My mother was sixteen when she was sent to the Kolozsvár Ghetto. There, as she and her family were stripped of their remaining possessions, she experienced her first taste of the torture the Nazis would inflict on her. Men were taken out at night by Hungarian guards and members of the Gestapo, and a flame was held to their feet to get them to reveal the whereabouts of the any gems or gold they might have hidden. From that point on, things only got worse. She was deported from the ghetto to Auschwitz, then sent to a labor camp a few weeks later, and finally, towards the end of the war, escaped while on a death march.
Those first moments of freedom must have been frightening for my
mother. How does a 17 year old girl look forward to life without a home, a
country, a single possession? What do you have when you have nothing?
As my children were entering their teens, I would emphasize to them
the contrast between their childhood and my mother’s. I used to think of this
contrast only in one direction, as in how much more my children have than their
grandmother did at their age: freedom, security, and material comfort.
Now, I think there is another contrast: my children’s generation, with
all of its material advantages, still struggles with resilience and character.
The generation of survivors, the people who had nothing, who had every reason
to emotionally collapse, exhibited remarkable character. If you asked these
survivors the question: what do you have when you have nothing? The answer
would be, you have a lot.
The Roman orator and statesman Cicero wrote: “Omnia mea mecum porto” - “I am carrying all my things with me”. Rav Azriel Hildesheimer, at opening of Berlin Rabbinical Seminary in
1873, related this quote from Cicero to a Talmudic passage that says “Blessing rests only on a thing which is
hidden from sight”[1].
Rav Hildesheimer explains “that the only
blessing is that which is invisible, that is, of the spirit and the idea.”,
and that the lesson of Jewish history is that “the scorned, sold and mortgaged Jewish servant, who has been driven
out at the whim of others, was continuously reminded, again and again, that his
only true belonging was that which he carried with him constantly, which no one
could separate him from[2].”
This lesson is what I learned from my mother’s example: the greatest
gifts are the ones you carry in your heart. These survivors, these
penniless, unfortunate, persecuted refugees possessed something invaluable:
their heart. And that is all that mattered.
But what do you carry in your heart? First of all, you carry your
education with you; nothing could be more practical. Kohelet (4:13) writes: “Better to be a wise and poor youth, than a
foolish and well established elder statesman.” In the end, wisdom is the
most valuable commodity, and education has always been a Jewish priority.
A perfect example is the Jewish interest in medicine, a field Jews
still dominate today. Dr. Avram Mark Clarfield offers an anecdote that
underlines how unusual the Jewish dominance of medicine is:
“Several years
ago, while talking to a group of physicians in an Edinburgh hospital, we got to
discussing which nation had the monopoly on first-class medical research.
"It's clearly the Germans," offered a Scottish physician.
"Why?" I asked.
"Because the authors of most of the articles in the most prestigious
American journals all have names like Levine, Glickman, Berliner and
Feinstein--obviously all of German origin."
This keen interest in medicine goes back to the Middle Ages. Joseph
Shatzmiller in Jews, Medicine, and
Medieval Society, tells of countries where less than 1 percent of the
population was Jewish, yet Jews were over 50% of the doctors. Clearly,
education was important to Jews, and in particular, medical education. Some
have speculated that this is because that “by
providing Jewish practitioners with a craft they could “carry” with them
whenever they had to leave their homes and establish themselves in a new place,
the practice of medicine also eased the harsh circumstances that stemmed from
imposed migration (evictions and expulsions)[4].”
The wandering Jews of Europe needed an asset they could monetize
anywhere; and so they relied on their education to support themselves whenever
they had to find a new home.
But the lesson of Omnia mea
mecum porto refers to more than education. It reminds us that the mindset
we carry determines our happiness. This lesson, one that was stressed by the
Stoics, finds expression in the Mishnah[5] that
says “Who is the mighty one? He who
conquers his impulse...Who is the rich one? He who is happy with his lot”.
Strength and wealth are primarily a matter of mindset. When facing challenges
courage is more important than strength; in everyday living, contentment is
more important than wealth.
All of us would nod our heads in agreement when hearing these lessons.
However, this is not the way we actually live. An abundance of material comfort
doesn’t diminish material desires, but on the contrary, makes us more
materialistic. The Talmud[6]
sees the wealth the Jews took out of Egypt as a corrupting influence, and the
motivating cause behind the Golden Calf.
Similarly, material success has reoriented the way Americans think. Tim
Kasser notes that contemporary Americans think that the “goods life” is the
path to the “good life”[7]. This mistake leads to a great deal of
unhappiness. Kasser notes multiple studies that show that the more
materialistic someone is, the less happy they are likely to be.
That is why the lesson of the Mishna is so significant: How many
people actually are happy with their lot?
The experience of having nothing teaches us how to be grateful for
everything. One of my mother’s favorite sayings was “hunger is the best cook”.
She said that the food she ate right after being liberated was the best meal
she ever ate in her life, because the overwhelming hunger she experienced at
the time brought out the best in the bland food she ate. With the right
outlook, any piece of food is exceptional; and the mindset of one who has
nothing sees life as a gift, not a given.
Beyond education and mindset,
the final (and most important) item to carry is: values. (Before discussing
this further, it needs to be noted that for a Jew, faith in God is a given, a
spiritual oxygen that sustains us every day. And faith is an all encompassing
value, and all other values are just a commentary on faith. But what are those
other values?)
David Brooks, (based on The Lonely Man of Faith by Rabbi Joseph Ber
Soloveitchik), coined two types of virtues a person can have: “resume virtues” and “eulogy virtues”[8].
Some virtues are about work: can you compete? Are you pragmatic? A
good leader? A financial wizard? Other virtues are about the types of
accomplishments people speak about at a funeral: Did you volunteer? What type
of father were you? Were you idealistic? I would point out this contrast
between the domains of “resume” and “eulogy” is not just about virtues; it is
about priorities and values, about the content and purpose of life.
This lesson is found in Jeremiah (9:22-23), who inspires the Mishnah
in its’ comments on the worthiness of strength, wisdom and wealth:
Thus says the
Lord:
“Let not the wise man glory in his wisdom,
Let not the mighty man glory in his might,
Nor let the rich man glory in his riches;
But let him who glories glory in this,
That he understands and knows Me,
That I am the Lord, exercising lovingkindness, justice, and righteousness in
the earth. For in these I delight,” says the Lord.
Jeremiah offers a harsh appraisal of human success. Do the resume
virtues of wisdom, strength, or wealth matter? No, they are not important. What
matters are the values love, justice and righteousness; what matters are eulogy
virtues, which are a blueprint to the meaning of life. For this reason,
Maimonides at the end of his great philosophical work, the Guide to the
Perplexed[9],
offers an exposition of this verse in Jeremiah, because he sees these values
are the very purpose of our lives.
Love, justice and righteousness are most compelling when you
experience them directly. These eulogy virtues matter because we intuitively
understand that they endow our lives with meaning. Dr. David Pelcovitz told me
a powerful story about a 9 year old girl that illustrates how inspiring eulogy
virtues are.
A 9 year old
girl, encouraged by her mother, started to volunteer by visiting an elderly
woman who had lost most of her eyesight. One day, while chatting with the young
girl, the woman explained that she could recover her eyesight if she would have
a small operation; but because she was on a fixed income, she lacked the
resources to pay for this expensive procedure. Inspired to action, the girl
went home and told her mother that she was going to do a fundraiser to pay for
the elderly woman’s operation. The mother smiled at her daughter’s good
intentions, but assumed, like most parents, that her daughter’s naive dream
would soon disappear.
The next day, the girl went to school and began to raise money. She went from
class to class, from teacher to teacher, and at the end of the day, after all
the change had been exchanged into bills, the girl had a grand total of 83
dollars. She took the thick envelope stuffed with singles, and ran off to her
elderly friend. Not knowing much about contemporary medical economics, the girl
announced to her elderly friend that she had raised the money for the
operation! So, the young girl and the elderly woman took a short walk over to
the local Ophthalmologist’s office.
The doctor examined the elderly woman, and says yes, she is a candidate for the
procedure, and he can do it right away. At that point, the young girl chirps up
and says that she will pay for the procedure, and produces the envelope with the
83 dollars.
The doctor does the operation.
The girl comes home, and reports to her mother the day’s events. The mother is
mortified; she assumes that her daughter has somehow misled the doctor. She
runs to the doctor’s office to apologize, and to negotiate a way to pay him the
balance. As the mother continues to talk, the doctor cuts her off in middle,
and opens his jacket. In his inside pocket is the envelope, stuffed with
singles; he had not put the cash away. He told the mother that this envelope was
far more precious to him than any amount of money, because this envelope
reminded him of goodness of humanity and why he became a doctor in the first
place.
This is a story about values: the values of a mother, a daughter and a
doctor. They all understand the lesson of “Omnia mea mecum porto”, that it is
what you carry in your heart that matters; and if your heart is filled with
love, justice and righteousness you have everything you need. And if there is
one lesson I want my own children to remember it is this: what you need most in
life cannot be put in a suitcase. Just carry your education, carry your
character, and carry your values; then
you will have everything you need.
[2] Marc Shapiro,
“Rabbi Esriel Hildesheimer’s Program of Torah u-Madda”, The Torah u-Madda
Journal 9 (2000), page 80
[4] Carmen Caballero Navas, “Medicine among Medieval
Jews: The Science, the Art, and the Practice”, in Science in Medieval Jewish Cultures (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 2011) page 339
[7] Kasser, Tim (2006). Materialism and Its
Alternatives. In M. Csikszentmihalyi & I. S. Csikszentmihalyi (Eds.), A Life Worth Living: Contributions to
Positive Psychology (pp. 200-214).
