I felt totally immersed listening to my Newtown, Pa. Hadassah chapter’s guest speaker CNN’S Elie Honig, producer of the documentary, 60 Years Ago We Saw the Face of Evil. Honig was clearly infused with a Jewish pride that mirrored my own!

A CNN analyst and former federal prosecutor, Honig is also a grandson of Holocaust survivors. The core of his presentation (and the subject of his documentary) was the Jerusalem trial of the malevolent murderer Adolf Eichmann. To my mind, the guilty verdict, with its subsequent hanging, was a belated bitter-faintly sweet victory over the pain, suffering and unspeakable losses and grief that the survivors of the Shoah (Holocaust) endured.

Though capital punishment like the execution of Eichmann continues to be extremely rare in Israel, it is reassuring to me that the hanging of Eichmann, the epitome of malignant evil, was considered by the Israeli court of three judges to be unequivocally just!

Besides the inconceivable murder of six million Jews (along with other “groups” of equally innocent human beings), the intrinsic value of such  “lost” lives surely became like mournful echoes in the courtroom.

Judaism teaches that life is a sacred gift from God. As you may well know, the Hebrew word chai means life and I, like many Jews, wear chai necklaces. This brings me back to the Hadassah event, which featured an alluring display of symbolic, evocative Jewish jewelry.

My eyes were drawn to a delicate chai charm. For me, chai has a uniquely meaningful and heart-tugging association, which began with our family’s first visit to Israel. Led by our Ohev Shalom’s Rabbi Eliott Perlstein, we were joined by (among others) close friends, their son and daughter and those........

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