8, 2009 at 7:45Three Lives
It was a strange phenomenon. The famed professor Victor Frankl, author of the perennial best-seller Man’s Search for Meaning, and founder of Logotherapy, would send each year a check to Chabad of Vienna before the High Holidays. Nobody in the Chabad center or in the larger Jewish community could understand why. Here was a man who was not affiliated in any fashion with the Jewish community of Vienna. He did not even attend synagogue even on Yom Kippur. He was married to a very religious Catholic woman. He is not even buried in the Jewish cemetery in Vienna. Yet, he would not miss a single year of sending a contribution to Chabad before Yom Kippur. The enigma was answered only in 1992.
I Am the First Emissary
From the Chassidim to the Opera
On the very night after her performance at the Salzburg Festspiele, close friends smuggled her out of Germany to Italy. From there she managed to embark on the last boat to the U.S. before the war broke out, just a few days later.
Margareta settled in Detroit, where she married a fine Jewish young man with the family name Chajes (a grandson of one of the most famous 19th century Polish Rabbis and Talmudic commentator, the Maharatz Chayos, and they gave birth to a beautiful daughter.
Forward the tape recorder of history. It is now many years after the war. Jews were rebuilding their lives and their careers. The rabbis were rebuilding their communities. But one rabbi was thinking of not just of his own community.
You see, the daughter of Margareta married a prominent Jewish doctor, who was honored by the dinner of a Chabad institution in the US and his mother-in-law, Margareta, acquired an audience with the Lubavitcher Rebbe, Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson.
The Rebbe listened. But he not only listened with his ears. He listened with his eyes, with his heart, with his soul, and he took it all in. I shared everything and he absorbed everything. That night I felt like I was given a second father. I felt that the Rebbe adopted me as his daughter.
Two Requests
At the end of my meeting with the Lubavitcher Rebbe, I expressed my strong desire to go back and visit Vienna. The Rebbe requested from me that before I make the trip, I visit him again.
A short while later, en route to Vienna, I visited the Rebbe. He asked me for a favor: to visit two people during my stay in the city. The first was Viennese Chief Rabbi Akiva Eisenberg, and give him regards from the Rebbe (the Rebbe said that his secretariat would give me the details and literature to give to Rabbi Eisenberg.) The second person he wanted me to visit I would have to look up myself. The Rebbe said that he was a professor at the University of Vienna and his name was Dr. Victor Frankl.
You Will Prevail
Using the German dialect, so Margareta would understand, the Rebbe spoke for a long time about the messages he wished to convey to Dr. Frankl. Close to forty years later she did not recall all of the details, but the primary point was that Frankl should never give up and he should keep on working to achieve his goals with unflinching courage and determination.
Margareta traveled to Vienna. Her visit with Rabbi Eisenberg was simple. Meeting Victor Frankl proved far more difficult. When she arrived at the University, they informed her that the professor has not shown up in two weeks. There was thus no way she can meet him. After a few failed attempts to locate him at the University, Margareta gave up.
You see, in 1947, Frankl married his second wife — a very devout Catholic, Eleonore Katharina Schwindt.
Victor Frankl showed up a few moments later, and after ascertaining that he was the professor at the University, she said she had regards for him.
Suddenly, the uninterested professor broke down. He began sobbing like a baby. He could not calm down. I did not understand what was going on. I just saw him weeping uncontrollably.
Forever Grateful
Suddenly, a change in his voice. Dr. Frankl melted like butter in a frying pan.
In the Camps
The Great Debate
You see, friends, this was no small debate. These two Jews were debating the very meaning of human identity and Victor Frankl had been advocating a view extremely alien to the then-dominant Freudian outlook. In a word: A human being has a SOUL, what we Jews call a Neshamah.
Freud, like most medical schools, emphasized the idea that all things come down to physiology. The human mind and heart could be best understood as a “side effect” of brain mechanisms. Humans are like machines, responding to stimuli from within or from without, a completely physical, predictable, and godless machine, albeit a very complicated machine, creating psychotics, neurotics, and of course psychiatrists.
Derision
Hope
“I began to sob. I cried uncontrollably. I was so moved. I felt like a transformed man. That is exactly what I needed to hear. Someone believed in me, in my work, in my contributions, in my ideas about the infinite transcendence and potential of the human person and in my ability to prevail.
Victor Frankl concluded his story to Rabbi Beiderman in these words: “??? ?????? ??????? ??? ???? ????”
I Love Chabad
And finally, Rabbi Biederman understood why he was getting a check in the mail before each Yom Kippur.
Their conversation was over.
Tefilin Each Day
But the story is not over.
In 2003, Dr. Shimon Cown, an Lubavitch Australian expert on Frankl, went to visit his non-Jewish widow, Elenor, in Vienna.
You get it? On Yom Kippur nobody saw him in shul, but a day of Tefilin he did not miss.
When they asked in interviews whether he believed in G-d, he would usually not give a direct answer.
But a day of tefilin he would not miss!
Oy, what a Jew!
The Soldier
In 1973, an Israeli soldier lay in the hospital, depressed and dejected, saying that he feels like committing suicide.
You see, he lost both his legs during the Yom Kippur war. He felt that without legs his future was hopeless.
One day, his doctor walked into the room. The soldier was sitting upright, and looked relaxed and happy. The doctor looked at him, and saw that his eyes regained that passionate gaze.
What happened? The doctor asked.
One Message
This, friends, was the potential the Rebbe saw when he decided to send Margareta on a mission to Vienna.
What is a soul?