It was chanted for five Sabbaths in a row in the small synagogue with the charred bimah, ashes staining the tzitzits of the rebbe’s tallit, as he raised his arms above his head, closed his eyes and sang the first alaf of seven thousand dabars, the oral memory passed down six generations, a psalm for a hundred sabas and savtas, abbas and eemas, nursery rhymes for ben and bat, stopping, receding, picked up again, one by one from cantor to congregant in a low moan until all nine hundred thousand silenced voices of Treblinka sang in the knesset’s bright light.
bimah- lectern from which the Torah is unscrolled on tzitzit- the knotted fringes of a Hebrew prayer shawl tallit- a Hebrew prayer shawl worn by rabbis alaf- the first letter of the Hebrew alphabet dabar- Hebrew for word saba- grandfather savta- grandmother abba- father eema- mother ben- son bat- daughter knesset- the members of a synagogue