Elie Wiesel was rushing up a Jerusalem street when a stranger grabbed him by the arm. “Do you remember me?” whispered the man.
“You must be mistaken, I’m sorry.” said Wiesel.
The man held on: “Do you remember me?”
“Your mixing me up with someone else. I’m running late, please.”
The man looked him in the eye and said only one word “Saragossa”.
Instantly Wiesel was brought back years in his memory to the city of Saragossa, in Spain. Wiesel the Holocaust survivor was not yet the conscience of the world, long before his Nobel Prize for Peace. On that day in Saragossa, Wiesel was touring its famous Cathedral.
A man approached him and asked “Would you like a guide?”
“No charge” – the man enjoyed showing off his beloved town.
He proved to be a knowledgeable and eloquent guide. Afterward, Wiesel treated him to lunch, to say thank you. The man asked Wiesel: “Where are you from? Do you have a family? What is it you do with your life?” How could someone with a past – or a future - like Wiesel’s even begin to answer?
“Surely you must know many languages?” the man observed. “Yes, too many.”
“Which?”
“Yiddish, German, Hungarian, French, English, Hebrew.”
The man dropped his fork in surprise: “Hebrew? Hebreo? It’s a real language?”
“Yes, it is real.”
“It really exists?” “Yes it really exists,” said Wiesel.
The man blanched. “Can you read it, it must be difficult?”
“Yes, I can read it. Not so difficult really, if you learn it.”
“Can I ask you a favor?” said the man. “It could be very important to me. Please come with me, I have to show you something. Please!”
Intrigued by the man’s insistence, Wiesel goes with him. He’s led to a small apartment not far away. The man asks Wiesel to sit. He returns a few moments later. In his hands is a fragment of yellow parchment. Wiesel gently opens it. He’s overwhelmed with emotion, his eyes cloud…”Is it in Hebrew?” asks the man.
“Yes, it is Hebrew.”
“Read it.”
Wiesel cannot bring himself to speak. He knows what he is holding. The man insists: “Read it!” Wiesel offers to buy it: This is a valuable religious and historical artifact. A five hundred year-old Hebrew letter. The man grows angry.
“It is not for sale! Guarding this parchment is a family tradition, the man says, an amulet passed from parent to child. Its loss would bring a curse upon the family.” He wants to understand it…
So Wiesel reads the parchment: “I - Moshe ben Avraham - forced to break all ties with my People and my faith, leave these lines to the children of my children and to theirs, in order that on the day when Israel will be able to walk again its head high under the sun, without fear and without remorse, they will know where their roots lie. Written at Saragossa, in this year of punishment and exile.”
The man who gave tours of the Cathedral in Saragossa still did not understand, and Wiesel had to explain to him: You are the child of the children’s children’s children of Moshe ben Avraham in the letter, victim of the Inquisition 500 years before. The man asked more questions, still trying to understand. He demanded the whole story, from Spain and beyond - to someone like Wiesel, to Auschwitz, and modern Israel; and from Spain and before - and before that back to Masada, the Temple, Judea, the Kings and prophets, Sinai, Egypt, the ancestors…
So there on a Jerusalem street, years later, Wiesel says: “Yes, I remember you.” The man spoke the halting and accented Hebrew of a new immigrant to Israel. I never told you my name said the man: “My name is Moshe ben Avraham.”
