“I was also crying and screaming, but in order that these Jewish cries were not in vain, I attached them to a song for the Creator”
Right after the fast, my father continued on to Texas for his army physical. When he got there, the doctor looked at his legs and feet which were swollen and full of sores, though it was actually just a bad case of blisters from standing in shul for so many hours. While the doctor was trying to figure out what kind of disease it was, my father was actually having a hard time keeping a straight face. Finally, the doctor said he’d never seen such a thing before, sent my father home so that he could get his legs checked out, and dismissed him from active duty. My father smiled the entire trip back, knowing that his dedication to Yom Kippur saved him from going overseas.
And so, when Yom Kippur comes around and I have an urge to sit down and give my aching feet a break, I always think of my father’s endurance, along with the well-known story of the first Modzitzer Rebbe, Rav Yisrael Taub ztz”l, and his esoteric composition of the Ezkerah piyut we say at Neilah on Yom Kippur. It puts my own temporary discomfort in a whole new light.
The Rebbe, who was the first in a line of Modzitzer rebbes to leave the stamp of music on the chassidus, was diabetic, and the doctors felt that he should go to the healing baths in the Czechoslovakian resort town of Karlsbad to help the circulation in his feet. In 1910, while in Karlsbad, the Rebbe went for a stroll and, overwhelmed by the beauty of the resort, thought of Yerushalayim that lay in ruins. He immediately thought of the stanza from Selichos and Neilah comparing the ruins of the Holy City to the beauty of modern cities:
“Ezkerah Elokim v’ehemaya… I remember and I painfully groan, as I see every city, built to beautiful great heights, while the city of Hashem has reached the lowest levels of She’ol. But despite all this, we belong to Hashem and our eyes look to Hashem.”
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