“He who saves the life of one person; it is as if he has saved an entire world.” – The Talmud
Many of us have heard the Talmudic maxim. The sages taught us something powerful with this message—the importance of each person. After all, the world began with one man, Adam. Adam married Eve. The entire world was brought into being, from their children to their grandchildren through the generations all the way to us.
One person can make an enormous difference. And the potential in one person is not just one life but countless lives, entire worlds.
We all mourn the tragedy of the Holocaust. It is not enough to say that six million lives were lost. Six million worlds were lost, six million chances to have children, grandchildren, great grandchildren and thousands upon thousands of lives, each life carrying the potential of entire worlds.
This is why we at The Ronald S. Lauder Foundation are so committed to rebuilding Jewish life in the lands devastated by the Holocaust. We will never recover what we lost. But with every Jewish child learning in our kindergartens and schools, with every Jewish teen exploring her identity in our summer camps and youth centers, with every Jewish young adult studying in our institutions of higher education, and with every one of those young Jews who then starts a Jewish family and has Jewish children, we are helping build new worlds— Jewish worlds.
