Monday, June 29, 2009

Korczak International News: Commissioner Hammarberg pay tribute to Korczak in Warsaw










Korczak International News: Commissioner Hammarberg pay tribute to Korczak in Warsaw

http://www.korczak.org.uk/portfolio/select1.html
The best tribute to Janusz Kroczak are the articles he wrote and the sentiments he expressed
Note this post from his own words:

COMMENT



Dzieina Street was set up as a hospital for the sick and dying children in the Warsaw ghetto. "a mortuary where corpses crawl, run by bandits and thieves who robbed the children of any food or help." (Quote). The children were in their own excrement and died of typhus and dysentery.Korczak demanded to be in charge of this hospital and committed the insuperable task of caring for the orphanage. Within a few weeks with two colleagues, he restored some order and spent his spare time tending to the dying children. He converted the premises to a hospice with makeshift bunks and gave a measure of dignity to the dying children. He learned the essence of charity in a one month stay in London.


















ApplicationHenryk Goldszmit Residence: I6 Sienna - 9 Sliska Street, February 9,
1942. Written in the Warsaw Ghetto 6 months before his
death.

C O M M E N T A R Y


Special Note: Dzieina Street
was set up as a hospital for the sick and dying children in the Warsaw ghetto.
Several thousand children were crammed into a space meant for just a few
hundred. Korczak described it as "a mortuary where corpses crawl, run by bandits
and thieves who robbed the children of any food or help." The children were left
lying on the floor like animals amidst their own excrement. Typhus and dysentery
took their toll.
Korczak could not tolerate the suffering of these children and
demanded to be put in charge of the hospital, even though he was committed to
the impossible task of caring for the children at his orphanage. Together with
two of his colleagues he restored relative order within a few weeks and spent
all his spare time tending to the dying.
He arranged for makeshift bunks to be
built, so that the children could die with care and dignity. This was perhaps
the first hospice of its kind. He makes some very telling admissions of his state of mind regarding children in this application including the following:






M Y O W N T E X T











  • he states he is the master of the "economy of effort".





  • I know not his allusion to Harpagon but will research this allusion.





  • I consider myself an expert in medicine, education, eugenics, politics.(QUOTE) This quote can be taken at face value and the following is surely caustic and autobiographical in the same satiric breath : Experience has endowed me with an appreciable ability for co-existing and collaborating even with criminal characters and with born imbeciles. (QUOTE)


  • Ambitious obstinate fools cut Korczak off but he does not return the favor. He tolerated an unsuitable manager in his orphanage over one year and yet he sought her to stay and she soon left of her own accord. The deficient present staff Korczak preferred to the uncertainty of a new staff. I anticipate that the criminal characters among the staff of the orphanage at Dzieina Street will voluntarily resign from the hated work to which they are tied by cowardice and inertia alone.(QUOTE)

  • Korczak's education and job experience as explained in semi resume format are very revealing: He worked in the clinics of Berlin and Paris one year,6 months,and A month's excursion to London helped me to understand the quintessence of charity work (a rewarding experience). (QUOTE) His exposure to different personalities and a variety of medical fields had a broadening aspect ,I am certain, on his resultant insights in his work with children. My masters in medicine were: Professor Przewoski (anatomy and bacteriology), Nasonow (zoologist), Szczerbakow (psychiatry), and the pediatricians Rnkelsztein, Baginski, Marfan, Hutinel ( Berlin , Paris).(On a day off - visits to orphanages, reformatories, places of detention for so-called juvenile delinquents.) One month in a school for retarded children, one month in Ziehen's neurological clinic.My masters in the hospital at Sliska Street:Koral, the cynic and nihilist, the jovial Kramsztyk the serious Gantz, the fine diagnostician Eliasberg, and also the medical assistant Slizewski and a selfless nurse, Laja.I expect to meet a few of the kind of Laja in the children's slaughterhouse (and morgue) at 39 Dzieina Street. (Quote)Note his allusion to the children's slaughterhouse. CHILDREN ARE MATURE,DIGNIFIED AND SENSIBLE WHEN FACED WITH DEATH AND THIS TO ME IS A SURPRISING YET 'INTACT' COMMENT KORCZAK WOULD MAKE. Statistics taught him truth and objectivity and unbiased assessment of fact.He weighed and measured children for a quarter-century and kept the graphs (priceless). He at first contacted the Jewish at child Markiewicz summer vacation camp . In Michalowka, the free lending library,he worked several years and he observed richly.

    Kind
    friends urge me to write my last will. I am doing it now in my curriculum vitae,
    to go with the application for a job as a teacher in the orphanage at 39 Dzieina
    Street. I am sixty-four. As to health, I received my certificate in jail last
    year. In spite of the exacting conditions there, not once did I report sick, not
    once did I go to the doctor, not once did I absent myself from gymnastics,
    dreaded even by my younger colleagues. I eat like a horse; sleep soundly;
    recently, after drinking ten shots of strong vodka, I returned home at a brisk
    pace from Rymarska Street to Sienna Street - late at night. I get up twice
    during the night to empty ten large night-pails.I smoke, do not overindulge in
    liquor. mental faculties for everyday purposes - passable.I am a master in the
    economy of effort; like Harpagon, I measure out every unit of energy to be
    expended.I consider myself an expert in medicine, education, eugenics,
    politics.Experience has endowed me with an appreciable ability for co-existing
    and collaborating even with criminal characters and with born imbeciles.
    Ambitious, obstinate fools cut me off their visiting list - though I do not
    return the compliment.The last test I passed: tolerated a thoroughly unsuitable
    manager in my orphanage for well over a year;acting contrary to the interests of
    my own convenience and peace, I sought to persuade her to stay; she soon left of
    her own accord (a principle of mine: always prefer the deficiencies of the
    present staff to the advantages of the new one).
    I anticipate that the criminal
    characters among the staff of the orphanage at Dzieina Street will voluntarily
    resign from the hated work to which they are tied by cowardice and inertia
    alone.I graduated from secondary school and university in Warsaw. My education
    was complemented in the clinics of Berlin (one year) and Paris (six months). A
    month's excursion to London helped me to understand the quintessence of charity
    work (a rewarding experience).My masters in medicine were: Professor Przewoski
    (anatomy and bacteriology), Nasonow (zoologist), Szczerbakow (psychiatry), and
    the pediatricians Rnkelsztein, Baginski, Marfan, Hutinel ( Berlin , Paris).(On a
    day off - visits to orphanages, reformatories, places of detention for so-called
    juvenile delinquents.) One month in a school for retarded children, one month in
    Ziehen's neurological clinic.My masters in the hospital at Sliska Street:Koral,
    the cynic and nihilist, the jovial Kramsztyk the serious Gantz, the fine
    diagnostician Eliasberg, and also the medical assistant Slizewski and a selfless
    nurse, Laja.I expect to meet a few of the kind of Laja in the children's
    slaughterhouse (and morgue) at 39 Dzieina Street.Hospital
    revealed to me how
    dignified, mature and sensible children could be when face-to-face with
    death.
    Books on statistics deepened my understanding of the medical art
    (statistics taught me the inexorability of logical thinking and unbiased
    judgment of fact).
    Having weighed and measured children for a quarter of a
    century, I have become the owner of a priceless collection of graphs - growth
    profiles of children at school-age and puberty
    .With the Jewish child I came in
    touch for the first time as an overseer at the Markiewicz summer vacation camp
    in Michalowka. Several years of work in a free lending library afforded me rich
    observation material





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Korczak International News: St-Petersburg Festival of Tolerance 2008

Korczak International News: St-Petersburg Festival of Tolerance 2008

The two kinds of the love of G-d and the child's first love of G-d RE:Tanya




The love of G-d which also characterize the Tzadikkim , a state of bliss on the soul level of Neshamah.








The child's love of G-d is at the root of obedience and observance of all the positive commands.This love must serve as a springboard for all positive commands performed through education.This love is described as inferior and transient as a foundation for observance of the mitzvahs performed as a result of education.This lower level of childlike love, if I may term it,possesses permanent qualities desirable and such that the adult should never depart from these qualities.To be commanded to love G-d is an expression of doing and how can emotion of the heart be so applied.?This is an anomaly resolved by the Alter Rebbe . He describes the superior degree of love that cannot be created. One can merely provide the conditions for its revelation. Meditation on the precepts arousing this love provides the "doing" factor of this love.There are two kinds of the love of G-d:







  • One is the natural yearning of the soul, intrinsic to the soul, and part of G-d above.This love cannot be created.How can it be revealed in the corporeal heart?When the rational soul prevails over the gross body,subdues and subjugates the body, the divinely appointed task of the G-dly soul rectifying the animal soul is completed. (The rational soul's comprehension of G-dliness.)



  • We are talking of the G-dly as contradistingfuished to the rational soul:The G-dly soul is too affect the body,that is, it's intellect and comprehension are too lofty. The rational soul embodies man's intellect and it is close to the physical body.The rational soul can comprehend G-dliness in such manner as to cause form to master matter (?) to overcome the body and its corporeality.The soul then blazes with a flame ascending of its own accord. This is not contemplative love but natural love barred initially by the corporeality of the body.The body must be mastered and refined ,a necessity for the soul's innate love of G-d to be revealed. The soul will consequently rejoice and exult in G-d its maker and will delight in Him with wondrous bliss. (QUOTE). This delight is part of the love of the divine service itself. It is itself a replacement for what might be termed the reward for divine service.


  • Those meriting the state of this great love are called Tzaddikim.They alone experience this great love from the G-dly soul ,possessed by very single Jew,but not experienced by all.

  • The reason for this — as the Alter Rebbe goes on to explain — is that one’s physical grossness impedes its revelation. And clearing this hurdle demands prodigious effort. (QUOTE)

  • This state of love which characterizes the Tzadikkim alone requires intense refinement of physical grossness and intense Torah study and good deeds . They have a different soul level of neshamah and there or in that state divine service is intellective.


















the love of G‑d [is the root and fundament] of [what motivates one to]12
“do good,” and to observe all the positive commandments of the Torah and the
Sages,
כמו שיתבאר במקומן
as will be explained in their proper
place.
“As will be explained in their proper place” refers to chs. 4 and 41
in the first part of Tanya. This reference, as the Rebbe points out,
corroborates the tradition handed down by chassidim that the Alter Rebbe
originally intended to reverse the current order, with this second part of Tanya
appearing first, as Part I, and the fifty-three chapters of the first part
becoming Part II.
ומצות החינוך היא גם כן במצוות עשה, כמו שכתוב באורח חיים,
סימן שמ״ג
(13The
commandment of educating [a child] includes also [training in the performance
of] positive precepts, as is stated in Orach Chayim, Section 343.)
Since a
child is to be educated to observe both prohibitive and positive commandments,
it follows that his love of G‑d, as the root and fundament of all positive
commands,
14
must be such that it serves as the springboard for all the positive commandments
that are performed as a result of education.
We must therefore say that there
exists an inferior and transient degree of love that serves as the root and
foundation for those mitzvot that are performed as a result of education, a
degree of love distinct from the superior level that motivates an adult
.
Nevertheless, as shall soon be explained, this lower level of love, too — a love
which is “according to the child’s way” — possesses certain permanent qualities
that make it desirable that “even as he grows old he will not (and indeed should
not) depart from it.”
והנה באהבה כתיב, בסוף פרשת עקב: אשר אנכי מצוה אתכם
לעשותה, לאהבה את ה׳ וגו׳
Concerning the love [of G‑d] it is written at the
end of the portion Eikev,
15
“...which I command you to do — to love G‑d...”
וצריך להבין איך שייך לשון
עשיה גבי אהבה שבלב
It is necessary to understand how an expression of “doing”
can be applied to love, which is [an emotion] in the heart.
The Alter Rebbe
now proceeds to resolve this seeming anomaly. (First, however, he describes the
superior degree of love that cannot be created: one can merely provide the
conditions for its revelation.) As to the above anomaly, he now explains that
there exists a manner of love that is indeed created — by meditating upon those
concepts that arouse it.
An active verb such as “doing” suits this manner of
love, since it is experienced as a result of one’s own doing.
אך הענין הוא,
דיש שני מיני אהבת ה׳
The explanation, however, is that there are two kinds of
love of G‑d:
האחת היא כלות הנפש בטבעה אל בוראה
One is the natural,
yearning love of the soul to its Creator.
Since this love is intrinsic to the
soul, which is “truly a part of G‑d above,” this love need not — and indeed
cannot — be created at all.
It merely needs to be revealed. But how can such a
passionate yearning become revealed in one’s corporeal, fleshly heart?
כאשר
תתגבר נפש השכלית על החומר, ותשפילהו ותכניעהו תחתיה
When the rational soul
prevails over the grossness [of the body] and subdues and subjugates it,
Here
the Divinely-appointed task of the G‑dly soul comes to the fore: to rectify the
animal soul and refine the body by means of the rational soul’s comprehension of
G‑dliness.
For the G‑dly soul’s own intellect and comprehension are too lofty to
affect the body. The rational soul, however, embodies man’s natural quality of
intellect and as such is close to the physical body. The rational soul
comprehends G‑dliness in such a manner that it is able to cause Form to master
Matter — to overmaster the body and harness its corporeality. When it actually
does so:
אזי תתלהב ותתלהט בשלהבת העולה מאליה
then [the soul] will flare
and blaze with a flame that ascends of its own accord,
It will be aflame not
with a love created through contemplation, but with a natural love whose
revelation was barred by the grossness of the body. Now, with the mastery and
refinement of the body, the soul’s innate love for G‑d can at last be
revealed.
ותגל ותשמח בה׳ עושה, ותתענג על ה׳ תענוג נפלא
and [the soul] will
rejoice and exult both inwardly and outwardly in G‑d its Maker, and will delight
in Him with wondrous bliss.
In this instance the delight is part of the love
and the divine service itself, rather than a reward for the divine service, as
is sometimes the case.
והזוכים למעלת אהבה רבה זו, הם הנקראים צדיקים
It is
those who merit the [joyous] state of this great love who are called
tzaddikim,
כדכתיב: שמחו צדיקים בה׳
as it is written,16
“Rejoice in G‑d, you tzaddikim.”
To serve G‑d with delight of this order is
the privilege of tzaddikim alone. For though the above-described love emanates
from the G‑dly soul which is possessed by every single Jew, for which reason one
would expect everyone to be able to feel it, it is nevertheless not experienced
by all. The reason for this — as the Alter Rebbe goes on to explain — is that
one’s physical grossness impedes its revelation. And clearing this hurdle
demands prodigious effort.
אך לא כל אדם זוכה לזה
Yet not everyone is
privileged to attain this state of love which characterizes tzaddikim,
כי לזה
צריך זיכוך החומר במאד מאד, וגם תורה ומעשים טובים הרבה
for it requires an
intense refinement of one’s physical grossness, and in addition a great deal of
Torah study and good deeds,
לזכות לנשמה עליונה
in order to merit a lofty
[soul-level of] Neshamah,
This is the soul-level whose divine service is
intellective; as the verse states,17
“The Divine Neshamah shall provide discernment.” Only this manner of divine
service can subjugate and refine man’s gross corporeality so that he is able to
delight in G‑d with wondrous bliss.











12.
Tehillim, loc. cit.
13.
Parentheses are in the original text.
14.
Note of the Rebbe: “In addition to the fact that love itself and
likewise awe are individual positive commandments [in and of themselves].”

15.
Devarim 11:22.
16.
Tehillim 97:12.
17.
Iyov 32:8.