Summary: <p>What do we do with something that is beautiful, broken, and ours? I want to tell you a story that captures beautiful, broken and ours. The story flows from this black and white photograph that was shared at Hartman two weeks ago by Rabbi Rani Yeager. Rabbi Yeager is the rabbi of a congregation in Tel Aviv called Beit Tefilah. He is also a senior faculty member of Hartman. The photograph is of his mother as a very young child, her siblings, and her parents, Rani Yeager’s grandparents. His mother was named Hertzelina by her Zionist parents. Two things about this photograph are striking.</p> <p><br></p> <p>One, the date. This photograph was taken in 1944, in Bulgaria. In 1944 the Nazis were intensifying their efforts to murder Jews. In 1944 the cattle cars to Auschwitz were going full-time. In 1944, other countries like Hungary gave up their Jews to the Nazi death machine. And yet, the second remarkable thing about this photograph is that the members of his family are smiling. Why, in 1944, was this family of Bulgarian Jews smiling?</p> <p><br></p> <p>Rani Yeager’s answer is that ordinary citizens of Bulgaria refused to be Nazi accomplices. Ordinary citizens of Bulgaria protected their fellow Bulgarian citizens who were Jewish. Leadership started at the top. The head of the Bulgarian church said, publicly and clearly, that if you cooperate with Nazis, and send Jews to their deaths, you will be officially excommunicated by the Bulgarian Church. Bulgarian citizens so resisted Nazi entreaties that Albert Eichmann penned a memo saying that the hunting of Jews was not having traction in Bulgaria because Bulgarian citizens were not cooperating.</p> <p><br></p> <p>Rani Yeager’s grandparents, mother, uncle and aunt were protected during the Holocaust by the decency and humanity of ordinary Bulgarian citizens, and they came to Israel after the Shoah singing the Bulgarian national anthem in their hearts. </p> <p><br></p> <p>Rani Yeager carries around this photograph which captures Israel for him.</p> <p><br></p>
