Student Inspired by the Legacy of Women Who Came Before Her

Nine grader, Talia Weisberg, Winner of our 2010 Youth Writing Contest

Last year, ninth grade student Talia Weisberg was inspired by the strength and courage of Jewish partisan Sara Fortis and many other Jewish women who came before her. Read her moving essay below.

JPEF will be announcing its 2011 Writing Contest soon! E-mail writingcontest@jewishpartisans.org for more information.

“We are of the Line,” I hear my mother say, and I am swept into the past, reliving the strong history of the women in our religion:

I am with Sarai as she becomes Sarah. I assist Rebecca as she helps Eliezer water his camels. I stand behind the chuppah with Rachel as Jacob unknowingly marries Leah. I strum a harp with Serakh as she tells Jacob that Joseph is alive. I sing with Miriam as she leads the Jewish women through the Red Sea. I protest with the daughters of Zelophehad as they ask Moses for their inheritance. I sit with Deborah under her date tree as she judges the Jewish people. I hand Jael the tent peg to kill Sisera and save her nation. I pray with Hannah in the Temple as she beseeches God for a child. I fast with Esther as she prepares to approach Ahasuerus and try to save her people.

I go from the plains of the Fertile Crescent, the deserts of Egypt, the lush fields of Israel, and the palaces of Persia to a more recent time. I am witnessing a hell unlike any I have seen before. Women, skeletons, starve in concentration camps I can barely recognize my grandmother and great-grandmother with several other female relatives, shipped from a wealthy home in Hungary, to this cold Polish prison, Auschwitz. I help my cousin pull my great-aunt from the left line, and again from a wagon destined for certain death I shield my great-grandmother as she steals scraps of food from the kitchens and trades them for cigarettes for my grandmother to smoke I deny the non-kosher meat with my great-grandmother and live off of air I feel the starvation, the cold, the pain, with my Jewish sisters.

As soon as I have seen their nightmarish life conditions in the concentration camp, I find myself among a group of Partisans, girls turned into women prematurely, acting as men trained for battle. They are dressed like regular Greek villagers, but it’s obvious they are on a mission. They stop at a house with swastikas on flags outside of it, and start a fire inside.

“Captain Sarika!” one girl calls out. “Sarika Fortis! Have we done it right?” Smoke begins to curl out of the house’s windows. “Yes, Eleni,” the captain replies. “Now we must go! The Partisans must never be caught!” The women hurry from the scene and I run with them, marveling at their strength, their audacity, how such young women could stand up to tyranny and prejudice with no second thoughts.

“We are of the Line,” my mother says, talking about the strong line of women we descend from, and yes, all I can do is nod, all I can do is agree. All these women were strong, defying social norms, protesting prejudices that kept them down, always questioning authority, never taking no as an answer, always fighting, always working, always reaching their goal.