Faith in God. This concept is perceived broadly, ranging to some, as an opiate of the masses, and for others, the bedrock and most fundamental truth of their life and existence. Some laugh at religious fervor; others live and breathe it. 

Within the community of believers, however, there would be unanimous agreement that faith is far from easy and simple. It is complex, challenging and at times, almost impossible.

Years ago I spoke about the three parshiyos in the Torah sharing the root sh.l.ch – to send: Vayishlach, B’shalach and Shlach.** This triumvirate all share a common theme: faith or lack thereof. In Vayishlach, Yaakov put his faith in Hashem for salvation from his vengeful brother. In our Parshah, the Jews demonstrated newfound faith in God while standing on the banks of the Red Sea and experienced the manna, the food of faith, a title shared with matzah. In Shlach, the skeptical Jews opted to believe in the exaggerated report of the scouts, not the word of God and His prophet.

Rav Yerucham Levovitz zt’l, the legendary mashgiach of the famed Mirrer yeshiva, counseled that divrei Torah for parshas B’shalach should focus on the difficult and often elusive virtue of emunah, of faith in the Almighty. The question then becomes how do we achieve this? Belief is not an action we perform; it’s a feeling we need to perceive in our kishkes, our insides. How do we get there and how do we sustain it and know that it is true, as Maimonides stipulates?

I wish I had a pill, or could enforce faith or inject belief. But I can’t. It’s a lifelong struggle, like anything eminently worthwhile. So how do we achieve it, and succeed to feel it and impart it?

I remember hearing from Dr. David Pelcovitz, the renowned psychologist and educator, that a study was conducted to learn what aspects of a day school education stick with the students years after matriculation. Not surprisingly, the moments of inspiration, the times when the ruach (spirit) of Torah was imparted, were more memorable than any text or classroom cognitive lesson. Rabbi Yissachar Frand recently opined in a column that the stories of the beautiful actions and attributes of great Torah sages make much more of a memorable impression than any class or chiddush (novel idea) on a text. I can attest to this about some of my mentors, teachers and great individuals I have had the privilege to know and from whom I have learned. For me, NCSY provided the inspiration I didn’t find in books and in school. A powerful kumsitz, ‘As Shabbos Ebbs Away,’ and NCSY’s classic Havdallah have brought so many souls closer to God, Judaism and the Jewish people, yeshiva kids and public schools equally.

In that spirit, permit me to share two stories that I read this week, that simply moved me, inspired me and help me connect further with my Creator.

The first pertains to the tragic and untimely passing of Rabbi Dovid Winiarz z’l, known as the Facebuker Rebbe, who succumbed to injuries from a traffic accident on his way to a kiruv conference. I’d like to share this story, which was posted on the memorial page established for him on Facebook.

Rabbi Paysach Krohn’s visit  to the Winiarz home was something none of us there would ever forget. As Rabbi Krohn sat down, Mrs. Winiarz mentioned that they had a Halachic question to ask him and told him this incredible story.

As happens often in outreach, a person might connect on a personal level, but as far as accepting Torah and Mitzvos… sometimes it just doesn’t happen. But Dovid never let that stop him or get him down. As he always said, “I just plant seeds. It’s up to Hashem to see that they grow.”

One such family let Reb Dovid know, about a year ago, that they were having a boy. As much as Dovid and his wife tried to prevail upon them to give their son a kosher Bris, all attempts failed. They tried everything they could think of, but the family simply were not convinced, and decided that a medical circumcision was the safer way to go.

“Although there is a way to remedy that, to give him a Jewish name, and make the Bris kosher after the fact, we did not even begin to know how to suggest it”, Mrs. Winiarz said. The ceremony includes a symbolic drawing of blood at the site of the Mila, which is not unlike the pinprick diabetics give themselves on a daily basis to test their sugar level. While not as painful as it sounds, it ranks VERY high on the “NO WAY!” scale!

“That’s right, Rabbi Krohn concurred. “This ceremony is a VERY hard sell”

Mrs. Winiarz started to choke up. “They came last night. All three of them. The mother. The father. The baby. They told me they want to do it. All of it. The blood and everything. They know about that. They want to do it in honor of Dovid.”Then, emotionally, she added “And… and they want to name him after Dovid!”

After a moment of silence, Rabbi Krohn said quietly “That’s incredible”

Recovering, Mrs. Winiarz said “She asked me what Dovid’s full Hebrew name was. I said ‘Dovid Avraham’At this point, one of Dovid’s sons in law, who is a Mohel, interjected. "So we have a whole bunch of questions regarding the ceremony."

Rabbi Krohn thought for a moment and said, “Yes, it could get complicated. Both emotionally and Halachically. You know what? I will help you! Let me know when they want to do it, and I will make the trip back. I will be right here, and I will do it with you, I won’t charge them a cent!”Mrs. Winiarz told her son “Call them now. See if they can come over now!”

Rabbi Krohn was flabbergasted. “Right now??!!”

“Sure”, she countered, “You are here, we are all here, why not do it right now?”

Rabbi Krohn, who felt the family might need time to prepare, said “What, you don’t have enough people in the house, you need even more?”

“The house is packed anyway”, she answered, “What’s three more people?”

“But it should have a Seudah”, Rabbi Krohn insisted, “And you are in Shiva, you would not be able to participate”

“Who says I need to participate?” She answered. “When they do it, I will just go upstairs!”

The very idea of delaying the Mitzvah, just so she could participate, was not something she would easily consider. However, Rabbi Krohn implied that since it would mean so much to the family that she be there, it was essential for Mrs. Winiarz to participate fully in the ceremony and Seuda.

“Look”, he said. “Today is Wednesday, the father is no doubt at work, and it will not be easy for him to come while I am still here. I am sure it will mean so much to them that you participate. Call them, tell them to come on Sunday, and I will be here to help it happen”

Sure enough, this afternoon, surrounded by the greater Winiarz family, one more of the seeds Dovid Winiarz ZT"L planted sprouted forth, as pure little Dovid Avraham entered the Covenant of Avraham Avinu.

Just when our yetzer hara (evil inclination) tries to inject doubt, our faith finds reason to sustain itself. From the depths of depression comes salvation. This is the story of the Jewish people, the shame that must precede the praise and salvation. Faith can come when we see the loving Hand of the Creator in our lives.

Our second story takes us to Poland. This week’s seventieth anniversary of the Russian liberation of Auschwitz has focused international attention on the Holocaust. A group of survivors, a dwindling group by virtue of time, attended the ceremony at Auschwitz.  One of these women was Angela Polgar. Reminiscent of the story of the babies in Egypt and Moshe’s survival, here is her incredible story (excerpts) called “Born in Auschwitz” by Jeff Heinrich, published on Aish.com.

Honor thy mother. That's the motto Angela Polgar has tried to live by all her life – a life that began in a death camp. The place was Auschwitz-Birkenau, in southern Poland. Her parents, Hungarian Jews, arrived there on a Nazi transport on May 25, 1944.Polgar's mother, Vera Bein, nee Otvos, was 25 years old at the time and almost two months pregnant.

On the infamous railway platform where "selections" were made, Bein, as Polgar respectfully calls her, was not sent to the gas chambers. Instead, she was assigned to a variety of grueling work details before becoming a guinea pig for sterilization experiments by a camp doctor.

By the horrific standards of the Holocaust, it's an ordinary story, perhaps – except for one thing. The patient survived, and so did her child.

On Dec. 21 Bein felt labor pains. She climbed to the top bunk in her barrack, and there, aided by two other inmates, gave birth in secret to a baby girl. The infant was tiny, weighing only one kilogram (about 2.5 lbs.); she was too weak to cry but strong enough to drink the meagre offering from her mother's breast, and somehow survived the next few weeks in hiding.

Soviet Red Army troops liberated the camp on Jan. 27, 1945. Baby and mother were among the survivors, and they were an unusual sight – indeed, almost unique.

The only other infant survivor, according to Auschwitz museum records, was a Hungarian boy, Gyorgy Faludi, born the day of liberation with the help of a Russian doctor.

Angela Polgar has decided now is the right time to tell her family's remarkable story.

"At selection on the platform, most visibly pregnant women were sent to die; so were babies, children, the obviously sick and the elderly. Others were spared for use as slave labor or fodder for medical experimentation.

 Some of the inmates in Camp C, Auschwitz's barrack for Hungarian Jewish women and girls, were able to bring their pregnancies to term, but their babies were almost invariably taken from them right after and killed – "mercifully" strangled to death by Jewish inmate doctors forced to work for the Nazis. Most pregnancies never got that far; the usual clandestine practice was to abort fetuses before they could be born – a life-saving measure for the mother, who was an easy target for liquidation if her pregnancy became too obvious.

One of the Jewish physicians who routinely performed this "service" at Auschwitz, a Hungarian gynecologist named Gisella Perl, described that and worse in her 1948 memoir I Was a Doctor in Auschwitz. Walking by one of the crematoriums one day, she witnessed what happened to one group of women who, promised better treatment, had revealed to their Nazi overlords that they were pregnant. "They were surrounded by a group of SS men and women, who amused themselves by giving these helpless creatures a taste of hell, after which death was a welcome friend," Perl recalled in her book. "They were beaten with clubs and whips, torn by dogs, dragged around by their hair and kicked in the stomach with heavy German boots. Then, when they collapsed, they were thrown into the crematory – alive." Vera Bein escaped that fate. For the longest while, she kept her pregnancy secret, and was lucky her delivery came within weeks of liberation by the Soviets, unannounced, and not "helped" by any camp doctor.

Then, in January of 2005, after a barrage of coverage in the media about the 60th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz, Polgar decided the time had come to let the whole story be told. Polgar also unearthed a precious resource: an old audio tape of her mother recounting her time at Auschwitz. It was an "interview" Vera gave her granddaughter, Katy, in 1984 for a high-school project. The tape – her final word on the subject – will soon be registered as part of the Auschwitz-Birkenau Museum's archives in Poland. Details of that tape can be read online athttp://www.aish.com/ho/p/48952026.html.

I have no panacea for faith. We struggle, but we must seek it out. At times it’s hard to find, and hard to see. Other times, we see it unmistakably. Those moments of clarity need to be remembered. Our mandate to remember is an attempt to sustain our faith.  By constantly remembering, we seek to make our default setting faith, with the occasional doubt as the exception, not the rule. By looking around and reminding ourselves why we are here, by uncovering the hiding Persona of the Almighty, we will succeed in becoming a people of faith and belief thatHashem hu Ha’Elokim, that God is indeed Lord.

 **There are other roots that have multiple names of parshiyos such as ‘to go’ (Lech Lecha, Vayelech), ‘life’ (chayeh sara, vayechi), ‘to count’ (ki sisa, Naso, massei), ‘commandment’(tzav, t’tzaveh), ‘statutes’ (chukas, b’chukosai), ‘judges’ (shoftim, mishpatim), ‘to depart’ (vayetzi, Ki Seitzei), ‘to come’ (Bo, Ki Savo). This is a fascinating side point.