Avodah Sheb'lev Winners

This past month, the assignment was choose a passage from Hallel. Here is one of the winning submissions, by Zahava Rothschild. The other co-winner to follow soon.

כי חילצת נפשי ממות, את עיני מן דמעה, את רגלי מדחי - For Thou hast delivered my soul from death, mine eyes from tears, and my feet from stumbling.

It was Yom Hashoah, and all of the students flocked into the auditorium. There was large chatter and small thoughts, all enjoying a peaceful day filled with the average tribulations of an average school day. Nobody shifted significantly when the teacher called for silence in order to begin the program. The lights were shut and the projector was uncovered. Nobody expected their peace to be shattered by the same pictures they have seen annually. Though the silence in the room shown thick, it was empty all the same. The solemn music caused everyone to jump a bit, but the sequence was the same nonetheless. Some squinted or turned away, some blinded their eyes, and some stared, whether with sympathy or apathy. I watched the screen trying to notice something, anything exceptional, about the photographs to cause me to feel something different, something more significant, about this specific commemoration of the Shoah. The pictures of empty children, the shots of naked dreams, they seemed so apart from me. Then, there was this one picture that seemed extremely odd. There were people in bunkers, stripped of their life and possessions, carrying striped shirts in their hands. Something seemed very strange about it. I continued to watch the next few slides, and I still could not conjure the difference that had existed in that picture. The lights flipped on, and before I knew it, the program had ended.
I kept the still-frame inside my vision and studied it for as long as it took. I noticed that picture had a spark, unlike the others. I had never seen color in black and white, until I realized in that specific picture, one man, that had been stripped of anyone he had ever been, was smiling.
It had been a miraculous gesture, an inward hope that maybe, somebody would realize that there was life in death’s camp, there was color in the darkness, and there was a future of students to look after.