Life is beautiful!

 

Rabbi Joachim Prinz wrote in his memoir about his role as rabbi in the Berlin Jewish community under Nazism until 1937: “Outside the synagogue, in newspapers, on the radio, in the streets, on propaganda placards, in the cartoons, the Jews were depicted as non-persons-ugly, immoral, uncreative, cowardly, useless, inferior. I had to tell my people from the pulpit in every single sermon that to be a Jew is to be beautiful. To be a Jew is to be great and noble. It is difficult to imagine now how important it was to the Jews sitting in the synagogue to listen to someone expressing himself freely and speaking out openly against the Nazi regime, in spite of the fact that two Gestapo men were sitting in the first row.” It was not a beautiful life, when a rabbi had to give a speech in a presence of two Gestapo men. He continues: "It was most important to demonstrate that I was not afraid of anything." We only live once. Is it enough? If we live it right, once are enough.

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