A Prince Among Men

Discovering the secret source of my grandfather’s greatness.

by Reuven Savit for aish.com

As a child, I didn’t particularly enjoy visiting my grandparents. I wanted to play Nintendo or soccer with my friends. I didn't always have a piece of velvet on my head. I was an average kid from Long Island. My grandparents had funny accents and their house smelled like a strange mix of moth balls and chicken soup, and I had other things to do.

My mother would cajole me. “It’s the right thing to do,” would be the first attempt. When that didn’t work, “We’ll go to Toys R Us afterwards” would be the second. And when all else failed she would say, “You know, you are lucky to have grandparents and they won’t live forever. You won't always have grandparents to visit.” And invariably we would make our way to their home.

I didn’t think then that the day would come, but now I don’t have any grandparents to visit.

As I grew older, it became clearer to me that my grandparents had experienced the most unimaginable, inconceivable torture. I don’t know how anyone can come back from that and live a somewhat normal life. Yet they did.

I remember thinking, when I would see my grandfather put on his tefillin, or pray to God, “What are you doing?” “How can you possibly believe in God after what you went through?” “And even if you did believe in God, why would you talk to Him three times a day, fast a few times a year, and do everything else that you are doing for a God who took away your whole family and did this to you?”

Those questions remained with me, albeit in the background, through high school and college.

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