Historic figure. Role model of faith. The eternality of the Jewish people.
One is tempted to pay the late Rabbi Herschel Schacter the high compliment articulated in the Talmud: Rare individuals “acquire their world in one moment.” Some people achieve something so dramatic, so groundbreaking, so helpful that this one act justifies their entire life.
Rabbi Schacter, a chaplain in the US Armed Forces, gathered Holocaust survivors right after the liberation of Buchenwald. Confronted by death, destruction and despair so brutal that they made even the Supreme Allied Commander, Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower, blanche, Rabbi Schacter held a Passover service.
At this unique service — followed by a Shavuot service a few weeks later [photo, at right] —attended by shadows and skeletons beaten down and beaten up just for being Jews, Rabbi Schacter breathed hope, faith, Jewish dignity and the beginnings of normalcy into hundreds of survivors. Not allowing himself to yield to despair amidst the ghastly piles of bodies and the specter of countless walking dead, Rabbi Schacter steeled himself, looked into the Haggadah —and looked forward — then showed the survivors that they too could begin to look forward. One dramatic act, indeed; enough to justify a lifetime. One act of rare beneficence, which, together with the Shavuot service, would never come Rabbi Schacter’s way again: the day after the Shavuot service, a group of Jewish children were repatriated to Czechoslovakia.
Yet, Rabbi Schacter was no ephemeral flame, no Henry Roth, who wrote one remarkable novel, Call It Sleep, and never wrote again; no Rodney King, who made one remarkable statement (“why can’t we just all get along?”) and was never heard from again; no Don Larsen, who pitched a perfect game in the World Series and never had another memorable moment on the mound. At Buchenwald, Rabbi Schacter did not “rise to the occasion,” as if it took a special occasion to call forth his passion for his people. Rather, Rabbi Schacter was steadfast in his faith and in the fulfillment of his duty. That steadfastness, deeply rooted, manifested itself over and over again, in many memorable moments throughout his long life of service to his people, here and abroad.
• When almost no one had any consciousness of, let alone exerted any leadership on, the millions of Jews trapped in the Soviet Union, Rabbi Schacter (along with the late Rabbi Samuel Adelman, then in Virginia, later of Denver) became a member of the first rabbinic delegation to the forgotten Jews in the Soviet Union, in 1956. Not content to break the ice and let others do the hard work, Rabbi Schacter became the founding chairman of the American Jewish Conference on Soviet Jewry.
• When post-WW II, newly minted rabbis preferred to seek the green pastures of the civilian pulpit, Rabbi Schacter kept the importance of the military chaplaincy alive as the chairman of the Chaplaincy Commission of the Jewish Welfare Board.
• When Israel faced a very critical moment — France’s decision to stop selling advanced fighter aircraft to Israel in 1967 — Rabbi Schacter helped cement the US-Israel special relationship, particularly in regard to American arms shipments to Israel, as the chairman of the Conference of Presidents of Major Jewish Organizations, 1967-1969.
• When loyalty to one congregation has come to be displaced by lateral and upward career strategies, Rabbi Schacter served one congregation, the Mosholu Jewish Center in the Bronx, for more than 50 years. His national leadership did not transcend his contact with the people.
Acquire one’s world in a moment? Even after helping to liberate Buchenwald, Rabbi Schacter took a “kindertransport,” a group of children, from Buchenwald to Switzerland. From the ashes of Europe to the prosperity of America, from the global perspective to the individual congregant, Rabbi Schacter was a tireless leader. He never rested on his laurels, never let one moment of service overshadow the potential in the next.
His recent passing, just before Passover, at the age of 95, deprived American Jewry of a genuine leader; but, at the same time, left behind a model of the best in the rabbinate, a paradigm of steadfastness and faith, an embodiment of the eternality of the Jewish people, and, yes, an icon of the resurrection and the revivification of Jewish life after the decimation.
Copyright © 2013 by the Intermountain Jewish News
