Beshalach: The Reed Shoes
Exodus 12:3,11
"Speak to the entire community of Israel and say: On the tenth of this month each man must take a lamb for his family; one for every household...this is how you shall eat it: your belts secured, the sandals on your feet, your staff in your hand. Eat it in haste: it is The Lord's Passover." (Rabbi Sacks' translation).
1770, 60, 3500, 800, 245 and 110,000 – what do these numbers signify?
Along the east bank of the beautiful blue Danube river, an der schönen, blauen Donau, the water laps gently against the concrete walkway. The river has wound its way through three countries from its source in the Black Forest mountains of western Germany and now it is passing through Hungary. Eventually it will cover some 1,770 miles until it flows into the Black Sea, many miles to the east.
Looking at the river from this vantage point, two Hungarian gentlemen, film director Can Togay and sculptor Gyula Pauer conceived and created a monument, erected in 2005 that once seen, could never be forgotten. It consists of 60 pairs of iron cast shoes in the period style of the 1940s, commemorating the massacre of 3,500 people of which 800 were Jews. All having been shot by the fascist Iron Cross militia in Budapest by the water’s edge after having been ordered to remove their shoes. Having fallen into the river, their bodies were swept away along its path. The only remnant of their presence being the shoes they had left behind on the bank moments earlier. The blue Danube had now turned blood-red.
It takes five-and-a-half hours, the equivalent of 245 miles to drive from the "Shoes On The Danube Bank" memorial to Auschwitz, the location of another set of infamous footwear, namely the 110,000 pairs of shoes that were found at the death camp - many of which belonged to children.
If I were to relate these numbers to you in any order, they would seem quite inconsequential, but when you place them in the context that I have quoted in the previous paragraphs, they take on a chilling resonance. Because the numbers are connected by one single word - "Shoah" or "Holocaust.
The 60 pairs of shoes belonging to 3500 people, of which 800 were Jewish, were left behind as their owners were swept along a river that runs its course of 1770 miles.
This massacre took place but 245 miles away from the location where 110,000 pairs of shoes belonged to the same number of people who were butchered. A fraction of the 6,000,000 plus.
Suddenly, the numbers mean so much more, don't they?
No-one knows exactly how many Israelites crossed the Sea of Reeds, known in Hebrew as the 'Yam Suf'. There seems to be some speculation that it might have been the current location of Lake Timsah or "Crocodile Lake" in the region of Egypt's Bitter Lakes. It sits in the Nile Delta and according to some people may have been the ancient northern terminus of the Red Sea (which may indicate why we refer to the event as the 'Red Sea Crossing').
If we calculate the distance between the Shoes on the Danube and Lake Timsah, we find that it is 2,388 miles which is another number to add to our chart. However, the one difference that we notice here, is, as the verse I quoted tells us, the people entered the water wearing their shoes and in that situation, their enemies, unlike the Nazis and Arrow Cross were vanquished. There was no Danube or Gas Chambers to record their last moments, but a miracle that allowed them to walk on dry land as the waters stood like a wall 'to their right and to their left' (Shemot/Exodus 14.22)
The common denominator in all the above is the presence of shoes and the very same nation who used them. In this week's Sidra, they were worn by our ancestors as they walked through the waters on dry land. Nearly eighty years ago, they were left behind as our relatives perished without a hope of salvation.
The Israelites, in their time, were blessed by Gd to be able to leave Egypt and witness the miracle of the splitting of the sea. Our relatives did not have that luxury. Even if they had worn their shoes, they would have still met their violent end.
Perhaps the significance of the shoes in both cases is the legacy of the people who did or did not have the fortune to wear them, for at the end of the day, those who lost their lives in the last century were no doubt descended from those who didn’t, due to the miracle they experienced which is described so vividly in this week’s sidra of Beshalach. In both cases, the two generations who were divided by three millennia knew that they were different to the nations that were persecuting them. They held a value system that was so diametrically opposed to those of their oppressors that, in holding steadfastly onto their beliefs, the latter generation paid the ultimate price.
As Jews, we can appreciate the unbroken link that binds both generations and if the shoes teach us anything, it is that, whether they disintegrated in the desert or sit hauntingly dormant in a concentration camp or find themselves replicated along a river, it is the people whose feet inhabited them that really matter.
We, the generations after the Shoah cannot understand why our relatives were persecuted any more than we can wear the shoes that they left behind. It is the spirit of Judaism that permeates any material at any time in every single member of the Jewish people.
Irrespective of our chosen footwear or lack of it.
Shabbat Shalom.
Comments
Post a Comment