His group reached the General Government border town of Dobrzyn-Wista (sic Dobrzyn nad Wisla) on 8 September, Erev Shabbat, not knowing whether to continue. Invoking the precedent of Joshua’s plea for Sabbath’s onset to wait until he could conclude his battle victoriously (Citing
Pirkei Derabi Eliezer ch. 52 to Joshua 10:12), Gelernter asked them to stop for the Sabbath—
making a miracle possible. They stayed in place and on Selihot (10 September, Sunday AM)
they prayed, saying over and over again with special emphasis:
The soul is Yours [God]. The body is Your work. Have mercy on Your people
(Amalekhah) [i.e., in history], O have mercy on Your people. (‘Lekhah yom….’ Selihot
Lekhal Yom). Throughout this episode, the God of prayer remained the God of metahistory.


…….Reports about the Yamim Noraim, which coincided with or immediately followed upon
the invasions, indicate that the relationship remained intact, and consciously so. The Skempa
Jews praying on the first day of Rosh Hashanah in Dobrzyn-Wista, according to the
contemporary account, pleaded (apparently during Tashlikh) “Out of the depths I cry to Thee, O
Lord! Lord, hear my voice! Let Thine ears be attentive to the voice of my supplication” (Psalms
130:2), with such fervor that the report said the plea ascended in ecstasy through the gates of
Rahamim up to the throne of glory—even as those standing watch urged them to lower their
voices. On the second day of Rosh Hashanah Gelernter recognized that in fact, all mankind was
passing before God like a flock of sheep to be judged for slaughter—evoking in his mind the
rabbinic interpretation of Leviticus 27:32, where each tenth lamb was sacrificed, and sanctified
(“Vekhal ma’aser bakai vatson, kal asher ya’avor tahat hashevet ha’asiri yehiyeh kadosh
La’adonai”): Lambs gathered at the door of their shed to be close to their mothers, who waiting
desperately at the other side to find out which of their children would be marked red—for
sacrifice. (Bekhorot 58b. See Rambam, Hilkhot Bekhorot 7:11). On Yom Kippur (23
September), back in Skempa, fearing that his congregants would be taken to forced labor like the
Jews of Lipno and their rabbi Shmuel Halevi Brot, he invoked the High Priest’s plea “may your
homes not become your graves” (“Ve’al anshei sharon Hashem Yerahem yehi ratson shelo ya’asu
bateihem kivreihem.” See Ta’anit 22b) and the congregants prayed to God desperately during the
closing services (Neilah) to open up His gates of Rahamim to them (Ringelblum). That is, the
metahistorical stream continued, the mythic language of God’s actions fit together with the
empirical realities of the present.