Dear Anne Frank
Through the lens of Jewish wisdom, the most famous diary in the world becomes a window into faith, prayer, and repentance.
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This is a guest essay written by Nir Menussi, an Orthodox Rabbi, author, and teacher.
“I hope I will be able to confide everything to you, as I have never been able to confide in anyone, and I hope you will be a great source of comfort and support.”
These are the opening words of the most famous personal diary in the world, the diary of Anne Frank.
The Diary of a Young Girl bears testimony to the two years in which Anne, together with her parents, sister, and four other Jews, hid in the secret annex of a Dutch family’s home in Amsterdam before the Nazis discovered them and sent them to concentration camps.
The diary describes the friction-packed, tense and demanding daily life of eight people living in a small, hidden space under constant threat of capture, along with the inner thoughts and conflicts of a teenage girl.
Anne Frank’s diary stands as the bestselling diary worldwide, the most successful book ever written by a Jewish woman, and the most widely read work by anyone under thirty. With 35 million copies sold and translations into 79 languages, it ranks among the most translated books in history.
In addition, it serves as the world’s most widely read book about the Holocaust, providing many their only window into the Jewish people’s horrific ordeals during World War II. Each year, half a million people visit Anne’s hiding place, and people worldwide still write to her as if she were alive. Each one of these facts is amazing in itself, but becomes even more remarkable when considering that The Diary of a Young Girl was written by someone not yet 15 years old.
Anne Frank grew up in an assimilated Jewish family with little connection to observant Judaism. Nevertheless, by Divine Providence she was granted the privilege of representing the entire Jewish nation to millions worldwide.
The Ba’al Shem Tov, founder of the Chasidic movement, taught that everything should be viewed through the prism of faith and Torah wisdom. Let us explore what inspiration we might draw from Anne Frank’s story through this lens.
Diary as Prayer
Anne Frank wrote the opening lines to her diary almost as if they were intended for the ear of a living confidante. In fact, in order to emphasize just how much her diary is like a real friend to her, she later named her diary “Kitty.” In some of the theatrical productions of the book, “Kitty” has even become an actual character, who watches the play’s events from the side and narrates Anne’s inner thoughts.
The idea of writing or speaking to an invisible confidante obviously reminds us of prayer. Indeed, the opening words of Anne’s diary sound like an appeal that any believer in the power of prayer might make to God. The Creator is omniscient and knows everything that is going on inside us, better than we know ourselves. This is why some identify the need to pray as a desire to get in touch with our innermost selves.
Fully identifying God with our inner being is of course self-contradictory and detaches us from our faith in God as creator. However, this idea does contain a kernel of truth: It is rooted in the belief that God is present at the core of our souls. We can therefore approach God with the same directness and simplicity with which we may write a diary.
So the lesson from Anne Frank is that writing a personal diary, particularly during times of stress and suffering, is analogous to pouring out our hearts to God in prayer. A verse captures this stance: “The prayer of a pauper as he shrouds himself and pours his words out before God.”1 At times, when we feel as powerless as a pauper, we should freely pour our hearts out before God, as if we were writing our personal diary.
An Exalted Soul
Anne Frank’s role as representative of the Jewish nation to millions teaches us that her young soul possessed an extraordinary quality and was given an important mission.
The writing talent that characterized her from a young age; the diary that she received just a month before going into hiding; the amazing story of the diary’s survival and of her father who published it — all these serve as a backdrop serving to reveal the light of her soul to the world, illuminating the hearts of so many.
After the diary was published and received unprecedented success, challenges to its authenticity arose. A number of Holocaust-deniers began to claim that it had not been written by Anne Frank.
Some claimed that its author was Meir Levin, the journalist who published the diary in America and wrote the first script based on it, while others pointed a finger at Anne’s father, Otto Frank, claiming he wrote it in order to reinforce the “lie” of the Holocaust and make a fortune on his daughter’s account. Some even went so far as to claim that Anne Frank herself had never existed. Otto Frank fought legal battles with some of these people until his passing in 1980.
Though these claims are nothing more than antisemitic provocations, there is something to be learnt from them. Strange as it may sound, when people claim that you don’t exist, or that what you are saying is unreliable, that may be a sign of your greatness. The Ba’al Shem Tov himself has suffered a similar fate at the hands of individuals considered bona fide historians, who claim he existed only in the myriad legends about him.
The Biblical figure of Job, history’s most famous sufferer, provides another parallel. The Talmud presents widely varying opinions about his character, era, and even his existence. It seems that the question of one’s existence is related not only to greatness, but for some mysterious reason also to suffering. In fact, according to one opinion, Job’s wife was none other than Dinah, Jacob’s daughter, who also suffered great anguish in her life.
Souls whose existence has been immersed in doubt are rooted, we may say, at a very lofty level of Godliness itself — whose presence in our lives depends, more than anything else, on our belief or disbelief in it. In Chasidic terminology, the soul’s power of faith originates in the hidden and elevated level of Godliness called radla, an acronym for “the head that is unknown [to others] and unknowing [of itself].” We might suggest that Anne Frank’s soul stems from this exalted plane.
A Teshuvah Diary
Primo Levi, an Auschwitz survivor whose writings expanded public awareness of the Holocaust, observed:
“One single Anne Frank moves us more than the countless others who suffered just as she did but whose faces have remained in the shadows. Perhaps it is better that way; if we were capable of taking in all the suffering of all those people, we would not be able to live.”
Levi’s words echo the fundamental Kabbalistic concept of tzimtzum (contraction). According to this teaching, God wanted to create the world and illuminate it with His infinite light, but knew that a finite world would not be capable of containing His light without shattering into fragments.
He therefore contracted His light into one thin ray and projected it into the world. This ray of light manifests in our world through the Torah, the words of the prophets, and the Divine spark present in each person.
Primo Levi spoke of concentrating the unfathomable suffering of millions through one small window: the story of 15-year-old Anne Frank. Her eyes serve as a peephole through which people can encounter the horrors of the Holocaust without shattering. Conversely, and positively, we can say that, if the personal story of one individual is capable of revealing great darkness to the world, it must also be capable of revealing great light.
We live in a generation in which many people like Anne Frank and her family are completely detached from the roots of their Jewish faith and spirituality in general. Often, these individuals begin to wake up in young adulthood and find their way back to their souls’ true origin.
Similarly, some who grew up in observant Jewish homes but became estranged from their tradition reconnect to it as they grow older. These precious, rare, and fragile moments of teshuvah — return to God — in which a person reveals his innermost essence, are in fact the most profound experience of the human soul.
The experience of teshuvah is also no less than Divine revelation. In Deuteronomy it says, “and God your God shall return with your return,”2 a phrase that seems to suggest God Himself will also repent. Rashi3 explains that “the day of gathering of the exiles is so tremendous and difficult, that God Himself needs to actually hold each individual’s hand, as it were, to excise him from his place.” In the ingathering of the souls of Israel to their origins, God Himself as it were returns with them, accompanying each soul on its way back home.
In our generation, anyone who has had the privilege of experiencing such a spiritual awakening should try and express it in writing or transmit it verbally, so that other people get a sense of it too, to “taste and see that God is good.”4
Just as Anne Frank’s diary offered millions a glimpse into the terrible ordeals of the Jews and her enduring faith despite them, accounts of one’s return to their Jewish roots can transmit to others a taste of the faith in the Divine light that lies beyond life and infuses it with purpose and meaning.
Writing about one’s return to God differs from ordinary journaling. When writing about a Divine experience, one must find a way to express the inexpressible. In this type of writing, the words left unsaid can be even more significant than those written down.
Though this is the subtlest of arts, we mustn’t shy away from it. Our heartfelt words, as well as the silence that hangs between them, could penetrate the soul of readers unlike anything else and awaken them to their own teshuvah.
Hidden and Revealed
When Anne Frank began her diary, she never intended for others to read it. This is why she allowed herself to use the names of the people living with her in hiding while writing personal information about them.
Yet, one day she heard a radio address by an exiled Dutch government official, announcing that after the war he planned on publishing the reports and journals of Dutch citizens who had suffered during the Nazi occupation.
Inspired by his speech, Anne decided that when she was free, she would publish her diary. It was then that she began to edit her journal and to change the names of the tenants in the annex in order to guard their privacy.
This teaches us another important lesson about personal writing. At first, we should express our emotions with the utmost honesty, exposing our inner feelings in a way that we would never reveal to anyone in the world. Even if we know that one day, someone may read our diary, or even if we ourselves intend to publish it in the future, we should write it as if no one else is ever meant to see it.
Yet afterwards, we must ask ourselves: Could what we have written be of benefit to anyone else? Could our candid words help others make significant changes in their lives or bring them closer to God? Could our words bless the world?
If the answer is yes, then we must make an act of self-sacrifice and, after appropriate editing, strive to have our work published, despite containing what is most intimate to us.
This transition from private to public writing is echoed in a profound Talmudic teaching about God’s “outer” and “inner” chambers. In God’s outer chambers He demonstrates His joy, as described in the verse, “might and joy are in His place”;5 in His inner chambers, however, we find that, “In secrecy, My soul weeps”6 —He cries in secret over the exile and torment of the Jewish people.
A similar duality holds regarding publishing spiritual journals: Intimate thoughts written in private tears can become a source of strength and joy for others, just as we find comfort in knowing God weeps over us.
Letters to Anne
That people worldwide, especially young girls Anne’s age, continue writing to her demonstrates the soul’s power to transcend time and space. When someone’s words inspire us across vast distances of time, moving us to respond personally, their soul remains present among us, kindling thought and feeling.
Anne Frank died at sixteen. At the time of this volume’s publication, she would be 96. We may try to imagine her as an elderly woman, probably bent with age yet retaining that familiar spark in her eyes. But it’s hard to do: In our mind’s eye, Anne, like others who have died in their youth, remains forever young.
This duality hides a profound secret. On the one hand, there is a custom to continue commemorating birthdays even many years after a person has passed away (for example, Chasidim commonly read the chapter of Psalms corresponding to the age of their deceased Rebbe). According to this custom, although the deceased do not grow older, they do grow up, continuing to mature with time.
At the same time, Kabbalah explains that in the resurrection of the dead, the deceased will rise at the same age they were when they passed away, as if not even a day had passed! So, do the deceased mature or don’t they? It seems they both age and do not age, rest and do not rest, at the same time.
Envisioning something like the resurrection of the dead is hard (Maimonides said of the Messianic era in general that “we will not know how it will be until it will be”7), but if we try to imagine Anne Frank returning, we can picture her as an elderly woman in the body of a young girl.8 This is a good metaphor for the nature of the soul in general: It constantly matures, yet always retains its youthful vitality.
What would you write to Anne Frank? What would you share about your life today?
Her diary should be required reading for youth her age, who should be encouraged to write to her, with the best letters published. Her soul should continue illuminating our dark world and inspiring us to express our deepest thoughts and experiences, as she so powerfully expressed hers.
Based on the teachings of Rabbi Yitzchak Ginsburgh
Psalms 102:1
Deuteronomy 30:3
Shlomo Yitzchaki was a French rabbi who authored comprehensive commentaries on the Talmud and Hebrew Bible.
Psalms 34:9
I Chronicles 16:27
Jeremiah 13:17
Mishneh Torah, Laws of Kings 12:2
This mirrors how Chasidut describes the desired Mashiach: he will combine Moses’s elderly soul within King David’s younger form.
Beautiful post. I’ve been writing about my spiritual awakening as I first started to write in support of Israel and the Jewish people and now am figuring out if and how I may convert.
How difficult would it be to get the book re-titled (as it should be): Anne Frank - The Diary of a Young Jewish Girl. She may have been almost non-observant, but she WAS Jewish.