Though my father and mother have forsaken me, Hashem will gather me in (L’Dovid Hashem Ori; Tehillim 27:10)
The Gemara (Sanhedrin 63b) describes how Eliyahu HaNavi was once walking through the streets of Yerushalayim. It was a time of famine with effects so severe that people were suffering from swollen, distended stomachs, the final stages of starvation. The sight was devastating.
As Eliyahu HaNavi walked, he came upon a young boy lying in a garbage heap. The boy was weak, his belly bloated from hunger. He couldn’t move and he had no strength. Eliyahu approached him and asked, “What is your name?” The boy told him. “And who is your family?” “There is no one left,” the boy replied. “I am the last. I am completely alone.” “If I teach you something that will save your life,” Eliyahu HaNavi said to the boy, “will you do it?” The boy agreed.
Eliyahu HaNavi then taught him familiar words. Words that you and I both know. Shema Yisrael Hashem Elokeinu Hashem Echad.
Now, if we would pause the story here, we might assume that the boy recited this simple Pasuk, this age-old declaration of faith in G-d.
But sadly, the Gemara does not say that.
“G-d forbid that I should mention the name of G-d!” said the boy. In fact, says the Gemara, the boy pulled out an idol, hugged it, and kissed it. And at that moment, his stomach split open, he collapsed, and the very idol he adored and professed his love for fell on top of him. He died just as the verse foretells: “V’natati et pigreichem al pigrei giluleichem—I will cast their corpses upon the corpses of their idols” (Vayikra 26:30).
It’s a harrowing story.
A child is visited by Eliyahu HaNavi and offered a second chance at life by reciting the simple words of Shema Yisrael. And yet, he refuses, and winds up dying alone, holding an idol, in a heap of garbage.
That’s the end of the story.
But there’s another story. I heard it years ago from Rabbi Ephraim Wachsman shlita and it has never left me. Allow me to compare it to this above Gemara.
He told of a woman named Mrs. Miriam Zupnik, known after the war as “The Angel of Auschwitz.” She risked her life in the camps to save Jewish women and children, unafraid of the Nazis. After liberation, many Jewish children who had been hidden in Christian monasteries remained there. That is when Mrs. Zupnik got to work, beginning to rescue them and bring them to a Jewish orphanage in Belgium. And every night, she would personally put the young girls to bed. These were orphans, many of whom were traumatized, and most of whom were alone in the world. She would bathe them, feed them and tell them stories. And then she’d give each one a hug and whisper: “Say Shema Yisrael.”
There was one girl who received all the love and care like the others, but each night, when Mrs. Zupnik asked her to say Shema, the girl would instead pull out a cross from her time in the monastery, kiss it, and go to sleep. Night after night, week after week, she refused to say Shema.
Until one night.
The girl looked up at Mrs. Zupnik and said, “This... this isn’t G-d. Is it?” Mrs. Zupnik gently replied, “No, sweetheart. It’s not.” The girl then took the cross, threw it under her bed, and for the very first time in her life, said Shema Yisrael.
Now here’s the question. Eliyahu HaNavi couldn’t get a child to say Shema, but Mrs. Zupnik could. How could that be? How is it possible that Eliyahu HaNavi, the prophet of fire, the messenger of redemption, couldn’t do what a Jewish woman from Belgium did in the aftermath of the Holocaust?
The answer is as clear as it is painful.
Eliyahu found a child lying in the garbage, starving, alone, unloved. Under such dire, ravaging conditions, even Eliyahu HaNavi couldn’t save him. But Mrs. Zupnik found a child who, though broken, was given love. She was given a bed; she was given warmth; she was given kindness, hugs, human dignity, and hope. In that environment, a child can throw away her idol. In that setting, a child can say Shema Yisrael for the first time.
That is the power of love. That is the power of chizuk, of encouragement, of care. That is the power of a motherly or fatherly figure who believes in a child and surrounds her with dignity and light.
And that is why we must never give up on our children.
Never give up on the boy who can’t sit still, or the student who struggles in class, or the one who seems to be pushing everything and everyone away. We all went through school and we all knew boys or girls who were labeled as unlikely to succeed. And today, many of them are outstanding talmidei chachamim, morahs, bnei Torah, mothers, fathers, teachers.
Why? Because someone believed in them. Because somewhere along the way, there was a rebbe or morah who saw beneath the struggle and who didn’t give up, but instead, offered a hand, a word, a smile, a second chance. To those rabbeim, to those parents, to those mentors, no eye can fathom the reward that awaits them. Only Hashem can.
So let us remember. Our greatest tool isn’t always brilliance or authority. Sometimes, our greatest tool is warmth. Because even when Eliyahu HaNavi couldn’t save a soul, a Jewish woman with an open heart could.
And so can we.
