His Family Was Fleeing the Nazis… But Their 11-Year-Old Son Was Missing

What’s said in this shiur

The opening of this shiur, in Rabbi Hillel Eisenberg’s own words — taken from the captions, so names and Hebrew terms may be approximate.

[music] [singing] >> I'm here in Austria and I want to tell you a story that happened not far from where I'm standing right now. It's hard to talk about Kabbalat Shabbat without noticing how many of the tunes we sing every Friday night trace back to one man Carlebach. And whatever you make of the fuller story of his life the melodies that he composed did something unusual. They didn't stay in one shul. They didn't stay in one community. They didn't even stay in one time. They became for a huge swath of the Jewish world the actual sounds that Shabbat makes. And it makes me wonder was there a moment, one moment in his life that explains why these songs out of every song written in the last hundreds years are the ones that carry so many of us into Shabbat? I think there might be. It happened right here in Austria when he was 11 years old. It's Austria in 1939. The city is dark in a way that doesn't feel like night. It feels like something closing in. There's Nazis [music] that are moving all throughout the streets and they're hunting Jews. The doors are locked and voices are lower and people are scrambling to get out. And inside one house Rabbi Naftali Carlebach, the chief rabbi of the city, he gathers his family and this is not a normal gathering. This is survival. Everyone is accounted for. [music] Everyone except 11-year-old And at first it's confusion and then urgency

Jump to a moment

1. 0:05[music] [singing] >> I'm here in Austria and I want to tell you a story that…
2. 0:35the melodies that he composed did something unusual. They didn't stay in one shul. They didn't…
3. 1:05he was 11 years old. It's Austria in 1939. The city is dark in a way…
4. 1:37and then fear and they're searching the apartment room after room calling his name opening doors…
5. 2:08still. There are literally Nazis down in the streets below him. His father's voice calls out…
6. 2:38And maybe that's what Kabbalat Shabbat is really is. Not something that you enter when life…
7. 3:08what's still unresolved, but by the fact that you're no longer rushing to fix it all…
8. 3:38>> [music] >> coming down the roads of our life, our own chaos, our own pressure,…

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