It was during the High Holiday season of 2005 when I had a lengthy conversation with my grandfather, Rabbi Moshe Greenberg, of blessed memory.
Since we lived thousands of miles apart and as a youngster I was not proficient in neither Hebrew or Yiddish, there was a significant communication barrier between us. But that afternoon in Brooklyn, when I was nineteen years old I asked him questions about the past.
At age nineteen, orphaned from both parents, he was sentenced to twenty five years of harsh labor in Siberia for the treasonous crime of escaping the Soviet Union to live the openly Jewish lifestyle he craved.
“Witnesses can attest to the fact that I never violated Shabbat, ate non-kosher meat or ate chametz (leaven) on Pesach,” he said.
This was not the norm. Jewish law stipulates that one must do anything to survive, aside for idolatry, murder or adultery, and every competent Rabbi would rule that my grandfather was obligated to eat whatever he had access to and to work on Shabbat rather than be in solitary confinement for five days each week. (This happened for two years straight!)
“Why did you risk your life to keep Shabbat and Kashrut under such impossible circumstances?” I asked him. “You weren’t obligated to do so.”
He smiled and after several minutes he shared with me a thought I am still trying to digest fourteen years later.
Twenty five years in Siberia was a veritable death sentence. He knew that he would never make it out alive. “Why should I violate Shabbat? Why should I eat non-kosher meat?”
Think about that. An orphaned teenager, condemned to a slow and painful death by a tyrannical government did not forget for a moment that G-d was with him even in the gulags and risked everything in order to connect with G-d through Shabbat and Kashrut.
The opening statement of this week’s parsha Chukat reads “This is the Chukah (statute) of the Torah.” Referring to the laws of ritual purity and impurity, the Torah clarifies that they transcend logic and must be accepted unquestioningly. That’s the way it is.
In a broader sense, this attitude of unquestioning acceptance is relevant in all areas of Jewish life, since the foundation of healthy Jewish living is unwavering loyalty to G-d and His commandments, because that’s the way it is.
Thankfully my grandfather’s sentence was commuted seven years later when Stalin died, and he went on to live a life rich with meaning and fulfillment. He was an inspiration to so many and he merited to have a large family across the globe who are the Rebbe’s emissaries for life.
But for me it is most significant that his yartzeit (anniversary of passing) will be observed this Shabbat as we read parshat Chukat. He was the paragon of unwavering loyalty to G-d and ironclad commitment to living Jewishly at all costs, even when it made no sense, because that’s the way it is.
I hope to emulate his example more often.