Bearing witness
Judah has survived and figures there’s a reason
Purim begins Wednesday evening. Judah Samet, a survivor of the Tree of Life massacre, referred to this joyful Jewish holiday in our first conversation after his delightful appearance at President Donald Trump’s recent State of the Union address.
It seemed a bit random at the time but reminded me of some beloved books from childhood — the “All-of-aKind Family” series, about Jewish immigrants living in New York City tenements a century ago. Their exotic foods and unknown holidays inspired many questions back then: “Mommy, what’s Purim? What’s Sukkot? What’s rye bread?”
Purim celebrates how beautiful Queen Esther and her uncle Mordecai saved Jewish exiles in ancient Persia from an evil man’s plot to destroy them. It was a story I knew from my safe, suburban Baptist Sunday School class.
To Mr. Samet, who has lived through the Holocaust and the worst anti-Semitic violence in American history, the holiday has renewed significance. Why he wasn’t killed at Tree of Life is what keeps Esther’s story on his mind.
Mr. Samet, 81, left home a bit late on Oct. 27, 2018, because his housekeeper came early, needing to speak to him. No sooner had he pulled into a synagogue parking spot than a man approached and asked him to roll down his window.
“He was a good-looking guy, full head of dark hair. He was wearing a black windbreaker, black pants, a white shirt. He said, ‘You’d better go — There’s a shooting inside your synagogue.’ His voice was very gentle, not shouting or tense” — and not swearing, like officers at the active crime scene soon were, he mused. “And I didn’t see any gun.”
It took Mr. Samet a full minute or more “to grasp what [the stranger] was saying.” During that lull, they both stayed put. Then — and only then — he heard sirens as first responders arrived.
These vehicles blocked his car in and officers emerged. He remembers “a detective in a light blue windbreaker and blue pants” taking position a few feet from his car.
As the gentle stranger then walked away from Mr. Samet’s window, “he almost became [the detective] … It was as if he morphed into him.”
Hours later, Mr. Samet asked both FBI and city police about the man in the black windbreaker who kept him in his car. They said they knew no one who fit that description. They declined this week to comment on Mr. Samet’s experience, as the case moves to trial.
“I don’t get traumatized,” he said with his usual cheerful directness. “I’ve seen people killed by the thousands.
“Was it an angel? I don’t know ... It has crossed my mind.”
Mr. Samet, who considers himself “semi-Orthodox,” studied the Talmud from age 8 until he entered the Israeli army at 18, and does again today. Esther’s story, celebrated at Purim, is highly unusual because it never mentions God.
But just because God isn’t named, Mr. Samet noted, doesn’t mean God isn’t there, at work behind the scenes in Esther’s story.
Or in any story.
“I believe there is the hand of God in history.” That is a remarkable statement, considering what Mr. Samet has been through.
If God or God’s agent — an angel — was at Tree of Life synagogue that morning, why didn’t this divine being intercede?
And the Holocaust? The Holocaust. To answer my questions, Mr. Samet turns to a different story, the ancient Book of Job, in which a devout human, stripped of every blessing, finally questions God’s wisdom and benevolence. God’s purported answer is worth reading.
To make sense of his life, Mr. Samet turns back to Esther, paraphrasing her uncle Mordecai: “Who knows but that you have come to your position for such a time as this?”
Mr. Samet survives, he told me, to show new generations the incredible evil of which humans are capable. To bear witness.
He celebrates Purim, I observe Lent, and we both ponder an inscrutable God whose way of salvation is beyond our comprehension.