This summer, I had the profound and challenging experience of visiting Auschwitz, a place that stands as a stark reminder of the depths of human cruelty and the resilience of the human spirit. During this journey, two texts, one from outside and one from within the Jewish tradition, helped me process the overwhelming emotions engendered by my experience: Being Peace by Thich Nhat Hanh, a Vietnamese Buddhist monk and peace activist, and Aish Kodesh by Rabbi Kalonimos Kalman Shapira, a Hasidic rebbe and spiritual teacher who perished in the Holocaust.
I visited Germany and Poland as a member of the Fellowships at Auschwitz for the Study of Professional Ethics (FASPE). Alongside 38 other fellows – all of whom work in journalism, medicine, or the clergy – I explored the sites of Nazi terror while considering the events that led to the Holocaust. In a radical approach, the fellowship asks its participants to temporarily view themselves not from the perspectives of victims of the Holocaust, but rather through the lens of Nazi society. The program encourages participants to ask: Could I have been complicit in such a crime as the Holocaust? It is a stark departure from the way I, as a Jew, have ever interacted with Holocaust history.
As an observant Jew and a modern person, I believe it is worth examining the limits of radical empathy – the expansion of our compassion for others based on our common humanity. How far can we push ourselves to identify humanity, even in the people we find most detestable?
Being Peace teaches that radical empathy is integral to becoming a person who truly lives the ideals of peace. This extends, in Thich Nhat Hanh’s teachings, even to perpetrators of unthinkable evil. Instead of distancing ourselves from people we find despicable, we are encouraged to embrace the principle of non-duality, the idea that barriers between the Self and the Other are illusions. This practice allows us to cultivate compassion without condoning harmful actions, recognizing the potential for both good and evil within each person, including ourselves.
Thich Nhat Hanh’s thesis is that peace isn’t achieved by separating ourselves from those we perceive as “bad” or “evil,” but rather by recognizing our fundamental connection to all beings. To me, Being Peace advances the Jewish value of seeing every person as having been created b’tzelem Elokim – in the image of God.
That said, all this “peace stuff” couldn’t have been more useless to me as I hyperventilated while touring the gas chambers in Auschwitz. As I saw the pictures of emaciated Jews, the beds they slept on, the yards they were shot in, I thought to myself: Surely no one on this tour is like me. I am alone in my fear and grief. While the tour guide did some quick math for us on how many pairs of tzitzit were likely destroyed after being taken from the bodies of Jewish boys and men, I thought to myself, over and over again: They would have taken my tzitzit They would have taken my tzitzit. Neither the prattling of our tour guide nor the presence of an interfaith group of clergy could convince me that the fascist antisemites who murdered my family in Poland were anything like me. I certainly couldn’t, in those moments, imagine the barrier between Self and Other melting away.
Fortunately, I had another, very different text to hold me in those moments. That book – a particularist answer to this tragedy that changed the entire world – was Rabbi Kalonimos Kalman Shapira’s Aish Kodesh. It is a record of the sermons Rabbi Kalonymos Kalman Shapira delivered inside the Warsaw Ghetto as the Holocaust unfolded, about faith in the face of the unimaginable hardships imposed on Jews by the Nazis.
In his discussion of Parshat Shlach (Numbers 13:30), Rabbi Shapira considers the story of the Spies who are sent to survey the Promised Land while the Jews wander the desert. After the Spies return, they tell the people that the Promised Land’s inhabitants are so powerful that the Israelites have no chance of overtaking them. It is a blow for the leader Moses, who often struggles to keep up the hopes of the Israelites. Alone among the spies, Caleb rises up to defend Moses. He declares, “We shall surely go up, and we will definitely be victorious!” Rabbi Shapira points out that Caleb doesn’t contradict the logical military intelligence of the other Spies. Rather, his message is one of comfort, reassurance, and faith. He is essentially saying, “Don’t listen to them – we’ll be fine.”
As Caleb did, so should we do the same in Warsaw, explains Rabbi Shapira in Aish Kodesh. In the book, he notes that a Jew’s faith is ignited not just when there is a discernible path to salvation, but also when there is no logical possibility of survival. In moments such as these, we, as Jews, acknowledge the direness of the situation, but we also must continue with hope. In the words of Rabbi Shapira: “…And I believe that G-d who resides above nature and is master of possibility will save me.”
In Auschwitz, the tour guide made clear the prowess of the Nazi extermination machine. As the numbers morphed into predictive statistics and my vision blurred from tears, I felt powerless to meet the moment. Then, from beyond all hope, I heard sounds of salvation: A group of young Jewish students began singing Ani Ma’amin. Their voices were full of the conviction and trust that Caleb and the Aish Kodesh would urge them to cultivate. Even though Rabbi Shapira was murdered in the death camps, the Jewish people, whom he had comforted and strengthened, continued on after the Holocaust.
Outside the barbed wire fences, I needed Being Peace to help me integrate the universal compassion I am desperate to give and receive. Inside the death camp tour, I held and was held by the Jewish people. After this experience, going forward, I will strive for both aims: to hold my Jewish family in their pain and to still believe that I can help the world become a better place for everyone.
Rabbi Eliezer Weinbach is the Director of Student Wellbeing for Hillel at Stanford Univeristy. He is an experiential educator for the Jewish people, and strives to manifest his love of the environment and Jewish tradition in a deeply connected world. After seminary in Israel and getting a BA from Yeshiva University, Eli worked in psychology research for five years before transitioning to the Jewish nonprofit world. He worked for Hazon for three years before transitioning to graduate-level rabbinical and environmental studies. He received ordination from Yeshivat Chovevei Torah in 2024. He enjoys fermentation experiments and cooking with fake-meat substitutes. Anywhere that people are trying to free themselves from the constraints of conflicting truths, you will find Rabbi Eli cheering them on.