While doing my regular daily perusal of news articles, I came across one of those bittersweet moments in time that once again prove what we humans are capable of if we only try. On CNN's site is an article about the passing of an 85 year old Holocaust Survivor by the name of Eddie Ford from Toronto. Seems Mr. Ford, who died of cancer and was penniless and had but one nephew who lives in Detroit, may not have had a minyan, a quorum of ten to preside over him in death as is done in Jewish tradition, neither did Rabbi Zale Newman think that anyone would even be there to attend the man’s funeral. So, after Mr. Ford’s passing on January 29th, Rabbi Newman posted a request on Facebook begging for ten to show up for the funeral. After he received only three responses he reached out to a Rabbi friend from California who had once presided over a funeral where no one showed up, for advice.
"I was prepared to do whatever it took to give him a proper send off," Newman said. "That's what he deserved, that's what all good people deserved."
Upon arriving at the cemetery the next morning, Rabbi Newman was startled to see many cars. Thinking there must be another funeral he began asking who was the other funeral for. When person after person told them they were there for Mr. Ford’s, his heart began pounding as he tried to understand just what was going on.
It became clear. Word of Ford's funeral had spread across the social media world, prompting do-gooders to show up in the freezing cold to send off Ford the way he deserved. Newman said everyone was "dressed like ninjas," a lot of people were hiding their faces due to the cold.
"I saw 200 pairs of eyes," Newman said. "What I could tell was there was men and women, old and young."
Seems Mr. Ford’s long lost brother also heard, and showed up to recite the Kaddish with the Rabbi’s help.
"Eddie ... did not leave the world alone," Newman said. "He left the world with his brother, his nephew and 200 members of the Jewish family."
"I am in tears just thinking about how humbling and awesome it is to be part of the Jewish People who on very short notice; would drop everything, leave whatever they were planning on doing, drive (a) long distance, to stand outside in a open field, on a super freezing, blowing, windy day to escort a sweet, little Jew from Budapest, who was unknown to almost all them, on his final journey."
I, too was in tears reading this earlier today, and now while I type, both for the loneliness and poverty Mr. Ford lived in his final days, and for the beauty of what occurred after his death.
The rest of the CNN article gives a very brief summary on how Mr. Ford escaped the ultimate horrors of the Holocaust by hiding with a Christian family in Budapest, and how he and the Rabbi came to meet.
This is just another example of many in the ultimate goodness of people as Anne Frank believed to be true.
"He saw the worst in humanity, and he deserved to see the best in humanity."