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Date Posted: 10:15:16 12/07/03 Sun
Author: schwabra
Author Host/IP: dialup-67.29.206.220.Dial1.Cincinnati1.Level3.net / 67.29.206.220
Subject: Primo Humility

Primo Humility


This year there have been two biographies published about the Italian chemist Primo Levi. He is known best as neither an Italian nor a chemist, but for his literary works - prose, fiction and poetry - in which he recounted his Holocaust experiences and survival, perhaps as powerfully as any writer ever has. "If This is a Man" and "The Periodic Table" stand as his two classics.

Levi didn't begin life with a strong Jewish identity. His ancestors had been appointed royalty by Napoleon. He was raised in a largely Catholic country, with little Jewish heritage to color his self-image. His first inkling that there was something very different about being Jewish probably came when Mussolini instituted the racist laws that forbade certain practices to Jews.

Eventually, his identity grew. He defended the Turin synagogue, and formed a guerrilla force in the mountains to fight the Fascists. He was captured and turned over to the Germans, who took him to Auschwitz. A student of chemistry, he was fortunate in being valuable to the Nazis as a slave laborer in a synthetic oil and rubber sub-camp. Scarlet fever was another peculiar piece of luck, because it kept him from the camp evacuation and march, which killed many.

After the war he suffered survivor's guilt, and began to write about his ordeals. But, for the next thirty years, he made his living by working in a paint and varnish factory. It wasn't until after his retirement that his writings gained worldwide acknowledgement. Whenever he is written about, his humility and resistance to fame are noted as remarkable.

This week in Vayetze we read about Jacob's journey toward Haran, and his dream in the desert outside Luz, in which he sees angels ascending and descending a ladder to heaven, and hears G-d speak to him. When he awakens, he declares his astonishment that the L-rd is in this seemingly barren place.

In the lives of both of these men a startling discovery occurs. Jacob's is benign, and comes to him in a dream, albeit in a stark locale. Levi's is traumatic, and comes to him through force and tragedy. Yet both arrive at the same place, humbled by their experiences and closer to G-d. What is it that reveals to both of them that, in the strangest places, G-d may be found?

It might be that they both began with humility, a fertile ground for discovery and awakening. Dig a little in the humble garden today. You may find out something astonishing yourself.

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