The Chain Continued

I often tell my kids that they are shomer Shabbos today because of the comics page in the newspaper.

They usually give me a befuddled smile. They’ve never even seen a comics page in a newspaper and probably have no idea what it is. And a frum life is one they’ve always known; keeping Shabbos is as routine for them as brushing their teeth in the morning.

Still, I’ll keep repeating that line until it piques their interest, and then I’ll have a good story to tell them – a story that changed the course of our family’s history and thus the course of their lives.

When my great-grandparents came to America in the early 1900s, they left behind a world of hardship and pain: rampant anti-Semitism, violent pogroms, and the ravages of poverty and hunger. They saved every last penny to become strangers in a strange land because they believed they would be giving their children a better life. When they arrived on the shores of New York City, they beheld what they hoped would be a land of opportunity, a new home where their children could live freely as Jews and thrive.

Their children did live freely. But they did not thrive in the way their parents had hoped.

I wonder, if my great-grandparents could have been given a crystal ball as they walked through Ellis Island, would they have turned around and fled back to Mother Russia? Because one by one, each of their children was lost to the swirling abyss of assimilation. One by one, they were lured in by the glittering materialism and unencumbered life that America offered them.

Except for my grandfather. He was saved by the comics page in the Sunday newspaper.

Zeidy was the youngest of seven children. He was born when his oldest brother was already 22 years old. He watched, through the eyes of a child, as each of his siblings threw off the yoke of Torah to live the American dream. His parents, exhausted while trying to put food on their table, had little time or energy to raise their youngest child, so he was often left to fend for himself. It seemed inevitable that he would follow the path of his older siblings, that he too would abandon shmiras Shabbos when he was old enough to go out and make a living.

But one teenage girl had the foresight to change the course of my grandfather’s life, to stop the inevitable – right in its tracks.

My great-grandparents were too poor to afford the Sunday paper. Zeidy was an avid reader, but he especially loved the Sunday comics. He would ask a neighbor who was lucky enough to have the newspaper delivered if he could have the page after everyone had read it. The neighbor had a daughter who was a few years older than my grandfather. Somehow, she had the wisdom and maturity to recognize a golden opportunity.

She made him an offer he couldn’t refuse: if my grandfather agreed to keep Shabbos and attend shul, she would save the comics page for him. Every week. So Zeidy attended shul, even when his older brothers often did not. He stayed inside and davened, protected from the influences of his home and from the outside world.

His shul attendance led to his involvement in the Bnei Akiva movement, where he found mentors and friends who helped him even when he had outgrown the comics page. Through the Bnei Akiva movement, he met my grandmother – a fine, frum girl from a fine, frum home, and together built a home of their own that reverberated with yiras shamayaim and ahavas hamitzvos.

In the generations that followed, my grandfather’s family tree was all but decimated by assimilation. I do not know any of my cousins on that side of the family, and I wonder how many are still Jewish.

Thus, I can have no doubts that it was a special teenage girl and the Sunday comics that ensured that my grandfather was a survivor of America’s spiritual wasteland – the only survivor from his family.

Zeidy’s mesiras nefesh and love of Yiddishkeit was imbibed by his children, each of whom went on to build Torah-rich homes of their own. His children were deeply inspired by a man who fought against the tide, blazed his own connection with Hakadosh Baruch Hu, and served as a role model for his family.

Moshe kibel Torah miSinai. The chain of our mesorah is a living, breathing entity.

The Torah is not transmitted without sacrifice, without commitment, without ensuring that the next generation feels the love and connection that we do. So this Shavuos – and every Shavuos – I will be telling my children the story of one girl and the Sunday comics. I will tell them about my grandfather’s mesiras nefesh to keep Shabbos and to instill a love of Torah in his children’s hearts. I will tell them how my father and his siblings stand testament to this. I will tell them how I daven that I can emulate my grandfather’s example.

Maybe then, one day, they will tell their children the story of the comics page and what it means to them, so the chains of our mesorah will continue for eternity.

Chag kasher v’sameach!