This week marked the ninth yahrzeit of Yossi Kaltmann, my father and personal hero. Born in 1928 in Bratislava, Czechoslovakia, he witnessed the horrors of the Holocaust and ultimately survived seven concentration camps before living as a proud Jew in Israel and Australia.
As I commemorated his yahrzeit, I was sent an image that at first incensed me but later gave me hope and renewed strength. Appearing alongside a news story about a desecrated Jewish cemetery in Humenné, Slovakia, the photo depicted a weathered tombstone marked with a spray-painted black swastika.
Before the war, Jews comprised one-third of Humenné’s 7,000 residents; however, today there is virtually no Jewish life left in the city. The cemetery stands as the last testament to the once-thriving Jewish community that existed in Slovakia for many centuries.
The defacing of Jewish cemeteries is a phenomenon that shamefully still persists among the lowlifes and antisemites of the world who wish to degrade and demoralize us, as well as deny our ancestors the dignity of resting in peace.
Last year, I traveled to Slovakia to pray by the graves of my ancestors, so this particular story hit closer to home than any previous one that I had read.
However, as I looked closer at the photo of this swastika-tagged Jewish headstone, something unexpected transpired.
The tombstone, with its inscription nearly completely worn away by centuries of erosion and weathering, still had two Hebrew words visible - piercing like a rainbow through a foggy and bleak storm.
The words “Menachem Chaim” – which literally means “comfort” and “life” – radiated through the grotesque graffiti, almost as if they were responding directly to the hateful symbol covering them.
We don’t know who Menachem Chaim was, or when he lived or died. But it seems as though God had used his tombstone as a canvas, intentionally placing a message of comfort and hope there for us to interpret it only centuries later.
This corresponds to the natural world, where the antidote to a deadly plant is found within its very environs. Similarly, the vandals, in their blind hatred, inadvertently highlighted the very words that offer the perfect remedy to their venom. This echoes Talmud’s statement that God creates the remedy before the disease (Megillah 13b).
Significance of the name in context of Jewish burial sites
THE NAME Menachem Chaim possesses even more significance, especially in the context of Jewish burial sites. Jewish tradition gives us three names for a cemetery, each revealing a different dimension of our relationship with death and memory.
The first is beit hakvarot – a house of burial, acknowledging the physical and abrupt reality of death. The second is bait olam – a house of eternity, recognizing that spirituality transcends physical death.
But it is the third name that the vandals unwittingly emphasized: beit hachaim – a house of life. This name emphasizes how in Judaism, cemeteries are not merely repositories of the dead but rather guardians of living memory.
Even after physical death, our nefesh – the life-force energy – remains present at the grave site. This is why the term nefesh is used in mystical sources to refer to the tombstone.
By spraying their hateful symbols on that holy tombstone; by attempting to intimidate, scare, and silence the Jewish community – this pathetic and cowardly act actually strengthened our resolve and spiritual fortitude.
Acts like this don’t tear Jews apart; instead, they remind us of our shared history and destiny that transcends all geographic, denominational, and ideological divides.
As I wrote in 2024 when neo-Nazis marched near my congregation in Columbus, Ohio: we have two choices in our response to hate. Rather than only seeking to punish the wrongdoers, we must also resolve to increase the good that we want to see in the world. This can be via increasing our acts of goodness and kindness, as well as doing mitzvahs to counteract the spiritual darkness of these hate crimes.
WHEN MY dear father would put on tefillin each morning, wrapping the strap it in seven turns around his arm, he would think of each of the seven concentration camps he had survived.
This was a conscious choice he made in his daily spiritual practice, to counteract the evil and negativity he lived through decades earlier. Every time the black strap coiled around his arm, he was reliving his liberation.
It’s been nine years since I saw him last wrap tefillin, but the conviction and strength with which he did so made it clear that our positive actions leave a powerful spiritual energy that dispels all darkness.
Throughout the millennia of Jewish history, we all relive the story of Menachem Chaim. These two words say it all – our comfort comes from us as we live thriving and flourishing Jewish lives.
When our people are defaced and defiled, we shine through as a holy and spiritual nation – a people who stand by each other in the face of hate and emerge stronger in spite of it.
Just as my dad took his tragedy and turned it into a daily sense of meaning and purpose, we too can live with a great joie de vivre – a love for life that no vandal or terror agent can possibly obliterate.
The writer, a rabbi, is co-director of the Lori Schottenstein Chabad Center of Columbus and co-director of LifeTown Columbus. For more information, visit www.chabadcolumbus.com.