A Poignant Moment

This morning I attended a bris where the Sandik (a great honor given to a person who holds the baby while the bris is being performed) was the baby's alter Zaide (great grandfather). This fact alone made the bris special but what was even more meaningful was that the Sandik was a survivor of Auschwitz and other concentration camps.

I remember that when the couple got married a few years ago, there was barely a dry eye in the hall when the grandfather and his wife (also a survivor) walked down the aisle. The Sandik is a man of very few words but great dignity and grace. On the day of the wedding, he told his son that if anyone had told him, while he was at Auschwitz, that he would be standing, 60 years later, under the chupah (wedding canopy) of a granddaughter, he would have thought the person completely meshugah (crazy). I am sure the same would have held if someone had told him he would be the Sandik at the bris of his great grandson.