Lessons from a Jew-Free Europe

As I've been traveling through Europe these past few weeks, something keeps happening to me. I'll be walking or driving through another breathtaking valley, walking through another picture-perfect village, standing in another medieval town square, and I get a sudden chill down my spine. >> And that is that the Jews were once here. [music] Not a handful, not a little tiny minion tucked away in some corner. These places were once overflowing with the Jewish life. The sound of [music] children learning Torah echoed through these streets. Yeshivas stood here, shuls stood here, battei midrashot stood here. Rabbanim walked these roads. Talmidei hakhamim argued over a ta'anit fish in these very little towns. Shabbat tables glowed here. Jewish mothers lit candles here. Jewish fathers rushed home from Ma'ariv here. Entire communities lived and laughed and [music] cried and built generations here. And now, they're gone. Most of the time, [music] without a trace. And what's heartbreaking is that Jews almost never left these places voluntarily. [music] We didn't wake up one morning and decide, "You know what? Let's try another country just cuz why not?" We left because we had to, because [music] there was blood, because there was fear, because there were expulsions, because there were [music] pogroms, because there were inquisitions, because there was hatred, because there was another ruler and another decree and another knock on the door >> [music] >> in the middle of the night, and another journey into the terrifying unknown of where do we go now? And standing [music] in these beautiful places, it's impossible not to think about them. It's impossible not to wander through these streets and wonder what these hills looked like when they were alive with Torah, what these streets sounded [music] like when they were filled with Jewish voices. But there's another thought that keeps coming back to me. Many Jews today have grown up in communities that have been peaceful for decades. Some communities have now passed the 100-year [music] mark where children are born, they grow up, they get married, they raise families all in the same neighborhood, and it's great. It's a gift. But, we should never mistake that for normal. Most of Jewish history, that wasn't normal. If a Jewish community >> [music] >> experienced 50 or 60 years of relative peace, that was considered a tremendous [music] blessing. We have become so accustomed to packing our lives into wagons that staying put became the exception in Jewish history, not the rule. And that's why every now and then it's good to remind ourselves that we should treasure every Yeshiva, every shul, every Beis Medrash, every Jewish school, every peaceful shabbos far more than [music] we sometimes do because our ancestors dreamed about the stability we often take for granted. [music] Every empty Beis Medrash in Europe, every abandoned shul, every forgotten Jewish street is asking all of us one question. Now that you [music] have what we lost, what are you going to do with it?