On Rosh Hashanah in the mid-1960s, my father received a cancer diagnosis. The doctors scheduled radiation treatments, but the initial treatments fell on Sukkot and Simchat Torah when he would normally be attending services at our modern Orthodox synagogue. He asked that he be allowed to come in for treatment during the middle days of the festival. The hospital spokesperson explained that those days were reserved for in-patients. Outpatients generally found it too depressing to see the terrible shape these patients were in. My father, unfazed, said that even if it was too depressing, he would come during the in-patient days. Reluctantly, they agreed.On the first day, he sat in the waiting room surrounded by terribly disfigured, desperately ill people on gurneys. While reading his newspaper, he began to hum. A lady on a gurney nearby said, “That’s pretty. Sing louder.” My father agreed. The lady quietly joined in. Others followed, and soon the room was awash with song.
Shortly thereafter, a nurse emerged and asked my father to come in. He rose, but before leaving, he turned to the other patients and said: “That is a tune composed by Shlomo Carlebach. I knew his family in Germany. He set a verse from the book of Psalms to this music. The words you were singing are Esah ayni el ha-harim. Mayayin yavo ezri. Ezri mayim Ha-Shem, osei shamayim v’aretz. I lift up mine eyes to the hills above. From whence shall my help come? My help shall come from the Lord, the creator of heaven and earth. And so may it be.”
Deborah E. Lipstadt is Professor of Modern Jewish and Holocaust Studies at Emory University, an author and respected lecturer. www.lipstadt.blogspot.com
