A Different Pilgrimage

I write still carrying the weight and wonder of a journey I did not entirely plan, which, as it turns out, may be precisely the point.

I traveled to Poland last week as part of the March of the Living, to bear witness on Yom HaShoah. Walking through the gates of Auschwitz, standing at the sites of mass murder, I tried, as one always must, to hold onto hope and meaning in the face of bewildering cruelty. The March traditionally carries its participants from the darkness of destruction in Europe to the light of renewal in our ancient homeland. We were meant to fly chartered flights from Warsaw to Ben Gurion Airport, to celebrate 78 years of the Jewish state reborn. But because of the conflict with Iran, those flights were canceled. The second half of our journey was not to be.

And so my wife Jacqueline and I chose a different pilgrimage.

Together we made our way to the small communities nestled in the Carpathian Mountains, where members of my own family once lived and loved and prayed. We began in Sátoraljaújhely, a city in Eastern Hungary that is, I confess, nearly impossible to spell and almost as difficult to pronounce. It was the birthplace of my cousin Mnashe Davidovits (1928-2021), a man I came to know deeply during my years living in Israel, and in the years that followed after I returned to America. Those turned out to be the last years of his life. I spent hours interviewing him, taking his testimony, listening as he described being a small child deported with his mother, brother and three sisters to Auschwitz in June of 1944. He and his father were the only survivors.

At last I stood in his hometown, which also happens to be the birthplace of the great 19th-century Rabbi Moshe Teitelbaum (1759-1841), the founding Rebbe of Satmar Hasidism. We visited the tomb of the Yismach Moshe — he is known by the name of his most famous book, which is such a Jewish way to be remembered. We found dozens of black-hatted, peyos-wearing Jews who had come to pay their respects to this towering figure. On our way in, a couple stopped us, asked where we were from, and after a little small talk, asked whether we had come for the yahrzeit of the Kerestir Rebbe. We explained that we had just come from the March of the Living, and had traveled here because this was our cousin’s hometown. The woman’s eyes grew wide. “This is not a coincidence,” she said. “The Kerestir Rebbe is inviting you. You must come.”

She explained that the Kerestir Rebbe (1852-1925) had been known above all else for his extraordinary hospitality, and therefore our arrival on this precise day could not possibly be accidental.

Jacqueline and I looked at each other, and without much deliberation, we adjusted our plans. The next morning, we rose early, drove a half hour to the town of Kerestir, and arrived in time for morning services. We found hundreds of the Rebbe’s followers gathered in the very synagogue where he once prayed. Then we walked up a hill to the Jewish cemetery and found hundreds more gathered at his grave, not in grief, but in something that felt remarkably like joy. People had come from Israel, from Brooklyn, from communities across Europe. There was singing. There was warmth. There was, against all expectation, a palpable sense of renewal.

From there, we drove to the childhood home of my cousin Mnashe and spent quiet moments thinking about the man I had known and the child he had once been, the child who left this place and nearly did not return from where he was taken.

Then we drove another hour into Slovakia, to the town of Michalovce, where Mnashe’s grandfather, Rabbi Eliezer Davidovits (1878-1942), had lived. There aren’t many Jews there today. We found the cemetery on the outskirts of town, called a number posted on the gate, and a helpful man talked us through opening the padlock. I searched in vain for a headstone bearing my family’s name. But I found comfort in the names I did see: Moshe, Yaakov, Mordecai, Yehuda, Esther, Rachel, Leah. The names that Jewish generations have always given their children. Names that say: we were here, and we loved, and we hoped.

We returned the rental car and boarded a train to Budapest. And there, as I prepared my heart for Yom HaZikaron and Yom HaAtzmaut, I found myself standing inside the Dohány Street Synagogue, once among the largest synagogues in all of Europe, a magnificent Hungarian Reform synagogue opened in 1859. In the building directly adjoining it, in 1860, just one year after its dedication, a Jewish boy was born. His name was Theodor Binyamin Ze’ev Herzl.

What a profound way to close a journey. At the birthplace of the prophet who understood, perhaps more clearly than any Jew of his era, that our people needed a home, and who, more than merely understanding it, moved hundreds of thousands of Jews to share his vision of a return to sovereignty in our land of indigeneity.

And then, as Yom HaZikaron approached, I watched the official ceremony broadcast from Har Herzl, the Jerusalem cemetery where Herzl’s own bones were brought after the state he dreamed of was finally born, where Israel’s fallen soldiers, its prime ministers, its builders are buried. I watched as the ceremony reached its solemn turning point: the flag, lowered in mourning, slowly raised back to full mast.

From Auschwitz to a Rebbe’s yahrzeit. From a child’s hometown to his grandfather’s grave. From mourning to memory to hope.

The journey I did not plan turned out to be the one I needed most.

Rabbi Yoshi Zweiback is the Senior Rabbi of Stephen Wise Temple in Los Angeles, California.