My Name is Moshe Duvid...

When the Jewish community mourns the breach of the walls of the Old City of Jerusalem on the 17^th of Tammuz as Israel’s enemies ventured to destroy the Holy Temple; and as we begin counting the three weeks up to Tisha b'Av which reminds us of the actual destruction of Solomon’s Great Temple and our exile from Israel. My brothers and I remember our eldest brother Martin David.

Marty as we called him, was a character in his own right. He was the first of six sons born to my mother and father, Harry and Esther. Marty provided my parent with a learning experience and he was a challenge from day one. He was bright and inquisitive and gave my parents a run for their money. The more they tried to coral his raw energy the more he ran from here to there and back. In Yiddish they would say; “he had ‘shpilkas’ and he did. In the hopes of disciplining his overwhelming energy, my father, convinced Marty to join the Army and learn a trade. When Marty was 18 years old he enlisted in the Army. Early on it became evident that if an honorable medical discharge was not arranged, he would spend his military career in the stockade. With the assistance of a Congressman the discharge was arranged and Marty returned home.

Somehow Marty ended up learning to drive a ‘Big Rig’ and his career as a trucker was born. He loved to drive and it was a place were he succeeded until the sleeping and eating on the road got the best of his health. By the time he was 40 years old, Marty, although six foot tall was so obese that he had difficulty moving around and keeping himself awake behind the wheel. He could no longer sleep the weight on his chest narrowed his wind pipe he could not breath when on his back. It wouldn’t be long before he fell asleep at the wheel and ran his truck into an abutment.

Marty lost his license for the big rig and was forced to take up driving a cab. He liked driving a cab just as much and told his customers the stories of driving cross country. When the lottery became legal he would box his cab number in the lottery tickets in the hopes of winning the big one. He liked to gamble and he loved the pony’s so food and gambling became his obsessions.

Marty drove all over Long Island and New York. Frequently, when I would return home from school on an out Shabbat from the train to my parents I would travel by cab. All the other drivers knew and liked Marty. He was a conundrum in his own right.

As time went by, the wanderer in Marty took him from city to city visiting his mother and father who by now retired and were living in New Mexico. Followed by visits to each of his brothers and his Cousin Robert, all living in different places. We never knew when Marty would show up at the door with his suitcase in hand, needing a bath, clothes that needed washing, a small and reasonable wish list and sometimes, medical care. In my home the wish list had to do with foods he associated with his childhood, giffilte fish and borscht with sour cream. It was hard to watch his deterioration but easy to fill his needs. Although, admittedly, I was not as tolerant with him as Barbie, he would come and stay for several days then move on to his next port of call in the storm of life. It took a few dollars for his pocket, a suitcase with clean clothes and off he went.

My mother tells this story about Marty. Esther reported that when Marty was a little child she went shopping for groceries. His curiosity got the best of him and he wandered off. When my mother realized he was gone she became panicked and began looking all threw the large store to find him. My mother reported that she was absolutely frantic. Then without warning, a policeman approached her and asked; “did you misplace a little boy”? “Did you find him;” she asked. “Yes, I think so.” The policeman asked; “blue-eyed, blond hair?” “Yes...Yes, were is he?” “He is upfront at the service counter we’re holding him there for you”; the policeman reported. “Are you Mrs. Duvid?” the policeman asked. My mother was set a back by the question and didn't know how to respond.

My mother asked the policeman to repeat the question. Again he asked; “Are you Mrs.Duvid?” Quizzically my mother responded Mrs. Duvid? He is Martin and I am Esther Mehler, his mother. Where did you get the idea that my name is Mrs.Duvid? The policeman said; “I asked him his name and he told me it was “Moshe Duvid”.

My mother then realized that my brother had given this Irish policeman his Hebrew name and so the policeman thought his first name was Moshe and his last name was Duvid.

That was Marty's life. We worried toward the end of his life that he would be found unconscious and no one would know his name. When he passed Marty was 540 lbs. He was found alive but near death on the streets of Mesa Arizona and taken to a hospital. He had collapsed from his diabetes and other medical conditions. When the nurse called to inform us of Marty's impending death, she said my tour is almost over but I will stay with him and not leave his side until he passes.

As a young boy a policeman identified Marty and became his guardian and protective angel and as he was about to leave this world a nurse identifies Marty as needing a guardian angel to help him find his way and she helps escort him through the transition between this World and the ‘World to Come’.

There is much more to tell of Marty’s story but I will stop here since I plan to post every year on his Yartshite a story about his life. However, what resonates for me in this story, is my mother’s experience in the grocery would foretell the story of my brother Marty's life. My mother and father didn't know it then but Marty would be a wanderer and we were concerned that when his time came to leave this world, would those around him know his name. The answer came when the nurse reported that he carried my business card in his wallet. That is the only reason they knew his name and identity. To this day, I believe and I advocate, my mother watched over Moshe Duvid carefully after she lost him in the grocery.

One of Marty’s final requests was that he buried next to my mother and in accordance with his wish he lies near my mother in Sheboygan Wisconsin at the Mehler Family Grave site.

He is missed his soul is loved and the stories of his life will be told for a long time to come.

Rabbi & Community: A Memorial to Eli Wiesel....

Rabbi & Community: A Memorial to Eli Wiesel....: The news of Eli Wiesel’s death was painful beyond words. A hero to many of my generation and a spokesman for all Holocaust survivors. He ...

A Memorial to Eli Wiesel....

The news of Eli Wiesel’s death was painful beyond words. A hero to many of my generation and a spokesman for all Holocaust survivors. He was the voice of the silent. The one million children, the six million Jews along with and the seven million Gentiles all considered by the Nazis to be “untermention” or subhuman. The people labeled as subhuman were taken to death camps to be worked to death by starvation, or gassed to death with Ziklon B and then cremated. Their ashes mashed together with so many others as to be indistinguishable as individuals. Even “untermention” are deserving of a name and an ability to be recognized by their families. Hitler had a plan to eradicate the History of the Jews and those who were classified in the same subhuman category. The mentally disabled, the gypsies, anyone who opposed Hitler’s plan all were treated to the label of “untermention” and their destiny was also to be identical to that of the Jews. Eli Wiesel dedicated his life to resurrecting the lives of those people unable to speak for themselves.

The perpetrator of this unspeakable and manycle plan were to have a destiny more gracious then his victims. Hitler has his place in History while his victims are lost to history by their destiny. Eli Wiesel was their voice in a world that would have otherwise not known what that destiny was like. The loss of Eli Wiesel is the lost of a quiet but powerful voice that gave the millions of victims of the Shoah a voice of life, in a world that would have otherwise forgotten them. Eli Wiesel gave other survivors the strength and courage to tell their stories and many of them were emboldened enough to record their stories so that the slogan “never again” would be a testimonial to the thirteen million lives lost in the crematoria of Hitler’s Germany. Eli Wiesel was the pebble high on the hill that began to roll down and instigated an avalanche which would caused Jews and non-Jews all over the world to remember and call out for all to hear “Zachor” and the Shoah took on new meaning. Eli Wiesel’s impact was profound and while thirteen million were lost in the crematoria of Europe millions were awaken to the truth of Nazi Germany. 

 

More attention was given to the coming Olympics than this giant of a humanitarian. It speaks more about us and our values. I picked up the New York Times the Sunday after Eli Wiesel’s death expecting full well a large article about Eli Wiesel’s life and his gift to humanity but instead silence. As a student of theology, many of my teachers in the private schools in the Jewish community were Holocaust survivors since they were hardly able to do anything else they became teachers in parochial religious schools throughout the Northeast. Later in life, I considered it a blessing. I understood the opportunity that I had been given to be by their side. However, while their bodies survived many of them were so wounded spiritually, so alone, so haunted, that their survival was hardly a gift but rather a torment. I’m sure they asked themselves every day “why me”! Why did I survive? 

 

Many of them have lost entire family's brother’s, sister's, mother’s and father’s, some even lost spouses and children grabbed from the safety of their homes trained across Eastern Europe in cattle cars, like animals, ultimately lead to reach their destination, a death camp where they would be starved and work to death. and worked to death They watching loved ones die and friends turned into skin and bone.

After I graduated from yeshiva high school I was visiting with a friend and we began to talk about a common teacher of ours, Rabbi R for the purposes of this writing, I said Rabbi R’ was a very special man and I remember him with fondness. My friend responded, “did you know that Rabbi R lost his entire family wife and six children in the Holocaust”. I did not know. My friend went on, “after coming to America he remarried started a new family and began again”. I shook my head in disbelief. “How does someone begin again after watching their family murdered and surviving the death camp that took their family”? Then I uttered the words;" how do you start over after watching that”? My friend responded " that is why he so admired by all of his colleagues! It is because of his faith, deep and abiding faith! Eli Wiesel often questioned his faith having seen the horror of mans inhumanity to man but he always returned to instruct his students that it was fine to question faith but not to abandon faith.

Once we abandon faith in God, we also abandon faith in man. I, for one, don’t want to be that kind of cynic.