Emuna: Learning From Our Elders and Putting Their Lessons Into Daily Practice - Rabbi Tzvi Sytner

so i was officiating a funeral of a 90 year old holocaust survivor and after the funeral lands i'm walking through the cemetery with her husband her husband was probably like 94 95 years old and as we're walking he eventually stops me i look at him in his eyes and if you can just imagine his face kind of like old withered face glossy eyes old european accent and he says to me look around i look around the cemetery and i see all the grave sites and all the headstones and he says to me before the war my family was in the construction business we were builders when the war broke out hitler took us he brought us to a local cemetery and he had us destroy dismantle every single one of the headstones of this jewish cemetery and then transport them to the local concentration camp to build roads into the camps [Music] and i just stood there looking at him in his eyes trying to process what he just told me i thought to myself hitler hitler looked at every single one of us and he looked at our background he looked at what we did for a living he looked at our skills and he figured out what are your strengths what are your talents what do you do for a living are you a shoemaker are you a leather maker are you in the silver gold business are you a writer are you a singer what are you what are your strengths and now that i know what they are how can i use them to destroy you he used our strengths he figured out what we were good at every single one of us and then used it to destroy us i thought to myself you know how many of us walk around and we ponder what are my strengths what am i good at what are my skills what are my talents and sometimes it's hard for us to figure out but i thought to myself if hitler can look at every single one of us and he could figure out what are your strengths and how can i use them to destroy you then can we at least look at ourselves and find one strength one talent one skill and ask ourselves the question how can i use it to build to build myself to build my family to build the jewish people to build this world if he could figure out our skills to destroy can we figure out one talent one skill to build to make the jewish people in this world even better to fulfill what the almighty wants from us in this world i ask you that one question ask yourself what's one skill i have how can i use it to strengthen the jewish people to strengthen my family to strengthen myself but to do something for this world i want to thank you all for listening i know it's a heavy message