The Legacy of Two Survivors

This week our parasha, Toldot, is a portion whose very name – toldot, “generations” -challenges us to think about lineage, inheritance, and the stories that shape who we become. At the same time, the Jewish world has been mourning the recent passing of two remarkable Holocaust survivors and educators, Manfred Goldberg and Vera Schaufeld. Their lives, and the values they transmitted, illuminate the themes of this parasha with striking poignancy.

Toldot opens with the struggles surrounding the birth of Jacob and Esau. Rebecca’s unexpectedly painful pregnancy prefigures a world in which generations do not simply follow one another; they wrestle, diverge, and ultimately choose how to carry forward the covenantal mission. Jewish survival is never easy. Jacob’s struggle, from the womb to old age, represents the challenge of Jewish history.

The Midrash (Bereishit Rabbah 63:6) teaches that when Rebecca cried out, “Lamah zeh anokhi?” – “Why am I like this?” – she was not only speaking of physical pain but of existential fear. She wondered what kind of future she was bringing into the world, what shape the next generation would take, and whether her children would carry forward the values she held sacred. Her question is, in a sense, the perennial question of Jewish history.

The lives of Manfred Goldberg and Vera Schaufeld offer a contemporary expression of this idea. Both emerged from the darkest abyss of Jewish history, not only having survived, but having dedicated their lives to ensuring that the next generation would remember and learn. They became living links in the Jewish chain, bearers of a precious and painful legacy they carried with dignity and purpose.

In a sense, survivors like Manfred Goldberg and Vera Schaufeld acquired a kind of “birthright”: the responsibility to speak when silence would have been easier, to educate when forgetting would have been more comfortable, and to rebuild Jewish life after unimaginable devastation. They understood that memory is not a passive inheritance – it is an active commitment. Like Isaac re-digging his father’s wells, they restored what others tried to bury. Through their teaching, they opened wells of truth for thousands of young people who would otherwise have remained thirsty for understanding.

Parashat Toldot asks us to consider what we will do with the inheritance handed to us. The passing of these survivors reminds us that we now become the generation that must carry the memory forward. The task is now ours: to tell their stories, to combat forgetting and distortion, and to embody the resilience and moral clarity they modelled.

As we read Toldot this week, may we honour their memory by strengthening our own link in the chain – ensuring that the toldot, the generations that follow us, receive not only our stories but also our steadfast commitment to truth, justice, and Jewish continuity.