The sell out crowd sat spellbound as Eva Schloss, Step sister of Anne Frank shared her riveting story this week. In one particularly moving tale, she told of the difficult times that the family spent in hiding in Amsterdam before the Nazis found them.
Eva and her mother were in hiding in one home and her brother and father were in another. When her brother's location was betrayed by the lady in whose house they were hiding, the Nazis were able to locate Eva and her mother too.
Somehow they both landed up on the same Nazi train headed to Auschwitz. In a very emotional reunion, her brother told her how he was unable to play the music that he loved when he was in hiding. He had therefore taught himself how to paint and had created some beautiful paintings. He told Eva that he was so excited to show them to her when they would return back home one day. Perhaps sensing that he might never return, his last words to her were the precise location of the paintings under the floorboards of their hiding place. This was the last time Eva saw her father and brother.
After the war, Eva returned to Amsterdam, hoping to find this precious legacy her brother left behind in his art. She was reluctant to knock on the door of the home as the lady who lived there had betrayed their location and caused their deaths! She was most relieved to find a friendly young couple opening the door. They gladly allowed her to search beneath the floorboards and, to her delight, she found the precious paintings exactly where her late brother had hidden them.
Like Anne Frank's diary, her brothers paintings were a glimpse into his soul. They allowed her to find solace and comfort in those painful years after the war.
Eventually, she donated them to the Museum of the Resistance in Holland where they now stand on display of the noble fight of humanity against the evil forces that sought to destroy her.
In Palm Beach Gardens this week, we too did some underground digging.
But it wasn't art that we were hiding. It was the sewer lines of our new Shul!
After much beauracracy and red tape involving civil engineers, landscapers, the water company, general and subcontractors and tractor companies we finally managed to install the sewer lines and have them covered up again.
How fortunate we are that we live in a time and place where we can celebrate our identity freely without needing to look over our shoulder and all that we need to hide are our sewer lines!
A caller this week on the radio asked me what its like wearing a yarmulke in public (listen here). When challenged to do the same, he was forced to admit that the only factor preventing his wearing his kippah in public is ...himself!
Let us not be our own enemies- there are enough antisemites for that!
May we be proud of our Jewish Identity and wear it on our sleeve without fear and reservation, because we can!