The Prayer of the Cantonist - Rabbi Yirmiyahu Abramov

[Music] some years ago two very great rabbis went on a mission for the Jewish people to the capital st. Petersburg it was Rev it Scylla from the city of illusion well-known leader great scholar and sage and the Timothy dactylic was so a great leader and a great scholar and these two rabbis went on this mission and the mission that they had took much longer than they expected and they found to their consternation that they would not get back home in time for me for her Jim there would not be home Rosh Hashanah they had to remain away from their homes and came Yom Kippur they found themselves again they still stack there and they really were in desperate need of a significant community where they could pray the day of Yom Kippur they were accustomed back where they came back home where they came from to these wonderful glorious communities that they headed where they would have this very inspiring prayers and here they stack in the middle of there's no real great they weren't great Jewish communities at the time because in the dark and dark days of of course repressed communism and they had to find a place to to pray and then one of them heard that there was a secret manana secret service to be held of the Cantonese Cantonese were Jews who were taken forcefully by the Zara's army they used to come into a city into a town and they would capture all the young children and they would take little children five six seven eight and they would put them through a whole procedure and then have them recruited into the army there would be virtually kidnapped from their from their families and they were then would spend another 25 years in the army so by the time these kids were finished they basically were detached from the immunity's they were really some of them really getting in tors middle-aged broken people and they were forced into this situation of the army that's what the Canton Asst but many of them retained their Jewish identity miraculously and they heard that there's going to be a clandestine meeting of the of Canton Asst for Yom Kippur so these two great rabbis found out the whereabouts and they came to this to this synagogue and they followed along and the prayers were held in secrecy and then came to the climax of Yom Kippur is nila the final prayer on the end towards the end of the day then the illa service which is the climax of the whole of Yom Kippur and the question was who would be the bountifully who would lead the community in this final prayer and many looked to one of these great rabbis that they would be able to inspire the people in this last prayer and at that moment a man stepped forward and he was you could see the man had been through one of the Canton lists one of these soldiers he had scars all over his face his arms were scarred he was clearly a man who suffered greatly and he said I want to lead the prayer and of course the rabbi stepped back and they saw this man who had been had spent years of torture and before he went up he explained to them I resisted throughout my army career I resisted them I would not eat not kosher food I would fight to try and observe Shabbat it cost me a lot of beatings and a lot of imprisonment and a lot of suffering and torture but I resisted them the rabbis thought well this certainly is the man to lead the prayers at such a crucial moment of the day of Yom Kippur a man who's had so much self-sacrifice for the sake of God so this man came forward he was going to lead the service but before starting the service he turned to community and he spoke and he said you know what we pray for on Yom Kippur is as the season the tongue will replay for hire for life that's a good life we pray for Bonnie we pray for children and our children and family and missingness and we pray for Perrineau so we play for sustenance that we can have the wherewithal to live and survive these are the three main categories that we're beseeching God for and they at the end of Yom Kippur it's the end of the when the the fate of a person for the entire life is sealed we play for hi Bunney and Mazzoni for these three categories and he said hi what's my wife worth what's my life worth I spent all these years the better years of my love my days I spent under those terrible conditions being beaten black and blue virtually daily what is my life with no I just pray along that I'll survive maybe I can keep another Mitzvah bunny there's no chance I'm not gonna get married again I'm not gonna get married at all life has been too cruel to me there's no way by the time I get out of here I'm not gonna be a foot husband for anybody or father for anybody so bunny I'm not praying for for children Mazzoni well the Russian army is providing me with my rations everyday and my food so I don't have much to pray for either in that field he says that I have one thing that I want to say I want to pray for the sanctification of God's name I want to pray that his glorious name will be praised by all and he proceeded to say the great prayer Kaddish yet kadal the Kaddish a Mirabeau may God's name be sanctified and that's how he began the prayer man had been through so much and all the concerned him was that God name should be sanctified [Music] you [Applause]