Kalonymus Kalman Szapiro (1889-1943) was born in Grodzisk, Poland, into a family of great rabbis. He was orphaned at the age of 3, and it was his mother, Hannah Berkhaha, who instilled in him a love for his Hasidic roots. He married at 15 and had two children. In 1909, after the death of his father-in-law, he became the chief rabbi of Piaseczno. In 1923, he founded the Daas Moshe Yeshiva, one of the largest Hasidic yeshivos before World War II. As head of the yeshiva, Kalonymus was concerned about young people dropping out of traditional education, assimilating into Polish culture, or joining secular Jewish movements such as Zionism and socialism. During those years, Hasidic schools had lost their creative spirit and had assimilated the rigid study format of Lithuanian yeshivot.

Rabbi Polen comments: Kalonymus, in his book Chovas haTalmidim (The Responsibility of Students), said that a child should be imbued «with a vision of his potential greatness» and be «an active participant in his own development,» and that teachers «must learn to speak the student’s language and express vividly the delights of a life close to God.»

In September 1939, after the invasion of Poland, Rabbi Szapiro was interned in the Warsaw ghetto, where he ran a secret synagogue. After the ghetto uprising in 1943, Rabbi Szapiro was taken to the Trawniki camp near Lublin, where on November 3 of that year, the remaining Jews there, including Rabbi Szapiro, were murdered.

The sermons Szapiro wrote during his time in the Warsaw ghetto survived thanks to Emmanuel Ringelblum and his group, who began gathering as much documentation as they could. They hid it in metal milk cans and buried them so that the world would know firsthand what had happened there. The collection of sermons was found and published under the title Esh Kodesh, Holy Fire.

Shaul Magid, in Esh Kodesh, distinguishes three groups of Kalonymus sermons: the first, where Szapiro is the rabbi who offers words of encouragement to his congregants, telling them that what was happening there was categorically no different from other times of suffering for the Jewish people. In the second group, Kalonymus has the difficult task of teaching his people to die with dignity and that despite the incomprehensibility of the situation, they were part of that divine drama. The final group shows us a radical theologian, especially when reading a note inserted in a sermon, where he writes that what he and his community were experiencing was unparalleled and unprecedented.

A student of Szapiro who survived the massacre said that Kalonymus had taught them that the best thing in this world was to do someone a favor. Thus, every time he thought about committing suicide or giving up fighting for survival, he remembered that he needed to do someone a favor and moved on. Kalonymus didn’t understand what had happened to God, but he knew that one thing that could save a person was to stop trying to explain divine behavior and do someone a favor.

By: Marcos Gojman.

Bibliography: The Holy Fire by Nehemiah Polen, article by Shaul Magid, and other sources.