One of the most surprising elements about the new HBO MAX documentary about Billy Joel, “And So It Goes,” is the singer’s Jewish story. His father’s family only narrowly escaped capture in the late 1930s. They owned a successful textile factory in Nuremberg that later was converted by the Nazis to make striped pajamas that were used at concentration camps. Later, his father, Howard, helped liberate Dachau, an experience that deeply traumatized him for the rest of his life. When Billy Joel was seven, Howard abandoned his family without explanation, moving back to Austria to start over.
Only as an adult was the famous rock and roller able to uncover the full story of his paternal family. Reuniting with his father in Vienna, he was surprised to discover he had a stepbrother, and of the horrors his family suffered during the Holocaust. While he knew he was Jewish, he had no idea what that really meant. Learning that so many of his family members were murdered at Auschwitz truly shocked him. In 2017 after the Unite the Right rally he wore a yellow star and declared to the world, “no matter what I am a Jew.”
In this week’s Torah portion Eikev, Moses lays out both the positive and the negative of our heritage. Eikev means burden, a foreshadowing of the struggles our people would face throughout our history. As we see today, and as Billy Joel learned through his father’s story, our Jewish heritage can be a burden, but it is also our greatest joy.
Shabbat Shalom,
Rabbi Alex