It’s a fake word mixing chutzpah, which is guts or nerve, and mitzvah, an ethical deed or good work. A chutzvah was someone who did something crazy trusting that the outcome would help other people no matter what. Not a hero but a bit of a well-intentioned fool.
Back in Vilna during the war Himmel met with the other town elders in an apartment in one of the abandoned buildings to discuss their future which was bleak. The army was set to burn the ghetto down.
Well one day their meeting was cut short when they heard the familiar sound of armored cars in the street. The men in the group knew that the soldiers would kill all of them if they found them but there was no time to escape. They instantly heard the shouts and footsteps of the soldiers coming up the stairs as they began to search through every apartment on each floor.
One of them pulled out a gun, ready to take a few of the enemy with him but Himmel signaled him to put it down because in the few moments they had left he had come up with a plan.
It was the plan, naturally, of a perfect chutzvah.
“Stand perfectly still,” Himmel whispered, “don’t move. And face the door. Now close your eyes, clear your minds, and raise your hands in the secret blessing.”
Himmel demonstrated this by lifting his hands up with the palms facing forward and the thumbs out, then pressing the first and second fingers together and separating these from the third and fourth fingers, also pressed together. This was a secret gesture used by the rabbis to bless the congregation and the elders were surprised to see Himmel invoke it here. Still they obeyed simply because they had no other alternative.
“Now,” Himmel added with gravity, “concentrate all your will on invisibility.”
“What did he say?” asked one of the older men who assumed he had misheard. “Our ability?”
“Concentrate on being invisible,” Himmel repeated.
“Are you insane?” one of them asked. “The soldiers are coming!”
“Do as I say,” Himmel insisted. “The Torah says that the vision of man is narrow. Let us pray for that weakness now.”
The others thought that Himmel had gone completely off his rocker. But they could now hear the shouts and footfalls of the soldiers outside the door to the very apartment in which they were standing. There was nothing else to do.
“Let your prayers float up to God to make us as transparent as the wind,” Himmel said as he took up the position right in front with eyes closed and hands raised, facing the door about to be opened.
One by one, the others mimicked his gesture and at that moment a young soldier pushed open the door to the room. It creaked as it swung slowly ajar. His rifle was drawn and his helmet was almost too big for his face as he stood there surveying what he saw. Imagine the scene…the soldier all orders and duty standing in the doorway looking into a musty old room. And facing him the old Jews standing still as posts, their eyes closed, their hands up before them in that peculiar gesture.
One shout to his comrades would have begun the slaughter but an uneasy expression flashed across the soldier’s face. Was it a look of surprise, confusion, puzzlement? Maybe all of these at once. He stood there staring into the room for what seemed like an eternity. Then came the sound of his superior as the other soldiers moved back down and out of the building. The squad leader shouted from the other side of the door:
“Anyone?”
The soldier blinked once.
“Anything?”
“What?” he said.
“Is there anyone in there?”
“No,” the soldier replied looking around the room cautiously. “It’s empty.”
“Let’s go then. There are many buildings.”
Thus ordered, the young soldier gazed across the room one last time then spun around on the heel of one boot and walked out.
The town did not fall that day although, as everyone knows, it eventually did.
So what do you think?
Did Himmel the chutzvah and the others really invoke the veil of invisibility? Did God answer their prayers and make them as transparent as the wind? Or do you think maybe the sun from the window dazzled the young soldier’s vision at just the right moment. Or, and this is even more likely, that the soldier himself somehow understood the meaning of what he saw and decided not to be the one to challenge their prayers or to start the slaughter.
Who can say?
In the end perhaps it does not really matter. That, after all, is the beauty of being a chutzvah or even believing that there could be such a person.
No matter how crazy it sounds, all you have to do is try.
Which means that sometimes the effort for a miracle is all the world needs to provide one.
But as everyone also knows…only sometimes.
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