Save a Life and You Will Save the World
The painful memories that Deborah Sevigne had thrust upon her- brought on every time she heard the ambulance siren- would often come flooding back in a torrent of sad memories. For this she-wolf, the sound of the ambulance siren brought her back to that fateful day. That day her boyfriend walked out of their Parisian apartment that day twelve years ago and into a firestorm, into his doom. Rioters from the poor and foreign-born north of the city had torched cars, destroyed storefronts, resisted the police and knifed her boyfriend Adam Thierry to death. The temple she and her family attended was severely damaged in these riots- the stained-glass windows of the temple were smashed in, the twelve displays more than 300 years old, each one a different color and each one with a different emblem of the Twelve Tribes, were destroyed irreparably. And the most blasphemous thing happened to the graveyard- the largest Jewish graveyard in Paris was vandalized with swastikas and anti-Semitic expressions.
And yet, through all this, Deborah Sevigne remained strong- until she heard that Adam Thierry had died. A student at L'Ecole de Arte de Paris, this wolf was one of the greatest aspiring artists at the school before his death. In his paws, the paintbrush became a tool which dispensed light, color, and life to the easel. And his ambition in life was to move beyond the poverty of northern Paris to resurrect an art scene which in his opinion, "died the same day that Pablo Picasso breathed his last". But in one of the most inconsiderate, inhumane acts, his life was tragically cut short and snuffed out before the wolf could realize his dream. The careless anger which engulfed the French capitol those days overwhelmed the police force, threatening the lives and livelihoods of the people in Paris' impoverished north.
And while the casualties in lives were few, those who died like Adam Thierry had a profound effect on their friends through their absence. In all, six Frenchmen, mainly of the Jewish faith, passed away in the riots and only the French police could callously claim that everything was under control the whole time. Reparations would be sent to the communities affected, funerals paid for, temples and storefronts restored to the best of the government's abilities but nothing the French government could do would resurrect the dead or restore centuries-old stained glass to working order. Or remove the shock and anguish felt when the Jews of Paris saw their graveyard, where generations of Jewish business owners, rabbis, scalars, and workers rested covered with hated swastikas. And inside Deborah's soul, who could only cover her eyes with her paws whenever she looked at it, the damage to a Law scroll created over 400 years was most damaging to her.
"Have the lessons of the 1940's been forgotten so quickly? Will there be another Shoah?"
she would often wonder to herself, remembering how entire branches of the Sevigne pack were rounded up and killed in Polish death camps, due to the Nazi regime of Adolf Hitler decades ago. Often times, though, as she had learned, when people get angry only the worst attributes are brought out and the results are invariably devastating. The whole riot started with an action by the French government in support of Israel- the impoverished Arab and North African immigrant groups then formed a mob and destroyed much of what the Jewish community held dear before order was mercifully restored by the police. But by the time things had quieted down, millions of francs in damage had been done and the loss of the cultural treasures the Sevignes and other Jewish families held sacred was far beyond money. Whatever uneasy peace existed between the North Parisian Jewish community and their Arab neighbors was permanently lost. And yet they carried on with confidence and love, even to the point of forgiveness for the men who had butchered their cultural heritage. Deborah knew that forgiveness was the only way the cycle of hate would end.
Deborah would never admit to this fact, as she had a falling out with her father many years before but his writings as a rabbi and Talmudic scholar had a profound effect on her, especially after the death of her wolf boyfriend. For many years, David was a distant figure- the mystic in the black felt fedora and dark suit, still holding on to the garments of a Hasidic rebbe while espousing views which would have been more in line with the Conservative school of Jewish thought. Nevertheless, David Sevigne's books were viewed by modern scholars as important, especially "La Sagesse du Talmud pour des Personnes Aujourd'hui" a book which had been translated into five languages- his own daughter, however estranged she might have been, would see in his writings not a detached mystic but a teacher who was guiding her into deeper spiritual understanding through his knowledge of the Talmud.
"I have found that the works of 2nd-century mystic Judah haSar and his compatriots, written over a span of centuries and published as both the Palestinian and Babylonian Talmud to be indispensable in understanding Judaism, as reading the Torah is not enough to understand Jewish wisdom," David Sevigne's translated writing stated in the book, which Deborah read many times over for greater understanding. The time came that she understood every chapter and phrase, feeling as though her father had written it for her to assist in the grieving process, which in Judaism is not the least bit easy, with constant reminders of the friend who passed away. The one part that Deborah Sevigne read and re-read with vigor was his writings on the famous saying formulated by the Sanhedrin in its final days "Whoever saves a life, saves the world. But whoever destroys a life destroys the world."
It was repeated in her mouth and in her soul like a mantra and every time she thought back to it, she remembered her love of Adam Thierry. She remembered how his paws would meet with hers and they would stare into each other's golden eyes as wolves that had fallen in love, she remembered the vision they shared of the future, now shattered. She and Adam would be standing underneath the chuppah at the temple, where they would be married and have many children, all under the protection of God's angels.
But the wolf would sigh when she realized that none of those things would happen, at least not in this world, because of the senseless suffering inflicted upon her by angry men- senseless suffering and anger had been the cause of so much Jewish pain throughout history and at times, Ms. Sevigne felt that this process would repeat infinitely. But in her mind, she knew that in the world to come, she would marry Mr. Thierry and nothing would divide the two wolves ever again. And it was for this saying and the positive feelings it created that this wolf became a registered nurse, who would save the lives of so many people. For her, each patient she saved in that hospital in Paris could have been someone else's son, daughter, sister, brother, boyfriend or girlfriend.
Thusly, she had like a phoenix from the ashes, came through all these negative experiences, the loss of her lover, the estrangement from her father, the terrorism that had gripped her hometown, a stronger woman. For the wolf had applied that ancient wisdom from the Talmud in attempt to help others- she now moved on as the Yahrzeit, the one-year anniversary of a friend's death grew near with confidence and love. Sevigne and her pack had learned the valuable lesson that to save a life is to save the world.