirty young men around him - who became known as Matovske’s, Mattisyohu’s men. They learnt a full seder of Torah from early morning til late at night. Imagine: with war, murder and terror around them, they learnt Torah day and night. Although they could not fight physically, they fought a determined spiritual battle. This was spiritual resistance at its grandest. Looking upon the Nazis with disdain, they were not going to let them dampen their passion and fire for G-d or for Judaism. Getzel had an uncle who belonged to this small group. He was so impressed with him that he wanted to join. Although they didn’t allow him, they forever remained his heroes, as if to say, this is who I too would have wanted to be. An indication of Getzel’s deep spirituality.

When the Nazi’s came, Getzel’s father sent the family to the nearby town of Bendzin where Getzel’s grandparents, his mother’s parents, lived. In the meantime, his father remained in the ghetto in Krakow where the Nazi’s offered him the position of Ordenungsdinst - a kind of policeman who would be responsible for keeping other Jews in order. His father refused this position as it would have meant that his survival came at the price of persecuting his fellow Jews. It was, Getzel explained, not something that a frum Jew could ever do. This brave decision cost his father his life and Getzel never tired of telling me of how proud he was of his father for having made that moral decision. Especially when we recall, as Getzel would hasten to remind me, there were other Jews who did not past the test and indeed maltreated their fellow Jews.

When I asked Getzel what they talked about in concentration camp, he told me that most people didn’t change and continued as they had been before the war. If you were interested in politics, you talked politics, etc. So I asked him what he spoke about. He said he tried to hang out with the Chassidim who after a day of hard labour would share Chassidic stories. Imagine - in concentration camp, with death knocking at your door, he was listening to Chassidic stories. He also told me that there were always those who in the midst of that hell knew the correct day on the Jewish calendar and they did their best to continue marking Jewish holidays. While in Auschwitz he became aware that his mother and sister were in the women’s camp. He went over to the fence where they could see each other. Their mutual joy knew no bounds. Getzel, for his part threw them bread and shoes (an absolute necessity for survival in Auschwitz), whereas his mum pranced around the camp announcing that her son was alive.

About twenty years ago, I decided that I wanted to find out more about what happened in the camps from a person who experienced it first person. Who better to ask than Getzel. Until then we had not really discussed the tragedy in any detail. Once Getzel began, he couldn’t stop and it went on for hours. The crying and the tears shook me to my core - as he recalled one tragedy after another, finally telling me of how he was forced to witness the hanging of a little boy at which time he gave forth a cry from the depths of his heart. I deeply regretted having put him through this and resolved never to ask him again.

I mention this now so that we should all understand the impossible situation of Getzel and the survivors. They had every right to give up on G-d, to give on Judaism, to give up on life itself.

There were some who did, and who could blame them? Getzel didn’t. In spite of everything that past, he never lost faith - a truly supernatural feat. He rebuilt his life, he married Ula and had children David, Stephen and Susan of whom he was enormously proud, and eventually he rebuilt his connection to G-d and to Judaism.

After the war, while in DP camp, the survivors began marrying and within a year or two a new generation of children were born. Getzel would tell me how much this meant to him - to see these children, this rebirth after the death and the hell that they had been through.

In the Hagaddah, when we speak of the Four Sons, we say: Chacham, Ma Hu, Omer. The literal meaning of these words is not, “What does the Wise Son say?” but “The Wise Son, what he is, he says”. Our Rabbis explain this to mean that you can tell a lot about a person by the stories he tells, by what he says.

Two people can undergo the same experience and come to opposite conclusions. These conclusions say more about the people, than about the situations which they have experienced. Getzel himself once explained this to me by way of a story. A fellow went to Warsaw and reported on its supreme spirituality. It was, he said, a city of Yeshivas, Shules, Kosher Restaurants, Chassidus, etc. Another fellow also went to Warsaw and reported on its shocking depravity: brothels, bear halls, etc. Same city, opposite conclusions. Moral of the story: it’s the same Warsaw, but you find in it a reflection of yourself.

In describing to me the rebirth in the camp with such passion and excitement, Getzel was telling me as much about himself as he was about the camp. He was describing his own willingness to be reborn in spite of all that had happened. Getzel was not going to be a victim.

And even when he lost his daughter Susan, the apple of his eye, he never lost his faith. If anything it was strenghthened. And our shule was the beneficiary of his revival.

Getzel has been a member of our shule for almost sixty years where he not only prayed but participated and contributed to shiurim, where he was our Baal Makri on Rosh HaShana and where he embellished our shule with the presence of a gishmake chassidishe yid - a phrase which loses its warmth in English translation - on an almost daily basis.

I began by telling of how Getzel in the middle of the war went to see the Gerer Rebbe, the Imrei Emes. Let me conclude with a short story about the Imrei Emes who lost most of his family. After the war, a former Chossid of his came to the Gerer Beis HaMidrash. He was no longer a chossid, he was not even frum. He had given up everything. But something had pulled him to see his old Rebbe, the Imrei Emes. He stood at the back so he wouldn’t be noticed. But the Rebbe did noticed him and asked him to come to his study. There they talked sharing the tragedies of their families. And of course the Chossid could not hold himself back, and he asked Rebbe, why, why, and they both burst into tears. The Rebbe said that he couldn’t answer but wanted to share with him something that he had been thinking about. The very last words of the Torah are G-d’s eulogy of Moses. It finishes with the words, “l’eneinehem” which Rashi explains to mean that Moses broke the Tablets in front of their eyes. What is the meaning of “in front of their eyes” asked the Rebbe. And he answered. Every person is a set of tablets. And just like the tablets, there are people who are smashed into little pieces. Their lives are shattered and broken. And who more so than the victims of the Holocaust. But don’t think that this smashing is real - it is only in front of their physical eyes. In Heaven, however, they are absolutely perfect and pristine and shine as bright as sapphire. There the tablets are not broken. There they are as perfect as on the day that they were given.

And so the Rebbe, concluded, the tragedy is before our eyes only - in Heaven the neshomos are perfect and pristine..

Getzel lived a life of faith. Getzel returned his neshomo to G-d in a perfect state with Shema Yisroel and Chassidic tunes on his lips. Our Chazan, Yehoshua was there to witness it and to assist his ascent to Heaven. I’ll be honest. I’m jealous of him. And now as Getzel goes back home he will no longer see broken tablets, but will see the complete and pristine tablets of his father, his grandparents, his baby brother, his daughter and all the beloved members of his family.

Carli told me: My grandfather was a quiet and strong presence in my life, a reminder of overcoming negativity, a true embodiment of resilience and faith. May Getzel continue to be an inspiration in death as in life - for his children, David, Orit and Stephen, for his grandchildren, Chavi and Avi, Dov and Lora, and their children, Carli, Joel and Joshua, for his great-grandchildren, for his nephews and nieces, Fred, Tanya, Linda and Agnus and their families, and for all of us at South Head where he will sorely be missed. יהא זכרו ברוך

On behalf of the Rebbetzin and all our family best wishes for Good Shabbos.

Rabbi Benzion Milecki OAM

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President's Message
The Boer War

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Last Saturday was Shabbos Zachor where we are commanded to remember our eternal enemy, Amalek, and their attack on the Jewish people in the desert on the way out of Egypt. The next day was Purim, where the Jews in the Babylonian Exile period were saved from the evil plans for their destruction by a descendant of Amalek, Haman. God was hidden in Purim; the Jews prayed collectively and Mordechai and Esther showed great courage in changing the course of events. In three and a half weeks we will celebrate Pesach, where we are commanded to tell our children of the miraculous ways by which God took the Jewish people out of Egypt.

There is a central theme of our enemies being powerful, threatening to destroy us, the Jewish people, and our salvation either through our own efforts or through Divine intervention. Sometimes we get more insights by reflecting on the experience of other peoples who have also faced great challenges. Accordingly, I share below an essay on the Boer War written a few years ago by my longstanding friend and former business partner, Robert Eales. Rob grew up in Bloemfontein in South Africa (our congregant Dr David Simmons went to school with him there); his father was English and his mother Afrikaans. His maternal grandfather fought with the Boers, but because he lived in the Cape Province under British rule when he was captured he was considered a traitor and sentenced to death; he was lucky to survive. In 2014 Rob wrote a book, The Compassionate Englishwoman, about Emily Hobhouse, an upper-class English woman who drew attention to the terrible conditions of Boers held in detention, most of whom were women and children. Read More

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Shabbat Mevorchim Luncheon 25/03
Guest Speaker: Gabrielle Lord

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True Merits
Rabbi Mendel Gluckowsky

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As it turned out, most of us remained in Israel. One by one, we married Israeli girls and became the Rebbe’s emissaries throughout the Land. I myself was offered a position as rabbi of the Chabad community in Rechovot. At the time, only eighteen Chabad families lived there, and I wrote to the Rebbe that this post appealed to me because Rechovot was a young community and I was a young man. I added, “I feel in my heart that this is the right fit for me.” The Rebbe responded, circling the word “heart” in my letter and adding, “This is what you should do and may it be at an auspicious time." Read More

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Parasha Sheet
Parashat Ki Tisa

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Q. Our Parasha this week speaks about Moshe’s brother Aharon. The Great Torah commentators say about Aharon and his students, "..be like the students of Aharon - loving peace and pursuing peace, loving your fellow creatures, and drawing them close to the Torah." What can we learn from this?

Read More

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Communal Events
Support the Community!

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