In a venerable synagogue in Prague, there is a display of paintings and drawings by children. It’s a lovely exhibit – until you realize that the children who created these pictures all perished in the Holocaust.
There is one sketch in the exhibit that’s especially evocative. It was drawn by a ten-year-old named Frantisek Brozan. Frantisek’s picture is a simple line drawing of a man with striped pants. He has two eyes, a dot for a nose, a mustache and a hat – but no mouth or arms. It seems like an expression of helplessness: no way to speak, no arms to reach out or touch. But inside the torso of the man, Frantisek drew another man – and, if you look carefully, you can see it’s that same man.
What is this “man with the man”?
In the display, there is a card placed next to the picture. The picture is titled Soul and Body.
Rabbi Naomi Levy saw the picture on a trip to Prague and was deeply moved by it. She writes in her book Einstein and the Rabbi: Searching for the Soul that the picture shows that “even in hell the soul can create beauty”:
Frantisek is asking us to see the soul within us, the “me” inside the “me”. The “me” that God created, the “me” that cannot be taken away even when we are imprisoned. The me that contains the goodness, the potential, the strength, that God has placed in us.
Frantisek Brozan was robbed of the ability to realize his potential, but they could not take away his spirit, his vision of an eternal soul.
Who we are in life, what we believe, how we respond to life’s challenges, is centered in our souls, the place where God dwells in us. It is that soul that calls us to compassion before judgement, joy before fear, reconciliation before division, and humility before pride.
Today’s Gospel challenges us not to let the negative influences of the world, prevent our soul from influencing our decisions and actions.