Yom Kippur Kielbasa

            I always believed there was a god. Who but a god could decree that Zisha the Powerful, the circus strongman from my town of Lakhva, who could bend rails with his fingers and snap chains with a chomp of his teeth, should die inside a barn on a bed of straw from the bite of a muskrat? Who but a god could cause a man to pass away while waiting for his supper, only to be called back from death by his wife, who screamed his name and slapped his face until he opened his eyes, and said he was famished, and she served him his meal? Who could avert his face from millions while allowing millions more to survive but a god?

            I thank God that I remember my Yiddish, for in English this would be difficult for me to express. Even behind the electric wire, in sleeping quarters that fostered only nightmares, I believed. I believed enough to pray at the latrine on the longest, coldest night of my life. I prayed that if I lived to see life, real life, again, I would tell everyone that even at that dark, frigid hour I had believed.

            So you see I believe, then as now, with a grocery store, a fifth floor apartment, a wife and a son. My son would laugh if I tried to say all this in English. At least he would laugh; as a child he was ashamed of how I spoke. But two words he said I pronounced perfectly – I believe. And I had struck...