Today is May 4, 2023. 

On May 4, 1945, Dr. Edith Eger was liberated from a concentration camp in Austria where she had been incarcerated. 

On the anniversary of this momentous occasion, Dr. Eger, psychologist and author of The Choice, posted on Facebook. She shared that while she had been liberated on May 4, there was a long road to survival she had to traverse. 

With survival came great challenge. 

On the physical plane, Dr. Eger has to relearn the skills necessary to rejoin society. 

She no longer knew how to wield a fork and knife. 

But there were also deep emotional wounds that needed healing. 

Dr. Eger hoped against hope that some of her loved ones had survived. When it became clear that there was no one left, Dr. Eger grappled with the meaning of life. There seemed to be no purpose in continuing. 

She questions what indeed kept her alive?

She feels that ultimately it was her sense of curiosity that reawakened her desire to live. 

She wondered what would happen, what might come next. With those thoughts, Dr. Eger felt a responsibility to come to terms with what had happened to her. 

She chose life. 

This week’s Torah portion is called Emor, which means speak or tell. In the first verse of the Parsha Gd instructs Moses

“Say to the priests, the sons of Aaron, and tell them not to contaminate themselves to a dead person…”

On a practical level, this commandment refers to the unique injunction that the Priestly class should not come in contact with a dead person. 

If one visits a cemetery, one will notice that the Kohanim, priests, or often buried in the first row, closest to the road. This will enable relatives, who are also priests, to come to the funeral without actually entering the cemetery. 

Rabbinit Yemima Mizrachi, Torah teacher in Jerusalem shared a different interpretation. 

She explains the message we are to glean from this verse is that we, each one of us, should not become contaminated by death. 

How do? 

Each and everyone of us is of course confronted with death and tragedy. The homiletic understanding is that we should choose not to see our lives through the prism of sorrow, death and distress. Don’t let “death” contaminate your view of life. 

She shares the story of a holocaust survivor who experienced beautiful Passover Seder with his family in his childhood. 

When he recalls his youth, those Seders were magnificent memories. 

But he also had a memory of a Seder he experienced in the concentration camp, with a tiny bit of Matza with only his father for company, the only survivors of their family. 

When this survivor, Rabbi Ezriel Tauber,  thought about those two Seders he wondered if Gd was present at both. In the first Seder the obvious answer was yes, but after some rumination, he realized that although it was much harder to see, Gd was at the second one too. 

There was still life. There was still hope. 

We have to make a conscious choice to see the gift of life, to be curious about how we can feel Gd’s presence, even in the darkest of times. 

The path to this type of recognition is through living our lives with joy and focusing on the gifts we are given. 

We can share stories of people given superhuman challenges who nonetheless focus on the good and are content and thriving. Such as a woman who has been stricken with ALS and chooses life and positivity every day. She chooses to look at her existence through the prism of curiosity, what might happen next, how can life still be lived in joy. 

While that is very inspiring, it is hopefully very far from our experience. But this ALS patient , Tammy Karmel suggests using her attitude in our daily lives. 

In the mundane details of our lives, difficulties arise. Perhaps there may be someone in our orbit who irritates us daily. Tammy Karmel challenges us to search in our toolbox of skills to use this as a motivation for personal growth to find a solution. If we look at this “minor” disturbance through the viewfinder of life can we find a growth opportunity?

If I am “dead” than I only revert to my default setting of annoyance, irritation, anger and more. But if I believe I am “alive”, I am curious where my creativity may take me. Can I imagine reasons to give the person the benefit of the doubt, can I exercise kindness and compassion?

Dr. Edith Eger is physically a tiny woman. But she is a giant in her attitudes. She has taught us all about the choices we can make on a daily basis to tap into our best selves. 

May 4 is a wondrous day indeed. It’s a day a woman made a choice to keep on living. 

Shabbat Shalom and so much love!