10 Inspirational Quotes by Rabbi Israel Meir Lau on the Holocaust and Faith

If you were to tell 8-year-old Lulek that one day he would dine at the table of the Queen of England, converse with the Pope in Yiddish, and listen with the Chancellor of Germany – of all people, the Chancellor of Germany – to the song “I Believe with Complete Faith in the Coming of the Messiah” to the melody of Gur Hasidim, he would surely not have believed it. Or perhaps he would. Because Lulek, the youngest child to survive the Buchenwald concentration camp, was accustomed to miracles. He survived thanks to a series of miracles: his mother pushed him into the arms of his brother moments before she was taken to her death, his brother smuggled him again and again, from camp to camp, from train car to train car, continuously captured, faced with death – and survived. And his brother survived with him, acting as his father, mother, and family. Together, the brothers fulfilled their father's last wish and immigrated to Israel, and Lulek-Shrulik-Israel continued a rabbinical lineage of over a thousand years and became the Chief Rabbi of Israel – Rabbi Israel Meir Lau, who in 2005 was awarded the Israel Prize for Lifetime Achievement and serves as Chairman of the Yad Vashem Council.

We have gathered a collection of quotes from Rabbi Lau about the Holocaust, faith, and resurgence:

1. "Have you never had doubts?", the interviewer asked, and requested: "Tell me about the questions and doubts." Rabbi Lau answered from his heart: "King David says, 'How great are Your works, O Lord, Your thoughts are very deep.' 'Your works' are the visible things: night, morning, sun, moon, stars, the depths of the sea. King David says: 'Your works' – are greater than me, and how much more so 'Your thoughts' – are beyond my understanding. The answer to the question 'why'. ‘A righteous man suffers, a wicked man prospers’, ‘Why do the wicked succeed?’, ‘Why are You silent when the wicked devours one more righteous than he?’, ‘What have these infants sinned?’ and so forth. There is an explanation for everything. I could say many things about this. Whole books have been written on this, in addition to the Book of Job, but I will give you a practical answer concerning the Holocaust. What is the alternative? To hand victory to the murderers or to the victims of the murderers? If you turn your back on the God of Israel in anger, no Shabbat, no holidays, no tallit, no tefillin, no, no, no, I’m angry. And if this is the case for you, your wife, and your children – then you have given the key of victory to those who wanted to annihilate the Jews, not only as a concept, but Judaism itself. "They said, 'Let us destroy them as a nation; the name of Israel will be remembered no more.' I decided that the victory does not belong to the murderers of my father and mother and my 13-year-old brother. The victory belongs to my parents, knowing that their grandchildren live in Israel. All my grandchildren, their great-grandchildren, live in the land, and the Jewish people live, and the lineage continues, with sons ordained as rabbis of the 39th generation, in Hebrew numerology 'טל' (dew), this is the dew of resurrection". (Interview with Orot Channel).

2. "You're an incredibly optimistic Jew," said the interviewer in amazement, and this was Rabbi Lau's smiling response: "I have good reasons. I am living against all the laws of nature. 6 years without a doctor, without vaccination, under subhuman conditions, freezing cold, constant hunger. You dream of a potato. Beatings, for nothing. Humiliation, and loneliness. No father, no mother, no siblings. With all of this, at such an age, to come out alive. Is that not reason enough to be optimistic?! Is there anyone else in the world who deserves to be as optimistic as I am?! After such a childhood, to establish a family, if you can come out of this alive and build another home – there is no reason for depression". (Interview with Orot Channel).

"The victory belongs to my parents, not to their murderers." Watch Rabbi Lau's poignant words:

3. "My name is Israel Meir Lau, but in Buchenwald, I had no name. I was a number, just a number. My number was 117030. Only later did I discover who I am. My father, Rabbi Moshe Chaim Lau ז"ל, perished in Treblinka. He instructed my brother, Naftali Lau-Lavie, former Consul General of Israel in New York, that should a miracle happen and we survive, we have only one place to go: the Land of Israel. But I never heard my father's name even in Buchenwald, not just from my brother. It was on liberation day, April 11, 1945. Bullets whistling, bombs from the air, we ran to the gate, and there was a pile of bodies. The jeeps of the American army were rushing in and an officer with a gun in hand stepped out of one of the jeeps and looked at the bodies. It was Rabbi Schechter. Suddenly he saw me. He realized I was a Jewish child. He took me in his arms and said to me in Yiddish: 'What is your name? Who are you?' I said: 'My name is Lulek from the Lau family.' He immediately said to me: 'Are you related to the very famous Rabbi Moshe Chaim Lau?' I said: I am his son, 'He was my father.' The officer began to cry. I saw the tears on his cheeks, and then he asked me: 'How old are you, my child?' I answered: 'What does it matter how old I am? I am older than you.' He asked why. I was then less than eight years old. I told him: Because when you laugh – you laugh. When you cry – you cry. I haven't laughed for years and I no longer cry. So who is older?'

4. "Five weeks after the liberation, we celebrated Shavuot, the day the Torah was given to the people of Israel. From Buchenwald, we came to the Land of Israel. I became a rabbi, because my father told my brother: if the miracle happens and you survive, remember that your younger brother must continue the lineage. My father was the 37th generation of family rabbis, and I was to be the 38th. I did it. I was the Chief Rabbi of Netanya, then of Tel Aviv, and then of the entire State of Israel." (At the annual AIPAC conference)

5. "I know it is not a personal obligation but a national one. We all have a duty to continue the lineage, not to break it. We must overcome all the problems we have, here and in Israel. We must live together, just as we knew how to die together. To live together in brotherhood, in friendship, we must do it. It is in our hands. Today, tomorrow, together. Let us build bridges to continue being together. Am Yisrael Chai."

Do the childhood memories of the terrible Holocaust not cause you doubts in faith, and which part of your life would you like to relinquish? A chilling and empowering interview with Rabbi Israel Meir Lau. Watch an episode from "Meeting with Roni Kuban" broadcast on Kan 11 and digitally:

"There was an aunt there, the mother’s sister, named Larisa, who said to him in Russian: 'Vladik, do you know who the man who came to visit us is? This the Chief Rabbi of Israel. You know, when he was your age, he too didn’t have a father or a mother, just like you now, and he came to Israel and today he is the rabbi of the entire state.' The child looked at me and I looked at him, and she continued: 'So you see, Vladik? If you just want, you have a future and will be a great man, you are not alone.' It is the kind of moments you do not forget."

"A few years later I officiated the Bar Mitzvah of a thousand orphans at the Western Wall and someone came up the stage to receive tefillin from me, patted me on the shoulder and said: I am Vladik Kushnirov—and a shiver ran through me. And now, after many years, the phone. He called to tell me he was getting married, and asked if I could officiate, hoping I would be available for him. I said to him, I am always available for you. We will meet under your chuppah before Rosh Hashanah, I will say 'May the year and its curses end, may the year and its blessings begin,' and the words will have great significance."

68 years ago, Miriam Lieber heard an 8-year-old child in Buchenwald concentration camp crying out in hunger, and immediately ran to feed him. Today, Miriam is 92, has already lost her sight, and when her autobiography of Rabbi Lau "Don’t Send Your Hand Upon the Boy" was read to her, she suddenly recognized that same hungry child - Rabbi Lau. Watch their moving meeting:

8. Rabbi Lau tells of a dear and noble soul named Fyodor, who was also a prisoner in Buchenwald and did everything to save his life: "What didn’t he do for me? He stole food from the Germans every day, stole potatoes. From stone pieces he made a campfire, found some pot, and cooked me every day hot soup with potatoes. Not for himself. At night he ensured that under my hat there would be a wool defender that he knitted with a single needle he stole from the Gestapo basements, and the wool he took from the body of a dead man. He knitted me an ear protector, and every night he passed to see that the protector on the ears was worn on me. Because when they wake us for the morning parade, with cold water thrown at us, and compel us to remove our hats – Lulek is protected. His ears will not rot. He – did not have."

The interviewer asked Rabbi Lau: "You have seen over the years people in their lowest moments and in their most exalted moments. How is it that there were those who risked themselves, like him, like Fyodor. And those who reached the lowest point. How do you explain this, after all, we are all human?!", Rabbi answered: "Our sages, of blessed memory, said in four words: 'All is foreseen, and the permission is given.' The right of choice was given to every human being. Whoever chose the Eichmann’s, Himmler’s way – chose that way. And whoever chose the good, generous, noble way – and there were many like that. It is a human’s choice. And for the extremes of good and evil there is no limit."

9. Rabbi Lau also added: "In light of what is happening in the country and what you hear and see - you come to the conclusion that for dying together, we took the world championship. We are champions in dying together. Living together – we haven’t even completed the basic training. We are not even eligible for the rank of a first private, so to speak. We do not know how to live together. But dying together? World championship".

10. "How do you live with this and keep believing?", the interviewer asks. Rabbi Lau responds: "I do not comprehend the ways of heavenly providence. You cannot reach the mind and heart of the Creator of the Universe and say and explain and decipher and justify, these are the simplest things. So how do you live?", the rabbi asks and immediately answers: "Live with faith that there are things hidden from me, higher than me. It is not in our hands. There are things I do not understand. I know in advance I do not understand. And I know in advance I will not understand them. They are wondrous beyond my understanding".

To purchase Rabbi Israel Meir Lau’s recommended book "Don’t Send Your Hand Upon the Boy" at Hidabroot Shops, click here.