A Higher Kind of Giving
There is an old folktale about a village rabbi who would mysteriously disappear for one night every year, on the eve of Rosh Hashanah.
One year, a young boy secretly followed the rabbi and discovered that the rabbi disguised himself as a peasant and then traveled across town to visit a frail, old woman. She was lying alone and cold in her dark, secluded cabin.
The rabbi spent the evening cutting wood, tending the old woman’s fire, and praying her prayers with her, without the woman ever being aware that he was the village rabbi.
The rabbi’s altruism reminded the young boy of something his mother had told him: “When the identity of the giver is not known to the person receiving the gift – this is an even higher kind of giving.”
Later, when the villagers were wondering aloud about the rabbi’s whereabouts each Rosh Hashanah eve, some asked, “Do you think he goes to heaven?”
The young boy whispered to himself – “Even higher.”
This folktale reminds me of an older gentleman I have come to know since my family moved to New Hope. Pierre, and his wife Raymonde, have taught us much about this “even higher” kind of giving.
Pierre is a twinkle-eyed, Serbian gentleman.
Pierre is also an unknown hero to countless World War II pilots, being one of the members of the Serbian resistance movement who rescued and then hid Allied pilots shot down over Yugoslavia on their return flights to Italy from their missions to German-held oil fields in Romania.
As finally recounted in Gregory Freeman’s 2007 book “The Forgotten 500,” Pierre and his countrymen risked their lives rounding up downed pilots, secretly housing them in their own homes, and lying to Nazi soldiers who were searching for them.
After several months, Pierre and his comrades were able to clear a landing field on the top of a local mountain, mostly in the dark of night, and then airlifted more than 500 Allied pilots to safety. Most of those 500 pilots will never know the identity of all those who saved them.
Pierre still has vivid memories of then being captured by Nazi soldiers, and living for several years in a concentration camp.
After my most recent visit with Pierre and Raymonde, I walked down the sidewalk toward my own home, and then saw that Pierre had stepped outside on the side stoop to wave goodbye to me.
As I looked over at him, he bowed deeply, nodded to me a couple of times, and then blew me a kiss, almost as if in slow motion.
A thought came to me just then: I wonder if Pierre and Raymonde are what some call “bodhisattvas” – souls who choose to be on Earth for many lifetimes in order to teach us the most profound lessons of love and true humanity.
If so, there must a place to which people like Pierre and Raymonde return – a place something like heaven.
Or, perhaps, “even higher.”
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(as published in Outlook By the Bay)
photo credit: Robert Weiss
