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L’Chaim: A Childless Holocaust Survivor Discovers He Has a Namesake

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by Rabbi Levi Welton

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An inspiring true story about two Chaims and the miracle of life.

My wife Chavi and I were visiting my folks in California. We picked a random Shabbat to go out there and went to the local Chabad for services. A family from out of town was also there that Shabbat celebrating their daughter’s Bat Mitzvah. We stayed for the Kiddush and the dynamic Rabbi Mendy Cohen led the entire community in singing, inspiring Torah learning and some hearty l'chaims. The party continued until late in the afternoon.

At some point, I asked the father of the Bat Mitzvah where they originally came from and he told me he was from Mexico City and had converted to Judaism many years ago before he had his kids.

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Rabbi Welton with Holocaust survivor Chaim Grossman while wearing suit hand-tailored by Holocaust survivor Martin Greenfield.

“So why’d you pick your Hebrew name of Chaim?”

He told me that he had once spent a Friday night Shabbat service at a synagogue in Westchester, NY back when he was just starting out on his spiritual journey. One of his Rabbis had told him that if he ever met a Holocaust survivor, he should remember these words:

“A Holocaust survivor who doesn’t believe in God….is a normal person.
A Holocaust survivor who does…is an angel.”

During that Friday night service, as they were dancing around welcoming the holiness of the Shabbat Queen, he looked down at the arm of the person he was holding hands with and saw numbers. He felt overwhelmed that he was dancing with an angel and couldn’t control the urge to ask the man his name.

The old man smiled and said, “Chaim.” At that moment, this man from Mexico City decided that when it came the time to pick his Hebrew name, he would name himself after the angel he was lucky to dance with. Years passed and he never saw the man again.

I asked this father, “Is the survivor’s name Chaim Grossman?”

His mouth dropped open. “How do you know that?”

I told him I’m the Rabbi of a synagogue in Westchester. One of my congregants survived Buchenwald, went on to become a pilot in the Israeli Defense Forces, and then immigrated to America. His name is Chaim.

This father began to cry. He didn’t even known that Chaim Grossman was still alive. I leaned in close to him and told him that Chaim Grossman was very much alive and that I would be seeing him the following Shabbat. After Shabbat , we took this photo as this father wanted to send his love to his “Godfather.”

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The author with Chaim Valencia.

The next Shabbat, I asked Chaim Grossman to sit in the center of the synagogue as I began my sermon. I told him that 3,000 miles away there lived a man that carried his name and who was raising his family in a traditional, observant home.

“This is incredible,” I said. “What is the probability that on the exact Shabbat, the only Shabbat in the entire year that we would fly out to California, it would be the same Shabbat of his daughter’s Bat Mitzvah? What are the chances that after hours of celebrating, we would have that conversation about the origin of his name? And what are the chances that the Shabbat for which I would return to New York City to tell this story to his namesake would be the same Shabbat on which we read the Torah portion of Shemot. (Exodus) which literally means “Names,” as our Sages teach that the way our ancestors broke free of their slavery was by keeping their Jewish names!“

I then pulled out the photo, printed and framed, and looked Chaim in the eye. As he raised his numbered arm to receive the photo of his “Godson,” everyone began to cry. You see, Chaim had never been blessed with any children. And yet now he had a proud Jew halfway around the world who was carrying his name and who would pass it on to his children’s children’s children.

I will never forget the moment when Chaim stood up and blessed God.

I will never forget the deafening applause that followed.

And I will never forget the image of this holy Holocaust survivor hobbling out of the synagogue holding tightly onto the framed photo of a miracle.

As my father, Rabbi Benzion Welton, taught me, “Coincidence is God’s way of remaining anonymous.” I had thought I was going to California on vacation but I was really being sent to bear witness to a profound lesson about “Chaim” which means “Life.” As the Talmud says, “If our descendants are alive, then our patriarchs are alive” (Taanit 5b).

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i’m not crying you’re crying

Source: aish.com
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Anonymous asked:

So I'm writing a story and my character has pretty bad insomnia and anxiety. Could you give me a few pointers on symptoms and how it might affect daily life? I don't personally have these, but it's important to the character and I want to make sure I do the representation justice.

torturing-characters-101 answered:

I can’t speak for everyone but here’s my experience of insomnia with anxiety:

Insomnia:

  • The feeling of adrenaline releasing, but over and over and over and over while you’re laying in bed. Like, every 2-5 minutes.
  • Constantly thinking about how much sleep you could get if you fell asleep right now and then feeling utterly disappointed in yourself for not falling asleep.
  • The feeling of “I forgot how to fall asleep.”
  • There’s a song going through your head, but also a fake argument and an embarrassing situation you’re remembering from work but like, all at once, repeatedly.
  • The feeling that it would be this huge risk to get up and walk around for a little bit because what if you were just about to fall asleep and you missed your chance?
  • Usually falling asleep one or two hours before your alarm goes off and as soon as it does all you want to do is sleep.
  • The first day without sleep you feel kinda gross and your face feels hot and oily and just can’t get clean even if you shower. Your work/school performance is definitely degraded but you don’t quite realize it. It’s kinda easy to forget you didn’t sleep.
  • The second day without sleep and the gross feeling is worse but now there’s like short waves of dizziness. You’re slow and don’t understand things. Social skills (or, I supposed, whatever situations you find most difficult) are significantly impacted and you know but you can’t do anything about it.
  • The third day you feel like your teeth are loose and your mouth is dry and your skin is weird. Late at night you are angry and frustrated and possibly crying and just so worked up. You can feel your heart beating.
  • After that everything feels not quite real. You have no energy for anything, you misinterpret things or have not-quite-hallucinations out of the corner of your eye. 

Anxiety:

Anxiety is different for everyone, and there are a lot of different anxiety disorders, including Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, Generalized Anxiety Disorder, and Panic Disorder. All of them have different defining symptoms. This is my experience with GAD:

  • Think of the overall experience as “my brain usually (but not always) responds to things in a grossly exaggerated way so I’m constantly trying to deal with those reactions and figure out if they were appropriate, and if not, what the appropriate reaction would be so that I don’t externally over-react to a situation or seem too apathetic.”

  • Because of this, there’s a lot of filler in your brain that saps energy but doesn’t actually contribute to your life or well-being. You’re always moving and doing things but it feels like nothing gets done and everyone’s disappointed in you even though you’re trying so hard.

  • You constantly crave sugar (or fat, or sex, or the wikipedia article about radios or Doctor Who fanfiction or anything that’s going to bring you comfort), but you’re really embarrassed about it and you’re worried other people will think you’re lazy/a glutton if you indulge yourself.

  • Worrying- this is probably what most people think about when trying to describe anxiety, and it can be rough. Like, think about something that weighed so heavily on you you had trouble thinking about other things, but instead of it being something important its actually, like, that you’re getting your blood pressure checked in 3 days and the nurse is going to judge you because you’re 25 and have hypertension which is DEFINITELY YOUR FAULT, but you know you really have false hypertension because you’ve been dumping adrenaline for the last three days non-stop- but who’s realistically going to believe that? And you literally, no matter what you do, can’t stop thinking about it and how much its about to ruin your life.

  • Brain tired.

  • Your abdominal muscles are tight and you have to repeatedly and purposefully un-clench. Then they’ll be clenched again like 2 minutes later.
  • You utterly fail to react or respond to a small but urgent (or at least in-the-moment) situation because it took you so long to think about it.
  • You then think about what you should have done and how much you disappointed people non-stop for 48 hours.
  • Conversely, responding to a big terrifying thing nonchalantly that everyone else is freaking out about.
  • Hands visibly sweating constantly.
  • Hair pulling/skin picking any time you sit down.

  • A desire to apologize for something like your own face.

  • A constant desire to cover your ass/explain yourself but also no energy to do so.

  • Intrusive thoughts. “Boy that knife sure looks sharp- if you fell on it no one would know it was on purpose” “Jump in front of that car.” “How much skin could you remove from your arm before you pass out?” (I know I’ve forgotten to take my meds when these start popping up)

  • All of this is at least 50% worse when actually physically tired or menstruating.

  • Getting on medication and realizing that 1, all of your motivation was tied to anxiety (but now, suddenly, all those motivation tips on the internet actually work) and 2, holy crap you can do so much in a day.

-Ross

insomnia anxiety self harm mention
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picaso

i am sitting on the couch, i hear tapping on the door behind me, i turn around and see this

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what do i do

picaso

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he is here….

brokuto-koutarous-mom

i still lose it every time i see this post because someone let a fucking goose into their house just because tumblr said to and if that doesn’t perfectly define all of our experiences on this shitty excuse for a website i dont know what does  

amkrii

How else would you pet the goose if you did not let him in?

kedreeva

I used to let my turkey free range because she was polite and stuck nearby and liked to eat bugs, and one day I went out and I couldn’t find her in my own yard and so, worried that she’s bothering the neighbors, I walk over to their yard through the little woods between us

And there she is

Standing at their back door

Tapping on the glass

And the lady comes to the door, and mind you I’ve never actually met my neighbors yet, and she starts letting Joslin into her house!

So I yell, and burst out of the trees, startling everyone, and start apologizing for my bird bothering them, and the lady looks absolutely baffled

“Your bird?”

Apparently this wasn’t the first time Joslin had done this

Apparently she’d just been over visiting my neighbor for weeks

And my neighbor just dead-ass thought she was hanging out with a wild turkey

She just let an entire wild turkey into her house without question

And my dumb bird apparently would just go in, inspect everything, and then walk out again

I cannot even imagine what this lady was thinking, she just accepted that she’s getting a house inspection from mother nature a few times a week.

I’m not surprised at all someone let a farm goose in. Humans have no sense of self preservation when it comes to things that we might get to pet.

goose cute LET HIM IN aww birds