Document

MORRIS GORDON December 28, 1989

Pages missing 20 minutes (01.20)

A: ...the German part of it was just about over and we thought everything was through. Then we felt the more serious part was with the uh Japanese carrying on and and continuing to kill our people in China, and so they said you have more work to do. Many of us were hoping that we would be ready to leave. We weren't ready to leave. So I was sent to China and I was sent there and all I can say is that it was the most meaningful experience because I never believed - I may as well move right into Shanghai - I ended up in Shanghai, not thinking there were any Jews at all. What would Jews be doing in Shanghai, China?. I announced to my men that we're going to celebrate at least the service of victory, we were going to celebrate the first service of freedom, and we had just...

Q: OK. I need to back up for one minute, because I need people to understand a little bit. Uh, can you tell us - you came with a group of men and this would be ...

A: This group that we, I was part of The Flying Tigers. The Flying Tigers were that part of the Air Force which dedicated itself to General Chenault (ph) to help him in winning the war in China. And I was part of the Flying Tigers. And when I, and after the war I did, I was invited to Peking where at the palace I was given a palace for the weekend. Three of us were chosen as the symbols to show that this, that we had won this war, and I was given with them, with the with the navigator who knocked down forty-eight planes or something, uh uh I mean a pilot, a bombardier, whatever it was, three of us were given the Chinese Medal of Honor.

And I value that because I found out that nobody else every got the Chinese Medal of Honor.

But that was for being in an American serving in the Flying Tigers and in the 14th Air Force and doing my work in China.

Q: How did you get to go to Shanghai?

A: Really by orders. They they wanted a chaplain and they wanted a Jewish chaplain. They look around and they see where there is no Jewish chaplain. They wanted me to come there. So I came to be the chaplain and I announced immediately after I got there when when we had won the war, I felt that we should celebrate the winning of the war, and we took a very big building - I think I have a picture of it - and we got the various groups together and I sent buses to pick up my men and a lot of non-Jews wanted to come. Everybody wanted to come to celebrate the victory. So I took the largest place I could. I knew this would happen. And I come to into the building, and I see youngsters there and they look little Nazis - blond hair, blue eyes, and they talked with heavy German accents. I couldn't believe what I saw. What were they doing here?. Why would German kids come to my service?. I finally found out.

These kids were from the ghetto and they came with other men and women - walked eight miles from the ghetto. They had no way of getting there. How they got there I don't know. How they knew that we were having this service I don't know. But there they were. A whole group and my men are standing around - they hardly had a place to sit. They were standing all over the place. We start the service. It was cold. Children whom we didn't know, looked like little Nazis, spoke with heavy German accents, little English........ (ph) and my men standing around - what did I do to them?. And as I said now we shall turn and sing "Shma.

Israel.". "Hear oh Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord....". As I turned to Shma Israel, the kids looked up. Hey, these are Jews. The soldiers looked down and saw the kids singing Shma Israel, so with Shma Israel, "Hear oh God the Lord our God, the Lord is one," the whole room became one and the soldiers start pointing to the men and the soldiers melted into the crowd and suddenly I saw kids on soldiers! laps. The whole thing became one magnificent beautiful service of victory. And when it was over I turned to to to the, who are you?. So they invited me to the ghetto. So I have a picture here of me the next week. I'm in the ghetto.

And from the ghetto I found out that these children attend schools. So then I went, after conducting a sabbath service, which was very unusual - they would never have taken a non- orthodox rabbi to conduct - they didn't even know. They just know I was a chaplain so they didn't bother uh you know - today's world you wouldn't have an orthodox, a conservative rabbi conducting uh an orthodox uh sabbath morning service. This is what I did and they were so pleased and that Bar Mitzvah boy was so wonderful, and and the family ...

Q: Back-up. What Bar Mitzvah boy?

A: A kid from the ghetto. A youngster who was turning thirteen and it it was just a delight because a Saturday morning what does he have to do for bar mitzvah - not the speech. He gives a portion of the Talmud - he gives a portion where he asks an impossible question, and I myself said to myself, what is the answer to that question. Then he answers it on the spot.

And while he's answering, he's thinking. He's going na-na-na, and then he gets stuck because he's a little stuck in his own thought. As he gets stuck, the whole congregation sings ya-ba- bam, ya-ba-bam, ya-ba-bam. Then he raises his hand. He's got it. They stop on a dime. He continues na-da-da. Whenever he gets stuck they sing and then they, he carried through with this dissertation of one hour on an impossible subject with an impossible question at the age of thirteen. I was visibly impressed that this is the way they celebrate a Bar Mitzvah. And then I went to the schools the next day. They invited me to school. And I went to the juniors and seniors in high school because they already had learned English. They were studying English. And I decided to have them write a composition and the composition is "Home Is Where Your Heart Is.". I said where is your home?. Where is your heart now that you've come from all over the world?. And how thrilling it was to have youngsters who had never heard of Israel but now they say we don't want to go back any place, any place. We want to go place to a land that we can call our own and the only land in the world that we would trust today would be Israel. So the 90%, then 10% of course said they'd like to go to America, so they were there. But I have used some of their original, their letters to quote from them to show of this universal love that they had to go to a homeland, to Israel. Now here we are in China, and I don't know how - what you want to continue in here, but I have...

Q: Let let me let ask you if I could a couple of questions. Can you describe for me uh the Jewish ghetto in Shanghai as you found it?. You have given me two incidents but after the service and after the bar mitzvah, uh you learned about the Jewish community. Tell me what you learned?. What what how was it structured?. What had people done?. That sort of thing.

A: Well, the Jewish community of Shanghai which I came into and this was already uh this was right after the war, the Joint Distribution Committee and uh of of the Jewish people heard about their Shanghai ghetto...well first of all, how did we become a ghetto?. How did it become a ghetto?. The Japanese became very friendly with Nazis, and they didn't want to be outdone when they heard what Hitler was doing to the Jews. The Jews were living very peacefully in China and in Shanghai. But as they came and conquered Shanghai they decided that they must follow and imitate uh the Nazi empire. Otherwise they wouldn't be uh good allies, so they immediately started to introduce some of the customs that were prevalent in Nazi Germany. They immediately said, here, you Jews have to be within the scope of this.__.

..(PH) settlement so to speak. This is where you have to be. You have certain hours you can't go out. This is where you will be. Your schools will be here, and they made a complete and they actually had uh I I don't know, I remember some of the kids saying they had badges which after the war they ripped off, and had all kinds of symbols to remind them that they are Jews, that they are Jews. That they are different from all other people and this was the stigmata that that the Japanese carried over merely to ape uh Hitler's concept of what should be, this image of the Jew to the world. And this is what they tried to imitate in the ghetto. But the the Joint Distribution Committee came in immediately with food and with equipment and I was amongst the first that was standing there and I have a picture with me with little children where we're giving them food baskets and and trying to show them that there are other people out there who care for them, who want to help them. And this is where I met them. And then I have stories of their schooling, and ...

Q: Tell me some of those that as you know them, as your experiences were in the schools?

A: Well, they had two types of schooling. There was a man there by the name of Saul Livery (ph). Does the name ring a bell?. Saul Livery was in the Shanghai ghetto. He was the spirit of Judaism in the Shanghai ghetto. He decided that even though we're in these dismal surroundings, there's one thing that we need to know. We have to know our heritage. We have to know our history. We have to know our literature. And so Saul Livery was the spirit that motivated and energized not just the Yeshiva learning, but that the Jews should know literature and history even on a Hebraic (ph) secular level. Hebrew literature, see. He wanted to teach them Hebrew so he formed a series of religious schooling which was the saving grace of these young people. Then they had to have their secular schooling so there were there were two great schools - one was the Kaduri (ph) School and the other was another high school which I, slips my mind but I have it in my notes, and in these schools the children went to high school to learn their secular subjects. When I came in to the little Jewish schools, I found out that they had nothing to write on. The kids would pick up a piece of paper from the trash and pick up a piece of paper from the trash and pick up a piece of black slate that writes and these were their notebooks. And I saw that. I thought I must do something about it. So I sent back home and they sent me books and and paper and notebooks and pencils and so on - the greatest gift. Imagine children considering it the greatest gift I could give them. When I came one day to their to their little schools and I handed out notebooks with pencils, with pens, with books, with with all the equipment that they needed. They said I revolutionized the the school system in the ghetto because we gave them pens and pencils. When I think of what a gift means to somebody - they they they kissed my hands, the kids, for for the fact that I brought them this. The same as after that first service. At at the end of that first service I'm standing at the door trying to see who these people are as they leave to say goodbye, and they started kissing my chaplain's insignia which I have there. The Jewish, because I had a Jewish star on it - they say you brought freedom, freedom to us and these, the whole the whole ghetto felt that America saved them.

That we brought freedom to the people from the Nazi empire. It was a very thrilling moment in in American history when we were considered the proponents of freedom. It's being recapitulated right now in every country of Eastern Europe that that that when you .. OK.

Any other questions?

Q: Yes. Tell me some more about other places in the vic...uh in the ghetto that you visited. Tell me about people's homes. What were they like?

A: Well, the homes that I visited, and I'll give you an example of this bar mitzvah - I went into a little house. They must have had about five or six in one room. They they they went from hand to mouth as far as food is concerned. Uh some standing on food lines and some uh trying to eke out a living from each other, just like in in the ancient in the in the ghetto of of of former times, of of three, four hundred years ago. What I found most exciting was the fact that the the Judaism which to many of them had never meant anything, I found that the the Jews of the survivors went one way or another. I thought that most of them would turn against their faith and I thought that as I went in one home after another these were survivors and these were the children and these were children without any parents who they adopted as their own. As I went into these homes I felt why would they want to carry on this heritage where there they were told - by the way some of them are so assimilated, so far-removed from anything Jewish - they looked so German that they could be an example of blonde hair, blue eyes, clipped - an example of German aristocracy, and went into their pitiful homes and saw their lovely children, saw that these children weren't even their children. They were adopting orphans who - by the way that's quite a story that these orphans were brought half way around the world and I found out later, you remember there's a story about Hannah Szenes [NB: Sennesh] who who who said I'm a match that was not to be consumed, where she volunteered to help save - I found out that Haganah, that the Jewish underground, had formed a railway and taken youngsters and put them into Christian homes who put their lives on the stake to save Jewish kids where the kids would be hidden in these Christian homes by day, and in the evening, at sunset they would pick them up and ride them through the mountains and ride them to the next town where they had another Christian home. I didn't know that story. And here I find that these kids were telling about the Israelis who who from from Haganah, went out there to save these kids. This was a chapter that that that really was hair-raising to me, to find these kids saved from in that kind of situation. As far as the - let me give you this bar mitzvah. Here's a lovely little kid, little boy who would have known nothing if it weren't for the fact that a fellow like Saul Livery so to it that there was Jewish education. And took the few that knew Jewish education and made schools around them. By the way, not only schools - they created a choir, a choir of forty voices that came and sang at my first service. They had uh men with such beautiful voices - they called them cantors.

They had operatic voices. I had an operatic singer conducting my Friday night service. With such a voice I wish I had video and I wish I had sound recording to hear that voice. To me it was, an operatic tenor like like Jan Peerce or Richard Tucker the days of...so here was my service where these people walked in and and and they - forty voice choir. An operatic singer to help me conduct a service, so at the beginning it was very cold because they did their Germanic music and I didn't get in to it. It wasn't until they let me take over with an opening hymn "Shma Israel" that the whole group got together. That that's an aside. But the beauty of that experience is that I see this youngster who could easily - first of all, how he survived - he was an orphan - how he survived the Nazi massacre and ended up in Shanghai in itself is is beyond understanding. Since he was only thirteen he wasn't one of those that wrote my compositions, so I started to talk with him and its another one of those stories. He he saw his - the knock on the door - he he saw them take his father and his mother and his sister and he were left and then and then two days later his sister was taken because she was a beautiful girl, and this kid saw it at four, five, six years old and he's telling this story and now he's going to be bar mitzvahed in Shanghai, all alone. His mother disappeared. So this is the kind of story that I got in in in the ghetto and and when you get it directly, when you hear it from a kid's lips, it's different than than the whole six million story again and again. It's just different. A bar mitzvah. This kid to have such a Jewish bar mitzvah. When they had to celebrate after the service, I, they said come and join us in a drink. They had one bottle of schnapps, of liquor, which they had kept for the whole year and every time they take a few they fill it with water. They filled the bottle with water so it says liquor. I said I don't drink.

They says this you can drink. I said I don't drink. They said this you can drink. Take a look.

I'm drinking water. But they have a big bottle of Jewish liquor, uh liquor, and they, everybody drinks it as if LALHAIM (ph) and they make believe they're they're getting drunk on it. It's the same. They have five bottles like that, practically all water, but this was their their schnapps. This was their SABBATH THING and a little old piece of herring which was this big - I didn't want to take anything because here I come from where we have everything in the service. They insisted. From their nothingness they insisted that I have something. So I have a picture of one of these bigger homes, a big basement where we were meeting sabbath morning, after the service. So there's a a little bit of the flavor of what I'm talking about in in in in Shanghai. Now I can, I don't know - based on your timing experience I would uh I could uh I could tell you the end of that story. Alright. The end of the story is that I started badgering the Pentagon that I want these kids out. I want a ship. I want somebody to come.

It's after the war now. By the way, we couldn't get out after the war because there were no, there was no transportation. They felt that the, that the people from Europe were more entitled to get back than we who came in a little later. So all the boats and all means of transportation, they gave us no idea of when we would get out of of Shanghai. Uh my luck was that my wife was pregnant with a child, and at the end of that period uh the doctor said look, something has gone wrong, and it's only because of her uncertainty of where you are - it's getting worse. She can't conceive of having the child without your presence. Since the war is over, he wrote to my colonel - so the colonel saw to it that I was able. I took a plane that goes around the world every week - we called it the Marco Polo flight - every week it takes mail from all the Army bases - I got on the mail plane with all the Army - and I got a lift to Chicago where my wife was. And and I traveled day and night and came just a few days before the child came to be. It was a very exciting experience. I didn't tell them I was coming because I didn't know I'd get there, so it's a wonder she didn't have the child when I walked in. But that's that's a story in itself. I did come home in time for my...but that meant that I would not be there to fulfill my mission which was to get these people out, to get these kids out. And I badgered them and badgered them and finally I learned that they finally sent a ship and the ship took a thousand of them out of Shanghai and that picture of the thousand of them out of Shanghai was shown last summer at the B'nai B'rith Museum, at the Klutznick Museum. They had a whole section on Shanghai, and in the section on Shanghai, over my torah, they had a picture of all these young people or whatever ages they were, who who finally got out, and I never let up until they one day they said yes, we will get you a ship.

Enough telegrams, enough. And that's how I knew that my hope for mission. And the end of that story is even more exciting. Uh well, first of all, 1 was given a dinner here by the Jewish War Veterans for all the service uh found out that I had more medals than most chaplains who served in the service. Uh I didn't know that at that time, but they had all my medals and clusters and all that, and then the fellow who ran it was a fellow by the name of Kiwi (ph) - I had never heard his name. I said what makes you so excited about this dinner, and you've given your life to it. Why?. He says because when you come and take a look at this picture, you'll see that I'm on it. I was one of those that you saved from Shanghai. And so the man who ran the dinner here at the Hilton, Jewish War Veterans and and let's see, who who was with me. We honored I think the Ambassador of Israel and myself, but the man worked on it so hard because he was on that picture. That picture by the way at this point is in limbo. It went from the B'nai B'rith Museum to whatever museum supplied it or whatever individual supplied it.

Q: We can we can discuss that later.

A: We'll discuss that later, because I'd like you to find it.

Q: OK. We move on. Let's go back to Shanghai. (Alright -just a word, another word about Shanghai...). We have time. We have time.

A: We have time. As far as I'm concerned I'm coming to the end of my story unless we want to give more of the other parts, but what happened to the end of the Shanghai story?. After I left, I just wan to tell you after I left, a few years ago I took a number of doctors - for some reason or another a lot of them were gastrologists - why I got into that I don't know - but they had sons who wanted to be bar mitzvahed. And they were members of my congregation in uh HAR (ph) Shalom. As you know I uh I am very privileged that of the eight synagogues that I was, that God has enabled me to found on the outskirts of Washington, one of them went out of its way to name the sanctuary for me, so in the Rabbi Morris Gordon sanctuary, they were members, and they went with me to to Israel to have their sons bar mitzvahed on Masada, who we had forty, with their families, all of us on Masada celebrating a double bar mitzvah and then we decided to go to Elat, so our buses, our filled bus, we're traveling to Elat and we suddenly come to a little cross-road. It looked like this one was a newer road.

We didn't know exactly - there were men standing with drills making the rocks of of drill...of cracking the rocks of which to make the road to the south. So I got off the bus since this is my people and I was the tour leader, and I said uh.___.. (ph), please, tell me which road would be best to take to Elat. I mean I never knew you had two roads. So one of them looks at me and one and one says in Hebrew,.__..... (ph) Chaplain Gordon. Are you Chaplain Gordon?. Yes. Rabbi?. I looked at them. There were five men. How could I recognize them?.

I mean they were thirteen and they're thirty-five or whatever it is. I didn't recognize any one of them. You must be...and they picked me up and everybody on the bus thought I'm going to get killed here, these big husky guys and they wouldn't let me go, and but we had to continue our journey. So they told me that they were on the boat. They were saved. They remembered me. They even gave me uh the psalm that they recited as they got on that boat in Shanghai. It's the psalm with which uh.___.... (ph), uh we sing onto thee oh Lord uh the song of a._...., and then we return,......., when God returned the people to Zion, they returned as those who dream and that those who sow in tears will reap in joy. They quoted the psalm that they quoted as they were going on that boat to leave Shanghai.............

a....... We were like those who dream. And they started saying it to me to show me that they remembered, that would L...they didn't realize I wasn't even there when they got on the boat. They were sure, they were waving that I must have been there to wave goodbye, and now here in Israel, they complete the story and I look at them and I said, but is this such a wonderful thing to do. All of you are cracking rocks. I said uh are you en...enjoying this?.

And one of them says uh Chaplain Gordon,.......... (ph). These rocks are mine. That's all they said. One guy said it. These rocks are mine. I'll never forget it. This is what they had dreamed of - that if they're going to crack rocks and if they're going to build homes, it's going to be in their own land. And they're not going to do it anymore for strangers in this foreign land. That's the way they spoke. That's the way they dreamed, and my men finally came off the off the bus and they surrounded them and we had a real - my men always have little food or a little schnapps and then they had the party that they didn't have in the ghetto in Shanghai. They had at the road to Elat. So there is the uh how that thing ended. At this point there are there are few who would like to get my story for some reason or other uh I never was able to write down. I have my original hundred and sixty-eight different experiences in Jungle, experience in China. I have these letters that these children wrote, when I said home is where your heart?. Where is your home?. Each one wrote a letter to to tell me where their heart is and where their home is. All these I have in a in a book with a couple of chapters that I started, but at the same time that I started thinking that I had finished - the areas of my life I told you was was schooling then synagoguing. Uh the first part was a rabbi of a synagogue. The next part was starting synagogues without enumeration, just as my love for the.___.

(ph) and then and then the war experience, and the fourth part was going to be put it all together. To write it all up. But I got involved in a universal aspect which I just mention one word - I am Chairman of the Board of PAIRS, Practical Application of Intimate Relationship Skills, the only course today in the country and perhaps in the world that says that you can go through high school and college without ever learning how to live side-by-side as a couple, with pleasure. How to overcome pain and live with pleasure.

Q: Rabbi, not for this tape OK.

A: Not for this tape, but I wanted you to know that we were just in Israel and they've introduced it into the University of Israel and it's now in Australia. It's being, it just was, they gave me a book in Hebrew on this course. It's in Russian. It's in Chinese and it's Burma, India, and all over the world, so I just want you to know that that's my universal aspect. How to make this world a better place to live in by putting couples together more pleasurably. It's in this issue of New Woman and four other magazines. OK.

Q: OK. Thank you. Uh.

A: Can I put in just one word.

Q: No, no more plugs. (OK. I loose.). No more plugs. No plugs allowed. No, thank you. The Shanghai experience is very important and I I thank you. I think what I'd like to do is, if you have nothing more, is to stop unless there's and go to the things that you've brought unless you have something else on Shanghai that you want to tell us.

A: Right now it doesn't come to mind. I don't want to force the issue because if I think of something I'll go off into a long rampage (ph) on another aspect of Shanghai. I mean I could talk more about the life. I could talk more about what was happening, but I feel I gave you the salient points.

Q: OK. OK. Then what we're going to do at this point is, Barney, why don't we stop the film and let the camera do, do it's thing.

TECHNICAL CONVERSATION

Q: OK. Let's take the knife. (Technical conversation) Tape #2

A: ...and this particular knife when I, it was lost - it wasn't lost - it was stolen I presume when I ended up in one of these, with one of these tribes after we were lost in the jungle, and we partook of food and I used it to open up the coconuts. We only ate uh food that had a cover over it so that we didn't partake of uh the food that they touched with their water and their hands. And so I broke open the things and I ate it and and used the knife and then later on I found out that I was missing the knife, and this is the story that I told you. They punish somebody who steals from a stranger with death. They have a lot of interesting uh things that they do. By the way the way I was able to communicate was because I was a chaplain and uh the head man would come to our base to bring fruits and vegetables from this particular tribe, so I was able to talk with him in English and able to get the story. He hearing I was a chaplain became very friendly with me because I, he felt I was in the same work. To me it was very interesting to see the young people sitting and and and swaying back and forth and and and praying sort of as they learned. Uh to me it was just like a Yeshiva in the school where I studied.

Q: OK. I think that's it. (Technical Conversation) OK. Let's go to the challis since we're still in Burma. (Technical Conversation)

A: This is the challis that the Catholic (technical conversation)... This is the challis that the Catholic chaplain brought to me on the eve of my leaving on that first trip of the Burma Road. He asked me to use it for his men and to tell them that he presented it for their services, but in the meantime I made it do triple duty. I used it for my protestant services, for my Catholic services, and I used it because it was much more beautiful than the little glass that I had for Fri...sabbath morning and Friday evening kiddish (ph) so I used it and it's really a sanctified cup. It's sanctified by the dignity of three religions being molded into the oneness that united all of us as we served our country overseas.

Q: Perfect. Very good. Thank you. Ok. The seal please, then the medal. You got that in Burma as well right. That was for the Burmese service, right. That was the Chinese medal...

A: I got it in China.

Q: Alright, then hold it. Let them, you got the medal first?

A: I got this first. Yes.

Q: Then let's do the metal first.

A: And with three, with a number of clusters but we didn't bring them in. (Technical conversation.). This is the bronze star which they, which is a medal for service beyond the call of duty. It was primarily given to me because | volunteered to take the first trip on the newly completed Burma Road. I didn't realize it would be under constant sniper attack. I didn't realize that I would never make the full trip and that my jeep would be shot out from under me and I would loose my associate. However, it does symbolize to me the entire experience which I found a challenge and I found it very wonderful to reminisce about. I don't know about going through it, but it's wonderful to reflect on it.

Q: Thank you. OK. The seal. (Technical conversation.). Well wait. This came after Shanghai, or before Shanghai. When when did you get this.

A: Uh, on the way to Shanghai.

Q: On the way to Shanghai. So we're ready for that.

A: Yeah. I was flown across the hump which I didn't make by boat, by, well, I'll explain that.

(Technical conversation.). This is the Chinese Medal of Honor. This is what uh they gave out three of these to a pilot, a bombardier and a chaplain to symbolize the American service through the Flying Tigers to provide supplies for our victory in that part 0 the world.

(Technical conversation.)

Q: OK. The ark. (Technical conversation.)

LONG PAUSE - TECHNICAL CONVERSATION

A: OK. I'd like to uh I'd like to explain that this is the torah, both the ark and the torah itself (technical conversation)... This is the torah, the ark and the torah itself which was made for me after I was pulled out of the water after my jeep was destroyed trying to cross the Himalayan Mountains and a Chinese officer would come to visit me in my hospital bed and he made a torah and he knew about ten commandments and that's all he knew about Judaism so he put Roman numerals from one to ten to symbolize the ten commandments and he put a Jewish star because he saw the Jewish star at the top of my chaplain's insignia, so he combined his decoration. All I wanted was a little something in which to carry my torah which I then took with me around the world and from Burma to China. With this I conducted the first service of freedom in China, in Shanghai as people gathered from all the surrounding areas in order to join us with the Jews of the Shanghai ghetto who had walked eight miles to attend this service with this ark. (Technical conversation.). You must understand that the enameled surface was done by the Jewish War Veterans. We didn't have that kind of bright-finished surface. They redid the surfacing. It wasn't the shiny bright little surface when I brought it back.

TECHNICAL CONVERSATION I would like to say that the torah as you know symbolizes everything that's sacred and holy to us and to me it was very exciting to me to see these Shanghai orphans of the of the Nazi holocaust running over. They wanted to touch the torah. They wanted to touch the ark. They wanted to kiss it because to them this symbolized that the Jews are alive and that their people will live.