On Sunday, October 29, over 250 people braved the elements to honor the memory of Professor Yaffa Eliach upon her first yahrzeit. The venue for the lecture was appropriate, as the Museum of Jewish Heritage is one of three repositories of Professor Eliach’s archival trove, with the other two being The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, DC and Yad Vashem in Jerusalem.
A moving tribute was presented in poetic Hebrew by Rabbi David Eliach, husband of Professor Eliach and one of the most celebrated Jewish educators in the US, having served as principal and dean of the Yeshiva of Flatbush. Rabbi Eliach described how Professor Eliach left behind a legacy of pictures and testimonies. Professor Eliach was one of the first to portray Holocaust survivors as they were, vibrant and productive, before their dehumanization by the Nazis and their cohorts. She was also one of the first to explore the Chasidic personalities who lived through these tragic times, and she brought hope and inspiration to even the darkest days.
Rabbi Yotav Eliach, the son of Rabbi David and Professor Eliach and principal of Rambam Mesivta in Lawrence, Long Island, remarked on the appropriate timing of his mother’s yahrzeit on the eighth of Cheshvan, which falls between the parshas of Noach and Lech Lecha. Noach’s generation suffered the first Holocaust and survived. Lech Lecha takes us on Avram’s journey to Eretz Yisrael, which Professor Eliach embarked upon as well after surviving the Holocaust.
Professor Smadar Rosensweig, the daughter of Rabbi David and Professor Eliach and professor of Judaic Studies at Stern College for Women, described her mother as having been a “superhuman eshet chayil. She was glamorous yet down to earth, she had an infectious dynamism, she was a force of nature with boundless energy. She was a devoted mother, grandmother and great-grandmother who commissioned an artistic chuppah for the weddings of her grandchildren.”
Professionally, Professor Eliach was a trailblazer and a pioneer, a world-class scholar with an international reputation. She earned a PhD through her study of the Baal Shem Tov, was a fellow at Princeton University and was bestowed with numerous awards and citations throughout her career. Her curricula for teaching the Holocaust which has been utilized worldwide, helped keep the cadences of Jewish life alive. “She is a flaming torch to future generations,” Professor Rosnsweig remarked.
The keynote speaker for the event was Professor Elisheva Carlebach, Salo Baron professor of Jewish Studies and History, Culture and Society. In a presentation entitled “Archives and Ashes: On Record-Keeping in Jewish History,” Professor Carlebach credited Professor Eliach with “harnessing the power of the archive as testimony to the Holocaust” through the thousands of testimonies she gathered. These testimonies came not only from the survivors themselves, but through the hundreds of students whom she sent out to interview the survivors and who then became eyewitnesses as well. Through her extensive interviews of the liberators, she created another body of eyewitnesses. Her model of interviewing and gathering testimony has become widespread in museums and academic institutions throughout the world. As early as 1974, Eliach’s Center at the Yeshiva of Flatbush became the first repository outside of Israel to collect Holocaust testimonies.
Through her archives and her Tower of Life at the United States Holocaust Memorial in Washington, DC, viewed by over 20 million people annually, Professor Eliach helped return humanity to the victims of the Holocaust.
By Pearl Markovitz
