Lunch Money
2/17/2026
We're still here.
A few years ago my wife and I took an organized tour, via the OAT tour group, of eastern Europe which include parts of Germany, Poland, Czech Republic and Hungary. All lovely places with tons of history, beautiful scenery, and for the most part friendly cheerful people. However, one cannot tour this area without seeing and learning from the many sites and monuments journaling the Holocaust. My wife, being Jewish, was particularly interested in seeing and learning more and included in our tour were guided visits to many well known sites such as Auschwitz-Birkenau, The Holocaust Museum in Berlin, the Old Synagogue in Berlin, Warsaw Uprising Museum and many more.
A Jewish friend we made on the trip asked if we wanted to join her to see the Old Warsaw Synagogue. It served the Jewish community since 1902 and though damaged during the war and used a stable by the Nazis, it has been repaired and in use today. So off we went and found it without too much effort. Near the entrance of this relatively unassuming building was a small cubical with what I assume was a security guard who, after brief conversation in broken English, allowed us in. The interior far surpassed it's unassuming exterior. We were free to roam most of the interior beautifully decorated, clean and quite a comfortable space.
We took a seat in the pews which were all facing the Bimah and were quietly just taking it all in when, from the direction of the entrance, came the chatter and shuffle people coming in. I looked up and in came a line of about 20 or so young men and women smiling and quietly chatting among themselves. They were accompanied by several adults. They filled the pews near us and one of the accompanying adults stood in front of the group gathering their attention and began speaking what I believed to be Hebrew. Or friend went over to one of the group to inquire who they were and what was going on. We were told, in perfect English, that this was a group of Israeli students on a tour of Eastern Europe to learn more about their heritage and history. We watched quietly as the one of the adult escorts spoke to them and although I could not understand a word, I could clearly get the gist of what she was telling them by the looks on their faces that went from smiling and giggling to serious and attentive.
There was a pregnant pause as the adult finished. Then, surprising to me, several youths began to quietly sing what my wife explained to me were traditional Jewish folksongs. The singing continued and grew louder and more animated as more and more student joined in. Students then began to leave the pews joining hands and dancing in front of the Bimah. The singing and dancing became more joyous and went on for quite some time. In the end, singing and dancing stopped, everyone hugged each other, and after a few came over and chatted briefly with us they filed out as they came in. Smiling and chatting.
The silence was deafening after they left. I sat there dumbfounded and trying to process what I had just witnessed. After seeing and hearing about all the atrocities and horror that had happened to the Jews of Europe, to experience the beauty of these youths celebrating in the same Synagogue that the Nazis had defiled was almost unbelievable. After a few days of processing what I had witnessed, I found it wonderfully ironic that while the great Nazi machine had done all that it could to exterminate the Jews of Europe the reality was, they the Nazis for all intent and purpose were gone and by law not memorialized in any way and those who they tried to exterminate were not only still here, they were prospering. In this current time, where hope seems fading, it was an important lesson for me to learn.
Quote from Mark Twain published in the year 1899, though written in language that today seems a bit inappropriate today, best describes my thoughts.
“If the statistics are right, the Jews constitute but one percent of the human race. It suggests a nebulous dim puff of star dust lost in the blaze of the Milky Way. Properly the Jew ought hardly to be heard of, but he is heard of, has always been heard of. He is as prominent on the planet as any other people, and his commercial importance is extravagantly out of proportion to the smallness of his bulk. His contributions to the world’s list of great names in literature, science, art, music, finance, medicine, and abstruse learning are also away out of proportion to the weakness of his numbers. He has made a marvelous fight in the world, in all the ages; and has done it with his hands tied behind him. He could be vain of himself, and be excused for it. The Egyptian, the Babylonian, and the Persian rose, filled the planet with sound and splendor, then faded to dream-stuff and passed away; the Greek and the Roman followed, and made a vast noise, and they are gone; other peoples have sprung up and held their torch high for a time, but it burned out, and they sit in twilight now, or have vanished. The Jew saw them all, beat them all, and is now what he always was, exhibiting no decadence, no infirmities of age, no weakening of his parts, no slowing of his energies, no dulling of his alert and aggressive mind. All things are mortal but the Jew; all other forces pass, but he remains. What is the secret of his immortality?”
