Late in the summer we had a beautiful Kiddush in our shul after Shabbat morning services. At the Kiddush, Moshe’le* asked me if he could speak. Of course I agreed.
He stood up and announced, “Rabbi Vigler is not a real rabbi! We need to check if he is even Jewish.”
I was flabbergasted. What could I have possibly done to warrant this? I mean, I’m used to complaints. As a Chabad rabbi I’ve had to develop a thick skin. But this was unexpected. I’ve known Moshe’le for a long time; he’s been a shul regular and I’ve helped him personally a number of times throughout the years. What had I done to upset him like this?
“Rabbi Vigler has decided to move our shul to a German music hall,” he continued. “My family are Holocaust survivors and this is totally forbidden. How could he do this?”
Now I understood. I saw the deep pain on Moshe’s face and in his heart. His Chabad rabbi was moving his regular shul to a German music hall, and he felt betrayed.
As I’ve written in the past, finding a space to rent or to buy in Manhattan is extremely difficult. Over the last 17 years we’ve rented so many different spaces, it’s hard to even keep track. For the High Holidays this year, we were fortunate to find a beautiful space on East 87th Street – a beautiful music hall with fantastic acoustics that suited our needs very well, including a separate area for our kids program.
And yes, it happens to be a German music hall, owned by a German foundation that has existed for 175 years (long before the Holocaust).
Now, what about Moshe’s pain? I empathized. I explained to him that my grandfather was also a survivor of Auschwitz, where he suffered unimaginable horrors and saw his entire family decimated.
But despite the fact that my grandfather was tortured by the Nazis, I certainly don’t consider having our shul in a German-owned building to be showing support for Nazis. G-d forbid! If anything, I view it as a small victory.
In this week’s parshah we receive our mandate and mission, which is to spread G-d’s teachings to all corners of the world and permeate the entire universe with spirituality. What better way to do so than to have the walls of our shul (in this case, a German music hall) absorb hours of davening and Torah? What better victory than to show how we are thriving, filling up a giant German acoustic hall with proudly visible Jews, less than a hundred years after the Nazis murdered 6 million of us? I can’t think of a better way.
I hope to see Moshe’le back in shul very soon, sharing a l’chaim at the Kiddush.
*Name changed to protect privacy.