I read this heartfelt powerful story on Twitter on the day before Yom Kippur. This is the story and message I shared with our Yom Kippur service entering Kol Nidrei this 5785/2024. And its something I thought about much of Yom Kippur.
We shared it in tribute and appreciation to all those who have stepped up to serve the Jewish people (here at UAlbany, around the world, and of course in Israel) in this extraordinarily challenging and difficult year, and as the story concludes, may we also merit to have their prayers and our prayers answered in the most incredible ways, beyond our wildest dreams and expectations. Amen!
This story was posted by Etti H. (@Etti_de_farina) on Twitter. It’s a story about her grandparents and her father, in 1960’s communist Russia:
Erev YK, mid 1960s, 20 km outside Moscow. My grandparents are attending an hours long meeting. The town will no longer tolerate their keeping the children out of school on שבת. As a compromise, they’d been sending 1 child out of many to sit in class arms crossed, without writing.
Harsh words are spoken. They threaten to remove the children for reeducation, somewhere far away and never to be seen again. Meanwhile, the secret/not so secret minyan gathers in their home. 40 people wait. Broken & distraught, my grandparents arrive just in time to eat quickly.
My grandfather is too shaken to stand at the amud. He asks a minyan regular, a Lubavitcher, to take his place. But he says, if they come to arrest you and see me praying, they will take me too. My grandfather turns to my father, who is 13 but looks much younger.
Maybe it would be safer for a child. “Itzik,” he says, “step up to the amud.” My father is nervous. He is young. But he steps to the front and begins: Kol Nidrei ve’esarei…
A year later, they received exit visas.