The Book Rabbi Sacks zt"l Couldn’t Stop Giving Away

When Rabbi Jonathan Sacks zt”l recommended a book as “an astonishingly inspiring book” and “one of the most inspirations books I have ever read,” it’s hard not to take notice.

A few years ago, I listened to a podcast where Rabbi Sacks zt”l was interviewed by popular media host Tim Ferriss.  Tim asked Rabbi Sacks to explain why “The Choice” by Edith Eger was so meaningful to him and is the book that he gifted more than any other.    Rabbi Sacks went on to describe with great passion and enthusiasm why “the Choice” made such a profound impact on him and why it wasn’t “just another Holocaust book.”  Rabbi Sacks acknowledged that “there are tens, and maybe hundreds of thousands, of them. And I try and read some, but I can’t possibly read all. But this…became a bestseller…I thought, ‘I must read this.’”

With that recommendation, I couldn’t resist and spent the next few days devouring this extraordinary book.  And this past week, with the passing of Dr. Edith Eger, that recommendation, and her message, feels even more powerful and enduring.

Like so many others, Edith was just a teenager when her family was taken from their home in Hungary and sent to Auschwitz.  And tragically, like so many others, Edith was immediately separated from her parents, both of whom she never saw again.  Edith and her sister Magda managed to stay together and spent the next year helping each other survive unimaginable horrors. 

This powerful and at times almost unbelievable book not only recounts her experiences in the camps, but also traces the difficult and disorienting years that followed, her eventual journey to the United States with her husband, and her long path toward healing.

Even after arriving in America, Edith continued to struggle with the weight of her past and the guilt of survival.

More than two decades after her liberation, Edith was handed a copy of psychiatrist Viktor Frankl’s “Man Search for Meaning.” Deeply moved by the parallels in their experiences, she wrote an article that eventually reached Frankl himself. His response helped spark a relationship that became a turning point in her journey of healing and self-discovery.

At the heart of her message is the very idea reflected in the book’s title: choice.As Rabbi Sacks zt”l told Tim Ferriss, “Essentially, her philosophy was very, very simple, and not unlike Viktor Frankl’s, which is whatever happens to us, we always have a choice. We always have a choice as to how to see ourselves in relation to what’s happening to us. Nobody can take away our mind. Nobody can take away how we define the situation. And it is that choice that’s the very essence of human freedom, liberty, and dignity.”

Or, as Edith herself put it, “In Auschwitz, we never knew from one moment to another what was going to happen.  I couldn’t fight or flee, but I learned how to stay in a situation and make the best of what is. I still had choices. So when we were stripped and shorn of our hair, Magda asked me, ‘How do I look?’ She looked like a mangy dog, but I told her: ‘Your eyes are so beautiful. I never noticed when you had all that hair.’ Every day, we could choose to pay attention to what we’d lost or what we still had.”

Ultimately, it is not our circumstances alone that define us, but how we respond to them.

Nowhere in the Torah is this more evident than in the contrast between Yaakov and Esav.  Despite sharing the same home and upbringing, their lives diverged dramatically. One became a patriarch of the Jewish people; the other charted a far different course. Their story reminds us that while background and environment shape us, they do not determine us. Our choices do.

Dr. William Glasser, author of Choice Theory, explains that “for all practical purposes, we choose everything we do…we choose all our actions and thoughts and, indirectly, almost all our feelings and much of our physiology.” (3-4) “We must replace our destructive behaviors with choosing to care, listen, support, negotiate, encourage, love, befriend, trust, accept, welcome, and esteem.” (21)

And Viktor Frankl, in recounting his experiences during the Holocaust, concludes, “We who lived in concentration camps can remember the men who walked through the huts comforting others, giving away their last piece of bread. They may have been few in number, but they offer sufficient proof that everything can be taken away from a [person] but one thing: the last of the human freedoms – to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.” (75)

I once had the opportunity to meet a young girl named Krizel during a visit to Israel.

Born without sight, she was abandoned as a child and had many social challenges.  She might easily have defined herself by what she lacked. Instead, through a program called Sulamot, she discovered music, and with it, a sense of purpose and possibility.   They perform in youth orchestras located in 14 communities across the country, gaining individual strengths as they learn to work cooperatively toward common goals. In addition to 18 orchestra programs, there is a special one for blind children.  That is Krizel’s orchestra. 

What stood out most was her outlook. She spoke about the joy of performing and the belief that “no matter who you are, you can do something meaningful.” It was a quiet but powerful reminder of what it means to choose possibility over limitation.

Life inevitably brings circumstances we did not plan and would never choose. That has always been true. But alongside that reality is another: within those circumstances, we still retain the ability to choose our response.

Like Edith and Krizel, we can choose how we show up, for ourselves, for our families, and for those around us. We can choose resilience, perspective, and even moments of gratitude.

Those choices don’t remove the challenges, but they do shape the way we live through them. And over time, they shape who we become.