JOSL ACKERMAN: AN APPRECIATION

Following the passing of his father-in-law, Josl Ackerman z”l (1932-2026), Rabbi Dunner delivered this eulogy at the shiva house in London.

There is a phrase that appears twice towards the end of this week’s parsha, Parshat Ki Teitzei: וְזָכַרְתָּ כִּי עֶבֶד הָיִיתָ בְּאֶרֶץ מִצְרָיִם – “Remember that you were a slave in Egypt.”

The Torah says it in connection with some very specific mitzvos. For example, don’t deprive the stranger or the orphan of justice. And, when you harvest your field, don’t go back for what you have forgotten. Leave something behind for the poor.

What has this got to do with Egypt? The simple answer is – remember how you suffered, so be nice to people who are suffering.

But I want to suggest that maybe there is more to it than that.

I think the Torah is teaching us something quite remarkable about memory. The Torah is not just telling us to forget the bad things that happened to us. It tells us something much harder. It tells us: Remember them — but don’t let them make you bitter.

You knew what it was to have nothing, so give to somebody else, and make them happy.

You knew what it was to be frightened, so give somebody else security, so they are not scared like you were.

You knew what it was to be vulnerable, so become someone on whom others can rely, so they are not vulnerable.

Take the darkness that you experienced and turn it into light, so that other people don’t experience darkness.

When I think about the life of Josl Ackerman, my father-in-law, I realize that this was, in a nutshell, the story of his life.

As a child, he escaped Nazi Europe with his mother and two siblings. It was a miraculous escape.

He arrived in England in 1942 at the age of ten, and his parents finally reunited after three years apart, during which time his father frantically waited for his wife and the children who were with her. Were they dead? Were they alive?

And then, almost immediately, Josl was separated from his parents. Like so many children during the war, he was evacuated from London and billeted in the countryside, away from his mother and father. It was undoubtedly traumatic. So much so, that he barely remembered it – he had blocked it from his mind.

There are experiences like that which can define a person for the rest of his life. And nobody could possibly blame someone who had lived through them for becoming anxious, cautious, or pessimistic. But somehow, Josl went in precisely the opposite direction.

Josl succeeded in his yeshiva studies. He became a lawyer. And then, together with his brother, he built an enormously successful property business.

He went through the property crash of 1973 and 1974. He weathered it and carried on.

His beloved brother, with whom he had built the business, became gravely ill and eventually died in 1989. He carried on.

And that became almost the defining feature of his personality. Everything was possible. Everything was doable. No challenge was ever insurmountable.

If there was a problem, there was a solution. If there was an obstacle, there was a way around it. If something went wrong, you dealt with it and moved on.

And for many years, I suppose it would have been easy to attribute that extraordinary confidence to his success, and his wealth.

Of course he’s confident, you could say: look at what he’s achieved. Of course he’s optimistic. Look at what he has.

Perhaps his confidence was the confidence of a man who had built an enormous property portfolio and knew that he had the resources to deal with whatever life threw at him.

But then, in the later years of his life, something remarkable happened. The wealth disappeared. This man who had once presided over a vast property portfolio went through an extraordinarily difficult financial period until, ultimately, virtually none of it remained.

And that was when we discovered something amazing about him. The confidence, the positivity, the upbeat nature: none of it came from the money. Because the money was gone — and the confidence remained.

The smile remained. The jokes remained. The compliments remained. He was still him.

And in a strange way, I think that was when he became even more inspirational.

Because who would have blamed him for being bitter? Nobody.

Who would have blamed him for looking back at what he once had and becoming miserable about what he had lost? Nobody.

Who would have blamed a man who had escaped the Nazis, been separated from his parents as a frightened ten-year-old child, lost his beloved brother, experienced the extraordinary ups and downs of business, and finally lost the fortune he had spent a lifetime creating, for saying: I’ve had enough. Nobody would have blamed him.

But he never did.

Rabbi Jonathan Sacks famously distinguished between optimism and hope. Optimism, he said, is the belief that things are going to get better. Hope is the belief that we can make things better.

And Rabbi Sacks pointed out that Judaism is not necessarily an optimistic faith. How could it be? Jewish history hardly encourages naïveté.

But Judaism is the supreme religion of hope. And perhaps that is what וְזָכַרְתָּ כִּי עֶבֶד הָיִיתָ בְּאֶרֶץ מִצְרָיִם really means.

We remember Egypt. We don’t pretend it didn’t happen. But we refuse to allow Egypt to have the final word.

And then came the final test. The most painful test of all. Josl’s extraordinary mind began to fail. A mind that had always been active. Full of initiative. Full of ideas. Full of originality. Always thinking about the next thing that could be done.

And he knew what was happening. He would say to me, in Yiddish: “Mein kop arbet nisht mer.”My head doesn’t work anymore.

There is something heartbreaking about hearing those words from someone whose mind had been one of the great engines of his life.

But what I remember is not only what he said. I remember how he said it. Not grimly. Not bitterly. Almost with a shrug. Mein kop arbet nisht mer.

And then he would bounce on. Still smiling. Still joking. Still interested in you. Still infectiously in a good mood.

And I think that tells us something very profound about who he was. Because gradually, life stripped away all the things that we might have thought explained his confidence.

The childhood security had been taken away long ago. His brother was taken away. The business was taken away. The wealth was taken away. And finally, even that extraordinary mind was taken away.

And yet somehow, the man remained. Josl, the unbelievable Josl we knew, remained. The smile remained. The warmth remained. The confidence remained.

The instinctive sense that life was good, and tomorrow was worth looking forward to – remained.

And perhaps that is the greatest lesson he leaves us. We spend so much of our lives imagining that happiness depends upon circumstances.

If I have this, I’ll be happy.

If this works out, I’ll be confident.

If I achieve this, I’ll feel secure.

But watching Josl taught us something else. His confidence wasn’t something he owned in the material sense. It was something he was.

And his positivity wasn’t just something that was his alone. He gave it to everyone around him.

You felt better after speaking to him. Problems somehow seemed smaller. Possibilities seemed larger. The world seemed a little less intimidating.

And I think that is the message of וְזָכַרְתָּ כִּי עֶבֶד הָיִיתָ בְּאֶרֶץ מִצְרָיִם. We never get to choose everything that happens to us. But we do get to choose what the things that happen to us turn us into.

Egypt can make us bitter. Or Egypt can make us kinder.

Loss can make us despair. Or loss can teach us that there is still something to live for.

The Torah asks us to remember — not so that we remain imprisoned by the past, but so that we can transform it into something good.

Josl escaped one of the darkest moments in human history as a little boy. And somehow, for the rest of his life, he chose light.

That light was his gift to us. And now it is our responsibility to carry some of that light forward. I’m not sure I will live up to it, or any of us can live up to it, but I know that his inspiration means that we will try our best.

Yehi zichro baruch.