As our struggle continues, no time for comfort

Reb Moshe Chaim Tiefenbrun was one of the personalities I grew up with, and one of the two people who first introduced me to nusach, the beautiful melodies of our liturgy and prayer. He was a Holocaust survivor who always had a tractate of the Talmud under his arm, and I recall hearing the story of his terrible loss. 

When the war broke out and the Nazis were approaching his village in Poland, fearing he might be taken to the German army or a labor battalion (as had been the Russians’ way for generations) he, along with most of the other young men of his village, escaped into the forest. He eventually made his way to Shanghai where he waited out the war. Six years later, on the day the Allies declared victory over the Germans, Reb Moshe Chaim found out what had happened to his young wife and two little children. The day after he escaped, they had all been taken out to the forest and murdered along with the rest of his village. It had never occurred to him, or any of them, that a civilized nation would or even could do such a thing. 

He eventually moved to the United States and remarried and had two children with whom I grew up on Manhattan’s West Side. Many years later he and his wife made aliyah to Efrat where I eventually made my home as well.

One year I happened to arrive for Efrat’s annual Holocaust memorial day ceremony exactly on time (which in Israel means early) and he was the only other person there so I struck up a conversation. I expressed my thoughts of how difficult the evening of Yom Hashoah must be for him, as it surely brings back painful memories.

He was incredulous at the suggestion, and shared that he had not slept a good night’s sleep since the Holocaust, for there was nothing that could comfort him. Nearly 20 years later I am still thinking about that conversation.

What prevents a person from being comforted? Is there a lesson to be learned as to how one can find comfort in difficult situations?

A week after the horrendous events that took Rav Yaakov Don and Ezra Schwartz from us, how can we find comfort, as individuals and as a people, with no end in sight to the conflict with terror and Muslim fundamentalism?