Vayigash - Reunions

Over sixty years ago the world suffered one of the greatest tragedies imaginable - the Shoah (Holocaust).   During it, six million Jewish souls were murdered by the Nazis and millions more were affected by the loss of family members.

                In April 2006, I had the opportunity to serve as a Madrich (chaperone) on March of the Living as we traveled to Poland and walked through the cities of Warsaw and Crackow and through the camps of Treblinka, Majdanek and Auschwitz-Birkenau (this Sunday I begin the process again, with our first Study Session, as I will serve as a Bus Captain for the 2008 March).  On the March, I walk through these places with survivors, heroes to our people.  Thank God many survivors have the strength and courage to go on such a trip and teach their stories, but unfortunately these survivors won’t be around much longer to share their legacy with us.

                Organizations throughout the world have been trying over the past few years to try and document every story they can, to locate every survivor and record their biography.

                As more of these survivors are being documented, more families are finding that other members in their family have also survived.  Siblings have been reunited; cousins and now future generations have found each other after more than 60 years.  Many of these survivors had thought that the other had perished at the hands of the Nazis, but thanks to technology and research, reunions are happening regularly.

                Growing up in a tight-knit family, seeing my parents, my brother, aunts, uncles, cousins and grandparents often is a luxury that I have often taken for granted.  Since moving to Miami, I truly value my visits “home” to see friends and relatives.  I can’t imagine going years, decades without seeing a member of my family or God forbid presuming that they had died and later found out that they had been alive the entire time.

                Yaakov, in this week’s Parsha, is reunited with his son Yosef, who he thought had been killed by a wild animal.  His sadness during all of the years apart aged him terribly as he mourned for his son.  The same is true for the brothers who became aware of Joseph’s identity and were reunited with him.  Joseph was able to forgive his brothers for all that he had done to them.

                While lost time cannot be made up, reunions have a special power.  They have the ability to recreate bonds and reformulate relationships.  Yaakov could not complete his life until he had been reunited with Yosef.  A piece had been missing and now it had been found.

AS A FAMILY:     Make plans for a reunion with a family member you have not seen in a long time.
                                                                Track your family history during the time of the Shoah and search for relatives.

FOR FURTHER DISCUSSION:
                                                                1.            Why did Yosef cry when Yehuda spoke up?
                                                                2.            What did God say to Yaakov in his dream?
                                                                3.            Where in Egypt did the Jews live?  Why?