Posted by:
Tevai
(
)
Date: July 03, 2020 06:05AM
After some searching, I found the thread you are referring to. (Reddit and I don't synch easily with each other and never have. My brain just doesn't work reddit's way.)
You did a really excellent job all the way through. Kudos from me!
Obviously, I did not remember (or perhaps did not know) your story. Now that I do know: you did wonderfully well.
One thing I would have likely added: gilgul. [The Jewish concept of reincarnation, going back at least as far as Tzfat times (especially around the 1500s).]
I disagree with parts of the Jewish concept of reincarnation (particularly the idea that it only happens a very small number of times; this is not my experience nor is it the experience of other people I have personally known)....but other, new to me, Jewish ideas about reincarnation have opened my mind to things I never conceived of before I began seriously studying.
My personal opinion is that there are, likely, now enough rabbis, and learned people of various kinds, who have talked to enough people--Jews and non-Jews alike--about their previous lifetime Holocaust memories (often describing in detail things that would be highly unlikely for anyone to know unless they had been there) to change Jewish attitudes and understandings overall on what actually happened to a given person who was once somehow caught up in the Holocaust (as a Jew), after that person died (whether they died during the Holocaust itself or died later on, after WWII ended).
I do know that an on-the-down-low, very highly informal (and mostly unknown), kind of totally unofficial "network" of rabbis exists--rabbis who, on a practical level, are able to function as informal "counselors" (I don't know of another, better, word), and who can, if needed, basically screen the content of Holocaust memories, and explain what this-or-that possibly means.
I have talked to one of these rabbis myself, and a woman who served with me in a Jewish volunteer group was directed to another of these rabbis. The rabbi she went to was able to verify certain specific facts (some of which were unlikely to be known by anyone who "was not there," in those specific circumstances, at that time), and was able, given what she related to him, to knowledgeably estimate how old she had been at the time of her death: about kindergarten age to us, which is the age when Jewish children begin learning the block letters of the Hebrew alphabet.
Very good job, touchstone!
I could not have come close to doing what you did, and you did very, very well.
Edited 3 time(s). Last edit at 07/03/2020 09:05AM by Tevai.