DOUBLE AMI PESACH ISSUE Includes 2 issues of Ami, AmiLiving, Aim, Whisk, Collection and More
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Issue 463 8, 2020 5780 April 14 Nisan
Last - te minu sides
14 NISAN
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ISSUE 463 APRIL 8, 2020 14 NISAN 5780
AMI TRAVELS
DISCOVERING JEWISH MALTA
AMI VISITS THE ISLAND OF JEWISH SLAVES, SORROW, AND HOPE
A SECRET JEW’S FIGHT FOR IRANIAN FREEDOM DANIEL DANA’S MISSION
MYSTERY IN A RABBI’S SUITCASE
HISTORICAL LETTERS UNEARTHED
A RABBI IN INDONESIA
LEADING IN THE WORLD’S LARGEST MUSLIM COUNTRY
THE HAGGADAH OF THE BLACK PLAGUE
A REMNANT FROM THE WORST MODERN PANDEMIC
Rav Chaım
Inside the World of
Kanıevsky With His Grandson Rabbi Aryeh
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Contents 4.8.2020
DOUBLE PESACH ISSUE
14 NISAN 5780 • ISSUE 463
86
Rav Chaim Kanievsky
34 66
THE SECRETS OF MALTA The Mediterranean islands of Jewish slaves, sorrow, and hope ISAAC HOROVITZ
LIKE VINES IN BLOOM A moving conversation with Rav Nissan Kaplan, the esteemed rosh yeshivah of Yeshivas Daas Aharon RABBI YITZCHOK FRANKFURTER
86
MY ZEIDE Rabbi Aryeh Kanievsky gives us a peek into the life of his grandfather, Rav Chaim. CHAIM FRIEDLANDER
RABBIS’ 104 THE SUITCASE
34
136
Correspondence between two London rabbanim and the gedolim of Europe
ELIEZER BRODT
146 156 166
HAGGADAH OF THE BLACK DEATH A French Haggadah bears witness to the epidemic that decimated 14th-century Europe. ISAAC HOROVITZ
FROM BRESLOV TO ISHBITZA Scholar of chasidus, Professor Ora Wiskind DEBRA HELLER
CHASIDIC KINGDOMS A documentary about chasidim that cuts through the stereotypes RABBI YITZCHOK FRANKFURTER
MAN ON A MISSION One man worked to overthrow the Ayatollah before finding his roots in Jerusalem. ELI LEVINE
28 A M I M A G A Z I N E / / A P R I L 8 , 2 0 2 0 / / 1 4 N I S A N 5 7 8 0
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Contents 4.8.2020
DOUBLE PESACH ISSUE
14 NISAN 5780 • ISSUE 463
66
Rav Nissan Kaplan
176
THE JEW OF TONDANO A tiny congregation on a remote Indonesian island PAUL MARSHALL
180
MEMORIES Grandfathers and grandsons
188
RABBI SHAIS TAUB
SHUL 190 THE CHRONICLES
Dealing with coronavirus and this peculiar Pesach
NESANEL GANTZ
184
156
THE HUMAN EXPERIENCE Their father had the last laugh. CHAYA SILBER
ASK Lowering one’s standards during a crisis
RABBI MOSHE TAUB
192
STREETS OF LIFE The first...and final redemption RABBI MORDECHAI KAMENETZKY
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How Entire Countries Keep Dangerous” Information Out Within the last decade, scientists have revealed a revolutionary technology that enables them to edit DNA with ease, offering the promise of improving crops, enhancing animals, and curing genetic diseases. But could it also create a nightmarish reality of made-to-order human beings? Learn about CRISPR and the “biohacking” movement.
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The Man Who Immortalized “Believe It Or Not!” Ever hear about the chicken that survived without a head for 18 months, the man who played piano with no hands, or the man with a horn growing out of his head? Robert Ripley traveled the world seeking out oddities for his incredibly popular Believe It Or Not! series. Was he a charlatan, a journalist, or merely an entertainer?
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Travel Malta
Feature
MA L
The Secrets of
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o
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Valletta Harbour, Malta
LTA of Jewish slaves, sorrow, and hope.
By Isaac Horovitz35
14 NISAN 5780 // APRIL 8, 2020 // AMI MAGAZINE
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I
Travel Malta
t was a cold wintry day, the gray sea meeting the gray sky, the foam of its surging waves touching the leaden clouds. It was hard to tell where one ends and the other begins. My stomach was churning. It had been a bad idea to go out to sea that day. The paved road at the base of the mighty walls of Valletta looked like a safe haven offering relief after our rocky boat ride. But the story that Ron, our tour guide, recounted (with a little embellishment) made our insides churn even more. The tales of torment he related were painful to listen to. For there, in the mighty wall, was a small doorway whose name sent chills down our spines. It was once known as the “Gate of the Weeping Jews”—the gateway for Jews arriving in chains on the island of Malta hundreds of years ago.
Birgu and the harbour
There was a time—not so very long ago, as measured on the ancient timeline of the Jewish people—that this half-deserted mooring along a section of wall between sea and sky teemed with life and death. From here, battleships departed to prowl the Mediterranean, attacking ships and sacking settlements along the North African coast. Among the spoils they brought back were Jewish men, women, and children who had been captured at sea while traveling to Eretz Yisrael. As the pirates unloaded their holds, the shackled Jews were marched along the dock towards the small opening, today called “Jews’ Sally Port,” in English. The captives knew that once they were beyond the stone portal, they would likely never see their homeland or families again. Ron and I wearily got off the boat, relieved by the firm black asphalt road beneath our feet, and turned to the historic gate, which looked like a gaping wound in the stone wall. It is wide enough to allow vehicles to drive through it into the city of Valletta, Malta’s
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Travel Malta
The fortified walls of Valletta
capital. The road rose steeply, and we passed massive iron doors with a serrated design. Just inside the wall was a brightly colored cafe with the sardonic name of “Sally Port Café.” As with anything related to the “merciful” Christian religion, one that talks about love, peace and turning the other cheek, it is easy to question how in the name of faith, Catholics devised the Inquisition with the intent of torturing Jews, and how in the name of love, the Crusaders devastated Jerusalem, massacring thousands of Jews along the way, destroying holy communities all over Europe. It was from this background that the treacherous culture of Malta was born. The Knights of Malta is a religious order that was founded in Jerusalem in 1048, after the city had been conquered by the Crusaders. In keeping with its mission to serve as a compassionate brotherhood caring for the sick and wounded, its first act was to establish a hospital in the city. The knights called themselves Knights Hospitaller, or the Order of St. John of Jerusalem. When Islamic forces routed the Crusaders
from the Holy Land, the Order fled, and after a number of relocations, ended up on the island of Rhodes in 1310. In 1530, Charles V, the Holy Roman Emperor, gave the Order control of the island of Malta as a bulwark against the Ottomans, in exchange for the annual payment of a single Maltese falcon. The Knights of Malta set up a sailing fleet to harass Ottoman ships in the Mediterranean, stealing their cargo and enslaving their crews. They also hunted for Jews.
o
As my flight from Israel began its descent, I could barely make out the tiny island nestled among the sea’s waves. Malta is located between Sicily and the coast of Tunisia, between Africa and Europe, and it is this location more than anything else that contributed to the island being such a confluence of Arabic, Latin and Western cultures. Maltese, a Semitic language, is the national tongue, but most people speak English and many speak Italian, as well.
Given its strategic position, the seafaring Phoenicians were already there in the ninth century BCE. It passed to the Romans, who lost it to North African Arabs in the eighth century CE, who introduced Arabic to the island. In the Middle Ages, the Arabs were driven away by the kings of Sicily, who converted it to Catholicism and ruled it through the era of the Inquisition. Then the Knights of Malta were granted possession. Over the centuries, Jews making their way from North Africa to Eretz Yisrael were forced to pass near the Christian island and were hunted down by the knights, who were more pirates than princes of peace. In fact, Malta became a great European hub for the slave trade, and among its captives were wellknown rabbis and entire Jewish families. Some slaves were sent to work on the ships, which guaranteed their death from harsh conditions in no more than two years. Some served the knights as cooks and domestic servants, some were sold in Malta’s slave market, and some were released for hefty ransoms. Educated prisoners served as doctors, interpreters, and scribes, though they still suffered beatings, starvation and humiliation. The situation of the Jewish slaves was so dire that they were cited as being in real danger of death in a contemporary sefer dealing with pidyon shevuyim. The Jewish community in Venice set up a prisoner redemption organization that collected money to redeem the captives, but the process was often lengthy. The Venetian Jews sent a Christian agent to Valletta to negotiate better living conditions and religious privileges for the captives, and to discuss the fees demanded for their release. The agent would notify the Venetians when new prisoners arrived and would inform them of how he used the money to redeem captives. Slavery was an important economic mainstay of the island, so much so that the knights refused to abolish it even after the Pope requested that they cease. It was those “pirates” who built the city of Valletta and made it their base of activity.
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Travel Malta
Upper Barakka Gardens, Valletta
The sharply-pointed cross of the order has become the official symbol of Malta, seen on its flag and in its architecture. I saw it on my walk through the alleys of the city, which is dominated by St. John’s Cathedral and the magnificent Grand Master’s Palace, built in the 1600s for the leader of the order, which now houses the offices of Malta’s president.
Within the Walls Malta is the smallest independent state in the EU, and Valletta, with 6,000 residents, is the smallest European capital. But every day 50,000 people pass through its gates, including government and public-sector workers, those who work in restaurants and shops, and throngs of tourists. The main street and stone-paved alleys are bustling and vibrant. In contrast to the Jew’s Sally Port, the main entrance to the city features a magnificent gate and a grand fountain that mists the air and cools visitors. The main street, from which smaller streets branch out, is Triq Ir-Repubblika. Some streets are named for the trades that they once
housed: jewelry alley, toy alley, tailors’ alley. (Triq shares Semitic etymology with the Hebrew derech.) Triq Ir-Repubblika is a magnificent street, lined with buildings from the Baroque and Renaissance periods, never far from the high walls and fortifications ringing the city. There are also palaces, churches and historical buildings belonging to the Order of St. John, all built with the plunder of the raiding pirates. Halfway down Republic Street is the Grand Master’s Palace, and opposite it is St. George’s Square, originally called Slave Square. It was there that slaves were bought and sold, as the Grand Master watched the human goods traded beneath his window. Today, the only things sold in the square are souvenirs. From St. George’s Square a narrow street leads to a memorial to the famous Great Siege of Malta in 1565, when the Ottomans set up a naval blockade and invaded the island in an attempt to conquer the Christian Order. Despite their huge fleet and tens of thousands of soldiers, the Turks were defeated. Legend has it that when the Turkish army commander returned to Constantinople to report to the Sultan, he told him: “Malta yok—there
is no Malta,” insisting that he could not find the small island. According to some historians, it was wealthy Jewish merchants who encouraged the Turkish campaign, as they were sick and tired of Malta’s treatment of the Jewish communities in the region. They were greatly disappointed by the Turks’ failure, and the Maltese clergy were now even more determined to make life difficult for the Jews after the end of the siege. With the defeat of the Turks, the Knights of Malta continued to fortify the harbor area, building the fortresses of St. Elmo and St. Angelo at the entrance and establishing the city of Valletta. We crossed Triq Id-Dejqa—Narrow Street in English, where the knights used to duel— which leads to the St. Elmo Fortress. This area contained the first prison for the abducted Jews. My Maltese guide to the city is Ron Helul, a Catholic who believes he has Jewish ancestry, based on his last name, which he traces to Spanish Jews who previously settled on the island. “There are many such families,” he told
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Siege Bell War Memorial
me. “Names like Rafaelo, Ben Gigi, Muscat. Our former Prime Minister Muscat is of Jewish origin. It’s part of our culture. Malta’s ambassador to the United States is Keith Azzopardi; his surname comes from the Hebrew word ‘Sfardi,’ a Jew from Spain.” My other tour guide is Steve, also not Jewish. His father is Maltese and his mother is Canadian. But his interest lies in preserving Malta’s Jewish heritage. “I was born in Canada,” he related. “I grew up there and came here as a young man. I fell in love with the place and decided to stay. There is so much history, so much beauty, but what particularly interested me was the island’s Jewish history. The more I learned about it, the more it called to me. It’s a fascinating history, unparalleled. And one of the most important episodes of Maltese Jewry is the sad story of the Jewish prisoners who were brought here.” Steve conducted his own research on the topic with a host of island historians, and established a tourism company that focuses on the island’s Jewish past. The huge fortress of St. Elmo sits at the
mouth of Valletta Harbour, where the city meets the sea. It was the center of power for the Knights of Malta, guarding the entrance to the city. Today, the fortress has a museum with a permanent display of the island’s history and treasures, complete with dioramas of battles, which probably instills national pride in the citizenry. But for Jews, it represents a dark, wicked chapter of Maltese history. Within the dark chambers of this fortress one would have heard prayers and sobs of Jews whose liberty was stolen from them simply because they were Jews, waiting to be sold in the market. Slavery was practiced until 1798, when Napoleon invaded the island on his way to conquering Egypt. He stopped at Malta to restock his army and ships, but when he learned that slavery was accepted on the island and condoned by the priests, he expelled the Christian knights, looted the treasures for himself and freed the slaves. Those who rose up against Napoleon barricaded themselves in the very same fortress, but they were defeated and executed. The Jewish slaves were liberated and a great
many of them left the island for Tunisia and Europe. Two years after Napoleon, the English arrived and wrested control of the island from the French. As part of the Paris Agreement of 1814, Malta officially came under the rule of the British Empire and remained there until independence in 1964, which is why English is the lingua franca and driving is on the left side of the street. Though the English may not have been completely free of a degree of anti-Semitism, Jews remained on the island and were involved with the international trade brought in by the English. During World War II, the Germans and Italians laid siege to Malta, subjecting it to severe shelling. With the German occupation of North Africa, Malta’s strategic importance only grew. Air and sea forces stationed on the island attacked Axis ships in the Mediterranean that were transporting vital supplies and reinforcements from Germany to North Africa. Malta was one of the most intensively bombed places in the war, but the Germans never overran it. During the shelling, the residents turned the fortress’ former prison cells into bunkers, which can now be viewed at the National War Museum, along with many military exhibits. In 1942, King George VI awarded Malta the George Cross, Britain’s second highest honor, for “heroism and devotion.” An image of the George Cross is now emblazoned on Malta’s national flag. Down the coast from the St. Elmo Fortress, the huge Siege Bell hangs in a monumental dome, supported by a ring of marble pillars overlooking the sea. Dedicated by Queen Elizabeth and the president of Malta in 1992 on the 50th anniversary of the awarding of the George Cross, it commemorates the siege of Malta and the 7,000 sailors, airmen and residents who were killed during the war. Within the fortress sits a row of black cannons that are fired every day at noon by soldiers in vintage uniforms, a tradition dating back to the days of the British Empire.
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Courtyard of the Grand Master’s Palace
The Wealthy Slave Let’s go back close to 300 years, to an era of murderous priests and Jewish captives. Here in the alleys of Valletta, where knights’ armor rattled and the sounds of horsemen echoed, Jews walked around in iron chains, serving their Christian masters. But some people resorted to terrible things in order to escape their fate. Behind the palace of the Grand Master, with its lovely plaza, stands a three-story Baroque building with a magnificent façade. Steve tells us that this home belonged to a Jewish slave named Yosef Cohen. “This structure belonged to the Maltese Order of Knights. In 1749, thousands of Turkish slaves were brought to Malta to supplement the Jewish slaves. One of their leaders planned a rebellion. The Christian holidays were approaching, and festive parties would take place in the palace of the Grand Master, Manuel Pinto de Ponce. According to the plan, the servants would poison the food and attack the slave prison to free the captive Turks, while others would attack the armory at St. Elmo and capture whatever weapons they could, and flee the island. “Three Turkish slaves met in a Valletta café to recruit a local servant to their cause, and
a quarrel broke out. Yosef Cohen, a Jewish servant who understood Turkish, witnessed the scuffle and overheard the talk of a rebellion. He reported it to the Grand Master and the slaves were arrested and hanged. The rebellion was squashed. “In consideration, Cohen was given a financial reward and the three-story house. A sign with his name was attached to show ownership. The house remains with the Cohen family.” Not far from the Cohen home, a pretty sign invites visitors to enter the Casa Rocca Piccola, a fine palace with a cloistered garden, built by Admiral Don Pietro La Rocca of the Knights of Malta in 1580. Our small group of tourists was led around the palace by none other than the current owner and resident, a short, elderly man with a bright smile. He introduced himself as Marquis Nicholas IX de Piro, a scion of one of Malta’s oldest noble families, and he was clearly happy to share his home with the public. It is an attractive 50-room house, full of beautiful furnishings, art, photographs, and portraits of popes, a repository of 400 years of memories, dating back to the early days of the reign of the Order of St. John. “Are you actually descended from the Knights of the Order?” I asked the marquis.
“You don’t look like a knight without your armor, visor and sword.” He laughed before responding. “Today we have no military agenda. The Order devotes itself to its original purpose of helping the sick and the needy. My son is also a knight, and is involved in helping the refugees who arrived on the island on their way from North Africa to Europe. That is our mission, nothing more.” The irony was impossible to miss. The island that once terrorized Muslims who tried to avoid it while sailing in the Mediterranean, today attracts tens of thousands of Muslim migrant workers trying to make it to Italy. “Do you know the history of the Order, about the slavery, the discrimination?” I asked. “Yes,” he said, “but it belongs to history. Not everything was so good. Part of our Christian mission then was to stop the Ottomans from entering Europe. But today the order concentrates only on humanitarian activities.” I thanked him for the tour. Near the Siege Bell are two large, tiered, manicured parks, the Upper Barrakka Gardens and the Lower Barrakka Gardens. Situated on a high cliff overlooking the sea, they are filled with flowers, trees and fountains and offer stunning views of the harbor filled with yachts and cruise ships. Across the water, three narrow spits of land jut into the harbor like fingers, each with its own small “city.” The middle one, Birgu, was once a semi-open prison that housed Jewish slaves at night after they finished their work in the ports or in Valletta.
Birgu
We climbed down the cliff and took a wooden Maltese ferry, brightly painted with colorful stripes, across the blue water to Birgu. Along with the bright stripes, the ferries all have a pair of eyes painted on the front, a tradition dating back to the ancient Phoenicians.
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Inside the ancient Jewish catacombs
Ferrying us across the narrow passage, our helmsman sang a Maltese song that somehow sounded both Middle Eastern and Western at the same time. Although to my ears Maltese sounds somewhat like Hebrew, it is in fact a unique language, heavily influenced by all the peoples passing through over the centuries—Phoenicians, Arabs, Romans, Turks, Italians and British—while still retaining its Semitic roots. Hebrew words like shemesh and karov (sun and near) in Maltese are xemx and qrib. A book is qtieb, similar to the Hebrew word ktav. Birgu’s pier looked like a smaller version of Valletta, making me wonder why the Maltese insist on calling each neighborhood a “city.” Maybe it’s because each district is surrounded by a large wall. Still, in some large countries the entire island of Malta wouldn’t be big enough to qualify as a city. We disembarked and climbed up a small stepped alley leading from the pier into the walls, called Triq tal-Lhud, or Jews’ Street, arriving in an area that used to be a Jewish neighborhood. The British had a small naval base here, so the Germans and Italians destroyed much of Birgu with their bombing raids. Many of the buildings were rebuilt in the 1950s, but the streets and alleys, including Triq tal-Lhud, were preserved as they were before the war.
We walked across a beautiful quiet square, passing the palace of the Inquisitor, who ruled the city on behalf of the Catholic Church, and which survived the Axis bombs. A short walk from there is another neighborhood (or is it another city?) called Kalkara, which contains Malta’s ancient Jewish cemetery, burial site of the Jewish slaves. The path to it took us along the waterfront, past an imposing church. The small cemetery plot is across the street, slightly higher than street level and tightly surrounded on three sides by houses. Along the street, there is a high wall of stone blocks containing a padlocked wooden door. Above the door is a stone plaque inscribed in Latin that says, in translation: “This cemetery was established in 1784 by the Livorno fund for ransoming Hebrew slaves at their own expense for the burial of their dead.” Only two people on the island have a key to the reddish-brown door: the head of the island’s Jewish community, and my guide Steve, who unlocked the door for us. We climbed a flight of stairs, bringing us about six feet above street level and onto the burial grounds. Apparently, over the centuries the level of the surrounding area flattened, while the cemetery, supported by a retaining wall, remained at its original level. Windows from
the surrounding houses looked down into the small cemetery, which contained a dozen or so scattered gravestones. The carved words on them have blurred over the years, but they would have told the sad, painful stories of the Jewish slaves who hoped and prayed for redemption but died before they could be rescued. Although the Jews of Venice started the work of raising funds to redeem the Jewish captives, bad economic times left the city’s kehillah impoverished and no longer able to support the cause. At that point, the Jews of Livorno, another city on the Italian coast, took on the task, and it was they who established a Jewish slave cemetery for the unfortunates who died while still in Malta. Trees and weeds covered the matzeivos— some intact, some fragmented—but despite the bad condition of the stones, I could make out a few letters and words: Moshe, Sarah. I said a short tefillah for the tormented souls interred there, true asirei ani ubarzel, prisoners of a cruel fate who remain here because they risked their lives to go to Eretz Yisrael. Now they lie in the shadow of a church’s dome and cross—a stone building as cold as the hearts of their Maltese captors. Steve told us that the Maltese Jewish Foundation is investing resources every few months to spruce up the cemetery and clear
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The ancient Jewish slave cemetery
the weeds. But the higher level of the ground is causing water damage to the adjacent houses, especially when it rains, creating friction with the neighbors. He hopes the foundation will get EU funding for the work needed to halt further erosion of the cemetery and to reinforce its walls, before the vegetation destroys whatever still remains. Before we left, a window opened and a woman yelled out something in Maltese. It didn’t sound friendly. Steve told me that he’s used to it. The neighbors want something done about the water seeping into their walls and homes. But he told me that there is a bigger story “buried” here: The cemetery was originally much larger than the small plot we were standing in. It is unclear when it started, but over the centuries, the houses started encroaching on the Jewish cemetery, removing tombstones, building on top of graves, leaving just this small remnant. And there are those in the local community who want even this plot removed and built over. Maybe it reminds them of their wicked past? Is this weedy parcel a thorn in their side? The neighbors are also possibly afraid that their little “city” will be overrun by Jewish tourists. Despite drawing the ire of the neighbors, Steve and his cleaning crew remain commit-
ted to making sure the cemetery is preserved, as best they can. Another window opened and a man shouted to Steve in Maltese. “What did he say?” I asked. “He’s upset because he saw rats in the graveyard. He likes to complain.” We left the cemetery and locked the door.
Jewish Valletta
There was a small Jewish community in Valletta, near the slave prison of St. Elmo. It was founded by the few Jews who remained after the expulsion of the knights and the French. With the arrival of the British, Jews arrived from England, Gibraltar, and North Africa, adding to the remnants of the liberated Jewish slave community, but it was never a large kehillah. When Sir Moses Montefiore and his wife, Lady Judith, visited in 1835 and donated money to the community, the Jews had to invite visiting merchants from Morocco to make a minyan; Lady Judith sat alone. In 1846, the congregation invited Rabbi Yosef Tajar of Tripoli to serve as the island’s first rabbi. He established a shul and served the community. An 1881 census shows that
there were 145 Jews in Malta, more than half of them British. One third were of Turkish ancestry. The community did not grow much, and in 1979, when the old synagogue in Valletta was demolished during an urban redevelopment project, the Jews were left without a synagogue. Today, a Jewish community still exists, numbering perhaps 25 families. They have a shul located in an apartment in Ta’Xbiex (pronounced “Tashbeesh”) a “city” west of Valletta. The head of the community is Reuven Ohayon, a descendant of Rabbi Nissim Ohayon, Malta’s last rabbi, who died in 1956. Reuven owns a luggage-making factory, which is where I went to meet him one evening. A short fellow of 59, Reuven radiates good will and a love of life. He wears a large kippah, has tzitzis dangling from his waist and is very gracious. After giving me a tour of his workshop, he brought me into his small office, which looked more like an exhibit of the many faces of Judaism than a business office. The walls were covered with posters, prayers, hamsas, and portraits of tzaddikim. I recognized Rav Kook and the Baba Sali. Above Reuven’s head was a large portrayal of the Beis Hamikdash. At the entrance to his factory, a small planted area contained a myrtle bush and a willow tree. “You see these? I planted them a number of years ago,” he told me proudly. “This way I have my arbaah minim for Sukkot. These are the only ones in Malta. I have to import lulavim and etrogim from Italy and Israel, but my haddasim and aravot thrive right here.” It appears to me that this workshop is secondary to Reuven’s main interest: keeping Maltese Jewry alive. His father started the company, and Reuven and his brother work to keep it going. “My grandfather, Rabbi Nissim Ohayon, was the first member of the family in Malta. He was a rabbi in Portugal when he was invited in 1934 by the Tajar family to become
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Reuven Ohayon in the shul in Ta’Xbiex
the rabbi here. The Tajars were the most prestigious Jewish family on the island at the time.” The Tajar daughters are still prominent today, especially Mrs. Shelley Tajar, who, in her 80s, is considered the “grand dame” of Maltese Jewry. But it is the Ohayons who have taken on the religious leadership of the community. “My grandfather, Rabbi Nissim,” Reuven continued, “was a teacher and a shochet. He would distribute meat to the poor, Jews and non-Jews as well. During his time there was a shul in Valletta, but the congregation didn’t own the building. When the city needed to widen the street, the building was demolished. After my grandfather passed away, my father Rabbi Avraham served as head of
the community. He raised me in Torah and taught me a trade.” “Did you have a Jewish school?” I asked. “No, my father taught us Torah. When I was growing up, I lived in Israel for a year and a half at Sde Eliyahu, a religious kibbutz, and I studied Torah at Machon Meir Institute in Jerusalem. I trained in halachah and shechitah, then I returned here and got married. We are fighting to keep halachah, the mitzvot and the spark of Judaism here on Malta, as it has been for thousands of years.” “Thousands of years?” I was somewhat surprised by his claim. “Yes,” he insisted. “Malta is one of the oldest Jewish communities in the world. Malta, if I am not mistaken, is the only Eu-
ropean state whose name appears in Tanach. After all, David Hamelech said, ‘Anah Hashem maltah nafshi.’” I wasn’t sure if he was joking. “According to our ancient tradition, merchants and sailors from the tribes of Asher and Zevulun arrived in Malta together with the Phoenicians and settled here. The Torah says that Yaakov blessed Zevulun to be a successful seafarer, all the way ‘to the coast of Sidon’ (Phoenicia). Here on Malta there is a Phoenician-era temple that has Hashem’s name carved into the stone. “Malta means ‘place of refuge,’ and Jews have been here ever since, during Roman, Byzantine, Arab and British rule, up to this day. Hebrew and Maltese are related; maybe Maltese is derived from Hebrew?” Reuven’s eyes sparkle as he talks about his homeland. He is very proud to be Maltese. “Quite a few Maltese people are of Jewish descent—Anusim from the Inquisition, before the Knights arrived. The Maltese people are very warm and friendly on the one hand, but on the other they are very ‘European’ in character. You can see how they are spending a lot of money helping the African refugees. During World War II, this country absorbed a number of Jewish refugees. People here are courageous; they endured so many bombings, but they never surrendered. “My father and grandfather went through the war hiding in the bunkers of St. Elmo and other places. My father told me that one day when he was in the street, the bombings started, so he fled into some building. It collapsed on him but he survived. It was a real miracle.” The nucleus of the kehillah is made up of about 250 registered Jews, whose roots date back to slavery, North Africa or England. Most are shopkeepers or work in finance and high-tech. Reuven continued. “I’d say the Jewish population has been growing due to Jewish and Israeli businessmen who have settled here, but I would guess there are more than a thousand Jews here in Malta who do not
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renovate it to meet local codes, but we have no money for that and the government will not give us any. We hope we can find donors for it.” Standing in the graveyard, of all places, Reuven assured me that the community was alive and vibrant, and he invited me to daven Shacharis in the synagogue in Ta’Xbiex the next morning. The shul is in a building called “Florida Mansions.” He gave me the address and we parted for the evening.
Cannon battery over the harbour, facing Birgu
want to associate with the community. Many have moved away from Judaism over time, but the fact that there is a synagogue here keeps the Jewish spark alive. We provide Torah lessons to the youngsters, but we need parents to instill a love of Torah and mitzvot in their children, and to teach them about tzedakah and Jewish values. That gives them the ability to surmount the challenge of being Jewish in a non-Jewish world. We get kosher food from Manchester and Israel. Since there are direct flights, it is relatively easy to get everything we need.” According to Reuven, Malta does not have anti-Semitism or violence against Jews. “We live in peace with our neighbors. They respect Jews just as they respect other minority groups on the island. If we have any concerns as a community, we contact the authorities, the prime minister and even the president of Malta, if needed. We always get the support we need.” As the head of the chevrah kaddisha, one of the biggest challenges facing the community is the cemetery. Malta is a small, crowded island with half a million people, with almost no available empty land. Reuven suggests that we visit the cemetery currently being used, where his father and grandfather and the Tajars are buried.
It was starting to get dark and I didn’t think we’d have time to make the trip, but it turned out that the Jewish cemetery was only a five-minute walk away, so we left. We passed a Turkish-style mosque surrounded by a high fence, site of the ancient Muslim cemetery of Malta, a reminder of previous Arab rule. The Jewish cemetery was next to it, a modest plot with a small taharah house. Reuven opened the creaky wooden gate to the cemetery and headed straight to pray at his father’s kever. “I try to come here whenever I can,” he told me, “to pray at his grave and tell him what’s new.” The cemetery is indeed very crowded, but clearly maintained by a loving hand. I saw the graves of the Tajar family and of Jewish soldiers who fell during both World Wars. Reuven told me that quite a few Maltese Jews joined the war against the Nazis, including his uncle. Reuven gleefully informed me that they very recently received government approval to use an adjacent plot of land along the road that will allow them finally to expand the cemetery. “It was very difficult for us to achieve this. Last Chanukah, former Prime Minister Muscat attended our event, and he told me, ‘I can’t make it official yet but the land is yours.’ Now we have to build a fence and
Cooperation
Valletta, Birgu, Kalkara, and other “cities” I have seen so far seem like small-scale Mediterranean island towns, similar in their ancient classical stone architecture and dramatic sea views—a mixture of cultures and languages that seems to define Malta. But, although the “city” of St. Julian’s is, like the others, not very large, it is exceptionally diverse. It’s a major tourist area, filled with high-rise hotels and modern shopping malls, beaches, casinos and international retail chains. St. Julian’s is the “Western” economic face of this ancient island, and it attracts business people and lots of tourists, primarily British and Italian. I arrived in St. Julian’s at night, with the hotel lights twinkling along the coast. The streets were busy and noisy; it was hard to hear the waves crashing on the shore. But it is here, between an ice cream shop and a hotel, that I find the prominently displayed sign that says “L’Chaim.” This is the relatively new Chabad House on the island, and here is where I met Rabbi Chaim Shalom Segel, the shliach to Malta, a tall, thin, redhead with a radiant smile. He and his rebbetzin, Chaya Mushka, have been living in Malta since 2013 and have established the Chabad House with their own hands. The space is small but well planned. You enter a kosher wine bar and tastefully decorated restaurant, which doubles as a lecture hall when needed. Behind it, through a narrow hallway, is a bookcase of sefarim and a small
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Vestiges of Britain in Valletta; Rabbi Segel, the Chabad shliach
room for davening, mostly filled by the aron kodesh. I think that a minyan of men could fit, but they would all have to stand. “We arrived here six years ago,” Rabbi Segel said. “Malta, though a member of the EU, did not have a Chabad House. There was no kosher restaurant, no mikvah, no Jewish school, but there are hundreds of Jews here, and the numbers are growing with recent arrivals. Local laws are very favorable to businesses, and new companies are being set up here. “Once direct flights between Malta and Tel Aviv opened, tens of thousands of Israelis began visiting. That’s in addition to the thousands of Jewish tourists who come here every year from Britain and elsewhere. “Our first mission was to find a place to set up shop, which was not easy in tiny Malta. But, baruch Hashem, we found an affordable location. We were also able to build a beautiful mikvah that was recently inaugurated, and we teach classes in Hebrew
and Judaism to the Jewish children on the island.” Rabbi Segel and Reuven Ohayon have a very cooperative relationship. In fact Reuven, whom Rabbi Segel calls a “tzaddik,” helped Rabbi Segel obtain the necessary visas and permits to operate on the island. Reuven concentrates his activity among the established local community, and Rabbi Segel assists the tourists and new residents. Some of Chabad’s activities take place in Reuven’s shul, and Reuven regularly attends shiurim given by Rabbi Segel in the Chabad House. And on Shabbos, they converge. Friday night tefillos are in the Chabad House, and in the morning Rabbi Segel and his guests walk to the community’s shul in Florida Mansions, about 30 minutes away. So the next morning I woke up and planned to arrive at the shul at 7:30 in the morning. It took a while to find the street with the “mansion.” I was expecting a large estate, surrounded by walls and lawns, but
what I found was a mundane apartment building that only in Malta would be called a mansion. Reuven took me up to the second floor, where a modest apartment has been reconfigured into a prayer hall, divided with a curtain; the ezras nashim is in the rear. To the side is a classroom for children. I saw a clipping from a local newspaper reporting the dedication of the shul, including a photo of the Israeli ambassador. The synagogue itself is decorated with Hebrew posters, framed prayers and decorative light fixtures. The chairs run along the walls and in the center sits a carved wooden bimah. A metal chandelier hangs over it, and the aron sits on a slightly raised platform in the front of the room. The paroches has a golden Magen David embroidered on it. Seems like it will be just Reuven and me. “Actually,” he admitted, “I come here every morning to pray, whether there is a minyan or no minyan. Usually I am alone. Only on Shabbat do other people come, including Rabbi Segel.” When he opened the aron kodesh, I saw seven sifrei Torah enclosed in silver cases. Most originated in Tripoli. The history of this shul is linked to them. “After the Valletta shul was torn down, we prayed at the Israeli Embassy for a while and then at our house. But my father decided that you can’t be a Jewish community if you don’t have a shul. It’s unheard of. So he set up a fund and donated a large initial sum, after which the rest of the community also contributed. But it wasn’t enough. We had to sell one of the most expensive sifrei Torah to the Jewish Museum in New York, and with that, along with additional money donated by the Jewish community of New York, we were
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Travel Malta
The man gate to Mdina and an alley within
able to buy this apartment. But the truth is that we need a more organized space, a real shul with a heichal and room for the community to grow. But look around, there is no empty land in Malta; every square meter here is in use. I spoke to government representatives and they said ‘If you can find empty land, you can have it.’ Basically they gave us the extra parcel for the cemetery. That is all we are going to get. I wish there was a solution.” Reuven put on his tallis and lit three oil candles. “I light them every day. One for the deceased of the community, one for am Yisrael, and one for all humankind. That’s the custom in Malta.” Then he began leading Shacharis, as if he was a chazan and there was a full room of mispallelim listening to his prayers. When we were done, he took out a large curved shofar and blew a perfect set of tekios, as if it were Elul. That also seems to be an ancient Maltese custom. For such a small community, they
have a lot of their own special minhagim. We made a brachah and ate some crackers before we left. As Reuven got into his small car, I noticed a sticker on the door: “Im eshkacheich Yerushalayim...” “Thank you for joining our minyan,” he said as we shook hands. I smiled and replied, “In a country of just half a million, where every neighborhood is called a ‘city,’ and this small building is called an ‘estate,’ I guess two people can be called a minyan.” He laughed and drove away, leaving me in awe of his energy and the care he takes to keep his community going.
The Walls of Mdina To be honest, before I visited Malta, I would have had trouble finding it on the map. So I found it even more surprising that
there are so many important historical sites on the island that relate to the Jewish experience. And not just in the Valletta area. One of the most important Jewish sites on the island, dating from the time of the Bayis Sheini, is the inland city of Mdina, the “diamond in the Maltese crown.” It is a beautiful walled city, more than 2,000 years old, situated on the highest point of the island. No one who sees the city from afar can fail to be impressed. The Phoenicians settled here first, but the Romans built over it. Then the Arabs who conquered Malta gave the city its present name: Al-Mdina, the fortified city. The first Christians came in the 12th century, expelled the Muslims, improved the fortifications and declared Mdina the capital of the island. Later, the Hospitallers, aka the Knights, came to Malta and moved the capital to the coast, near present-day Valletta. With no trains and few taxis, Malta relies on a remarkably efficient bus service. My bus stops at the Mdina city gate but does not enter. The city is tiny, with narrow streets; buses simply don’t fit. The miniature city is surrounded by a deep moat, with its main entrance through a well-fortified gate within the high walls. There are two smaller entrances as well. Only a few hundred residents have the privilege of living inside. There are no cars. The medieval city retains the atmosphere it must have had centuries ago. I wander among the stone houses along the narrow alleys, avoiding the horse-drawn carriages that transport tourists through the town. Mdina also contained a Jewish neighborhood next to the fortress, where Jews lived during the Middle Ages, before the arrival of the Hospitallers. They were silk and textile dealers, and accounted for a quarter of the city’s population. In one of the alleys, a small building with a red door has a sign next to it recalling, in Hebrew and English, that this
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Travel Malta
Site of the former Jewish silk market, Mdina
was once the Jewish silk market. The Jewish community was expelled during the Spanish Inquisition. The Mdina synagogue became a monastery, which was then sold to a wealthy family who turned it into a residential palace. Today, it’s ground floor serves as an ice cream shop. More disturbing is the museum in a tower dungeon that graphically and realistically depicts the various means of torture used by the inquisitors to get “confessions” from Anusim, as recordings of screams emanate from speakers. It is not for the weak of heart, and I was glad to escape back to the sunshine outside, as I reflected on how many Maltese are descendants of those Jews who had to hide their religion from their Christian neighbors over the centuries. Adjacent to tiny Mdina is neighboring Rabat, which means “big city” in Arabic. It’s a bit of an exaggeration. Many years ago, Mdina and Rabat were one city but it was divided when the moat was excavated and the walls were put up around Mdina. Also long ago, an underground city was discov-
ered beneath Rabat, including a system of burial caves and ancient catacombs, cut into the soft limestone. Within the tombs, filled with idols and Christian symbols, is a section of at least 300 ancient Jewish graves dating back more than 2,200 years, to the time of the Bayis Sheini. The site is well organized, thanks to generous funding from the European Union. There are detailed explanations describing various burial practices, and the uniqueness of Jewish burial, which involves only simple shrouds and none of the jewelry or other possessions found in crypts of other religions. In these caves, now empty, the feet of the deceased Jews all pointed to Jerusalem, and there are images of menorahs carved into the stone over some of the caves. According to some scholars, a menorah indicates that the deceased made a pilgrimage to Jerusalem. Perhaps to participate in bringing the korban Pesach, I wonder? During World War II, the catacombs were opened to allow locals to take cover there during Italian and German bombing runs.
The sealed caves still contained bones at that time but they were broken open and desecrated during the war, as people searched for valuables, not knowing anything about Jewish burial customs. Bones were scattered all over the place. It was Reuven Ohayon who, years later, got permission from the Maltese Tourist Board to investigate the condition of the Jewish burial chambers. He asked that he be allowed to collect the bones, return them to the niches and close off the Jewish catacombs to all visitors. He also suggested that the whole site be filled with dirt to prevent future desecration. The ministry did not agree to Reuven’s requests. The Israeli Foreign Ministry and the Israeli Embassy got involved, and it became something of an international political issue. For years the site was closed; in the end, the Jewish community had to agree to a compromise. The bones would be removed and reburied in the Jewish cemetery, which contains a special kever for the bones from the ancient Jewish graves. The government then reopened the bone-free site to tourists.
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Travel Malta
A view of Comino
Comino
Malta is both the name of a country and an island. But the country is made up of more than just the island of Malta. It is, in fact, an archipelago of three islands, of which Malta is by far the largest. There is a smaller island called Gozo, and in between them is the tiny island of Comino. To get to Comino you need to take a small boat, and once you are there you will find there is almost nothing on the island but a castle on a hill overlooking the sea, and a small hotel. Only three people actually live on the island. The attraction that draws people is a small bay whose waters are crystal clear, known as the Blue Lagoon. When I arrived at the dock for the boat to Comino, there was already a line of people wearing life jackets. Despite it being winter, the sky was blue and the sea was calm and blue as well. We soon approached the small island, and as the boat floated in the lagoon, I understood why this is considered the most spectacular blue one could ever see. The boat docked, and most of the passengers remained by the bay to enjoy the
water and take selfies, but that wasn’t why I made the trip. Comino has its own Jewish history, connected to the renowned kabbalist and writer Rabbi Avraham Abulafia. Toward the end of his life, he lived on this arid, treeless island. Its rugged shoreline consists of huge limestone cliffs, dotted with deep caves that were popular with medieval pirates who raided boats crossing between Malta and Gozo. It looks the same now as it did when Rabbi Abulafia arrived 750 years ago, exiled from Sicily for his controversial conduct. How he managed to survive there, without water and without another living soul, is but one of the mysteries of his mysterious life. Rabbi Avraham Abulafia was born in Spain in 1240, studied Kabbalah in Barcelona, and delved extensively into Sefer Yetzirah. He sought to use Kabbalah as a method to influence consciousness and reach the level of nevuah with which to bring the geulah. He traveled to Eretz Yisrael in search of the river Sambatyon and dreamed of restoring the Ten Tribes of Israel. Failing at that, he returned to Europe, where he preached and wrote a number of
books on Kabbalah. He settled in Italy and tried to meet Pope Nicholas III, in an attempt to convert him to Judaism, whereupon he was sentenced to be burned at the stake. But the pope suddenly died and the rabbi’s sentence was stayed. He fled to Sicily, where he was able to attract admirers who thought of him as a navi, but the Rashba, the gadol hador of the time, denounced him. He lost his following and exiled himself to barren Comino. It was there that he wrote his final sefer, Imrei Shefer. Little is known of his life after that. His teachings were forgotten and his burial place is unknown. It was not until 300 years ago that the cheirem against him was lifted by the Chida, who ordered his sefarim to be printed. Rabbi Avraham Abulafia is now considered one of the great kabbalists. I wandered the island’s dusty dirt roads, searching for a living soul to ask about Rabbi Abulafia—where he lived, where he was buried. I went up to St. Mary’s Tower, built by the Hospitallers, which served as a prison for several years before being used by the British Army and then by the Maltese Army. It was locked. I found no one. The only living things were lizards, ants and swarms of mice. Even the cumin that once grew wild, for which the island is named, no longer grows. The only sounds were the waves below. I returned to the dock and waited for the boat to take me to Gozo Island. A fisherman stood next to me with a bucket of crabs, also waiting for the boat. I asked him if he ever heard of the holy Jew who once lived on the island and disappeared. He had not. The boat took us to Gozo, which is smaller than Malta, but more rural and open, not nearly as crowded. Ron, my guide, was already there, waiting to show me around the 25-square-mile island. No Jews live on the island today, but it is rich in Jewish history. It is home to 5,000-year-old Phoenician structures, the Ggantija Temple Complex, which contains an ancient Hebrew inscription of the fourletter name of Hashem.
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Travel Malta
St. Mary’s Tower, Comino
“The name of this place means ‘giant,’” Ron said, “because according to tradition, the structures were built by giants who used them as guard towers.” The stones are huge, six meters high and weighing a few tons apiece. The largest stone is believed to weigh 57 tons. Who could haul and erect such a stone if not a giant? Were they the Nefilim, who lived on the planet before the Flood? We continued on our way, passing silent fishing villages, as the road headed west and then split into two directions. We went south, to Dwejra, a beautiful, deep “inland sea” created by the natural collapse of a sea cave, which is a popular diving site. In the center of Gozo is the island’s capital, formerly called Rabat, which was confusing because a Rabat already existed on the main island of Malta. “The people of Gozo weren’t concerned,” Ron explained. “Gozo is an island in its own right, with its own culture. They could have their own Rabat.”
The British tried to solve the problem by renaming the city Victoria in 1897, marking the 60th year of Queen Victoria’s reign, but to this day Ron and other Maltese still call it Rabat. Call it what you like, it has an ancient feel, with narrow alleys, old houses and the requisite central square. Towering above the square, reaching the highest point in Gozo, is the city’s cathedral, a large citadel dating back to Roman times. From the top you can see the whole island, surrounded by the blue sea. From there, the islanders would watch for approaching enemies and strike a bell, at which point all the islanders would gather behind the fortress’ walls and close the gate. Next to it was the small Jewish neighborhood and its synagogue. There are still reminders such as a fountain called Ghar Lhudin (Jewish fountain) and Jews’ Square. The government works with the Jewish Malta Preservation group to maintain these memories of the Jews who once formed a
vital part of the islands’ population. Of course, it is also good for tourism. My friend Ron told me, “There is a similarity between the Maltese and the Jewish people. We are both small nations with a long history. We each have our own language, our own culture; we have been victims of many conquests, but we have survived and retained our uniqueness and continue to thrive.” “Yes,” I said, “but I’m not surprised about the Maltese people. You live on a remote island, cut off from the world. It is easy to preserve and maintain your unique character. But the Jewish people are scattered and dispersed and we still stand strong, like a cliff battered by the waves of the sea. That is the difference.” I think again of Reuven’s little office, filled with Jewish pride and optimism, and I recall the sticker on his car: “Im eshkacheich Yerushalayim, tishkach yemini.” We do not forget who we are, and once again I am in awe of my nation. l
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VINES in Bloom
A moving conversation with Rav Nissan Kaplan, the esteemed rosh yeshivah of Yeshivas Daas Aharon in Yerushalayim By Rabbi Yitzchok Frankfurter
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“Place me like a seal over your heart, like a seal on your arm; for love is as strong as death, its jealousy unyielding as the grave.” —Shir Hashirim 8:6
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M Feature: Like Vines in Bloom
Meeting roshei yeshivos, rabbanim and Rebbes is always an exhilarating experience, as one can never be fully prepared for the insightful conversations that usually follow. Still, my recent visit with Rav Nissan Kaplan, in the office of his magnificent yeshivah in the Har Nof neighborhood of Yerushalayim, was a standout. Expecting to discuss divrei hashkafah, I was completely taken by surprise when he opened his heart and soul to me about the passing of his wife, Rebbetzin Gittel Kaplan, a”h, who passed away four months ago at the age of 49 after battling a difficult illness. For most of the time we spent together, he kept wiping away the tears that stubbornly flowed from his reddened eyes to his flushed cheeks. He elicited a tear or two from me as well. I cordially invite you to listen in.
Love of Torah As you’re originally from the United States, I suppose we can conduct this conversation in English, which is probably your mother tongue. I was born in Baltimore, but my family moved here when I was a year old, so I can’t say that it’s mamash my mama lashon. But my wife, who recently passed away and was the daughter of Rav Avrohom Gurwicz of Gateshead, only spoke English. Because I was forced to speak to her in that language, my command of it improved. You mentioned your wife’s passing. You must still be in a state of profound mourning. She passed away on 21 Cheshvan after a five-and-a-half-year illness. We had 11 children together, and seven are still living at home; the youngest is only seven. I must tell you that losing a wife is ten times harder than I ever imagined. People don’t realize the pain a family goes through when someone is lost.
I repeated a story to my children that I heard about an Israeli general who, every time he lost a soldier in combat, used to say that he felt as if he’d lost a son, and he would tear kriah and sit shivah. After losing around 80 soldiers, his own son passed away. At the levayah he got up and said that he wanted to ask mechilah from all the parents of the soldiers who had died, because he’d never understood what it meant to lose a son. Similarly, my wife was a big machnis orchim, and we always had almanos and yesomim in our home whom she “adopted.” Even when I was busy in yeshivah, she would encourage me to sit at the seudas Shabbos for hours with the orphans. I told my children that our house was always open to every yasom and almanah. We took care of every nitzrach, but we never knew what being a nitzrach really meant. And her petirah wasn’t even unexpected, because she was sick for several years. It was still unexpected, because every time things got bad she’d always managed to climb out of it. Just to give you an example of who my wife was, let me tell you some-
thing that took place on Chol Hamoed Pesach around six and a half years ago. I was learning Maseches Shabbos, essentially a masechta that I was learning bein hasedarim. I really wanted to finish it, but I was running behind. I told my wife that I was going into my room to learn until I completed the masechta, and she said that she would keep the house quiet. By the time I finished, it was about nine or ten at night. I walked out of my room and into the dining room, which for some reason was dark. When I turned on the light, I found my father, mother, brothers and sisters all sitting there and waiting for me. My wife had arranged a massive seudah for the whole family. I have no idea how she got everyone to come or how long they’d been there. She wasn’t sick yet, so no one came out of chesed. But that was the kind of ahavas Torah and ahavas habriyos she had. It wasn’t as if I was a child or had just finished a masechta for the first time, but she still went out of her way to acknowledge my learning. I only realized after she passed away how much she had encouraged me. I noticed this quality in her even before we got engaged. When we met, I told her, “I know that you want a talmid chacham, but
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my question is if that is your ultimate goal. Because if you’re looking to be married to someone famous, that’s not me. My goal is to sit and learn. Your father achieved great fame, but that’s not something I’m aiming for.” She replied, “My dream is for my husband to sit and learn without anyone knowing about it. I don’t know if it can be done, but I will make sure that you have whatever you need so you can sit and learn.” After she said that, the shidduch happened. Your wife’s dream that you should sit and learn was certainly fulfilled. Her dream was to have a Torahdike house in which she would give a lot of love to all her children. A lot of articles were written after she passed away. People wrote about how everyone loved her and felt close to her. If her friends feel so lonely without her, you can imagine how her children feel. And she wasn’t one of those people who give love to the entire world but not to her immediate family. Her love for her family was boundless, which makes her passing even more difficult. People naturally gravitated towards her wherever she went. All of the nurses who treated her came to the shivah. My wife wasn’t hospitalized the entire five and a half years of her illness; she was only in that particular department for the last three weeks, when she couldn’t breathe anymore. The way it works in Shaarei Zedek is that patients are only admitted into that department when it’s almost over; otherwise, they’re treated as outpatients. The fact that she let me learn in yeshivah full time meant that she was our children’s mother, father, mentor and friend, and now they’re left with a void that cannot be filled. It’s very hard when I think about the future. My wife took care of everyone in the house. She’d wake up at 6:00 in the morning to get the children ready for cheder, and when I offered to help her she’d say, “No, you went to sleep late, and you need to have koach to learn.” There was no musag that she was sick; I sometimes forgot about it. My son was learning here in Yerushalayim by my father and brother, but my wife wanted him to learn in Ponovezh in Bnei Brak. The night before he left, he heard a noise in the kitchen. He went to investigate and found my wife crawling on the floor, taking out the
mixer and making chocolate chip cookies for him. Baruch Hashem, we don’t need to have everything homemade. We can go to the store and buy rugelach and cookies. But she wanted him to have something his mother baked when he went off to yeshivah. She had simchas hachaim and very strong emunah. She never cried or complained, and she never let the children see her suffering. Even when I said Viduy with her in the hospital we made sure to close the door so the children shouldn’t hear it, and she told me that aside from the Viduy, we had to make sure to stay upbeat and happy. She was alert until the last moment? Yes. She gave every child a tzavaah on how to behave and what to do. Did she know that the end was imminent? Yes. The doctors had explained everything to her, because five days before the end her kidneys, liver and lungs had all shut down,
so all they could do was count down the hours until the poison would make its way through the body. I was sitting there two days before she passed away and it was very difficult, even though we are required to daven: ‘afilu cherev chadah…al yimna atzmo min harachamim.” The doctors had told her that even if they resuscitated her she would only pass away again because her organs weren’t working. My children and I were discussing how hard it was to daven, so I repeated a vort from my son-in-law, Rabbi Mordechai Yaffe: It says that we learn about Shacharis from the pasuk [Bereishis 19:27] “Vayashkeim Avraham baboker,” which was right after the destruction of Sedom. How does that make sense as a source to learn about Shacharis? As the Ramban explains, Avraham knew that we have to daven during an eis tzarah. Why did Hashem tell Avraham that He would be destroying Sedom? So he could daven. Avraham got the message and davened, but when he woke up the next morning he saw that it hadn’t helped. In that case, why did Hashem bother telling him? The answer is Avraham learned from this that we daven because we have to daven, and that was when he was mesakein Tefillas Shacharis. The tachlis of davening is davening. So I told my children that we would now recite Tehillim l’sheim davening. We closed the door and everyone held my wife’s hands, and we all started saying Tehillim pasuk by pasuk. The whole family davened together like that for an hour and a half. The hospital staff told me afterward that people pass away there all the time, and they usually hear crying and screaming, but all they heard from the other side of the door to my wife’s room was a special davening. There was another patient in that department who was a talmid chacham by the name
I must tell you that losing a wife is ten times harder than I ever imagined.
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of Rav Dov Paley. I spoke to him in learning two hours before he passed away. This was a week before my wife’s passing, and all of his children were there. All of a sudden they started to scream “Shema Yisrael” because his neshamah had started to leave. Being that we’re kohanim we ran out of the hospital, and my daughters remained behind with my wife. The family wanted to close the door because they were in the next room, but my wife asked them to leave it open. After they heard the family saying “Shema Yisrael” and “Hashem Hu Ha’Elokim,” my wife turned to my daughters and said, “Listen carefully to what Jewish people do when the neshamah goes up. I want you to do this with me, because we believe in Hashem even when something like this happens.” [As soon as Rav Kaplan finished this story, his daughter called his cellphone and he picked up. He told her that he couldn’t speak to her just then, but he was repeating the story of the “Shema Yisrael.”] You said that your wife was both the mother and the father of your children, but I see that you have now taken her place. Yes. I have to be available to them at all times. I would imagine that this entire episode has been a “mikvah” of sorts for the entire family. It was a meshunahdike mikvah. On the last Shabbos of her life, my three daughters and my sister were staying with her in the hospital. Their meals were kindly being provided by some of my wife’s friends from the neighborhood, so they prepared exactly five portions with five sets of cutlery and plates for us. After they sang Kabbalas Shabbos in my wife’s room, she said she was tired and suggested that they go downstairs to the shul. They would eat the seudah when they came back. In the shul one of my daughters met a girl from her grade, so she asked her if she had someplace to eat. The girl said no, so my daughter told her to come and eat with them. “Our mother loves to have guests,” she said, so she came upstairs to eat with the family. When my daughters realized that they were short a plate, they took out a different one that
really thought that was it. I told her to cancel the bachurim, but she said, ‘I can’t. It’s so important for my husband to have a yeshivah.’” Not only didn’t my wife tell me how hard it was for her, she left this world leaving me with the feeling that I had enhanced her Shabbos. She was tov b’etzem.
didn’t match from another bag. My wife insisted that she be given the one that didn’t match because she didn’t want the girl to feel uncomfortable. Avraham Avinu did hachnasas orchim three days after his bris. This was three days before my wife’s passing, but she was still concerned that the girl might feel awkward. During the summer she was in terrible pain because a portion of the growth was right on the lungs, so every breath was like a knife. One week, I felt as if I should invite the older bachurim to my house because it was a brandnew yeshivah, so I asked her permission. She said yes, but only on condition that we serve them homecooked food, because otherwise there was no point. She insisted on making salmon and everything else, and the bachurim stayed until one o’clock in the morning singing. After they left she said, “You gave me nachas. I really enjoyed this. It was one of the best Shabbosim I’ve had in the last few years.” I was very happy I’d done it. On the Shabbos of shivah one of her best friends came to visit. She said, “Do you remember that Shabbos? That Friday, your wife told me she couldn’t live with the pain anymore. She
Do you attribute some of her qualities to the fact that she was a bas talmid chacham? Yes. She appreciated the chashivus of Torah from what she had seen growing up, and that’s what was most important to her. Look, I like to help people; it’s my nature. I’m a people person. Every time someone would come over to our house to discuss something with me, I thought she’d be happy that people looked up to her husband and sought his advice. But after they left, she would indicate that her ideal was not for me to be a social worker, but a talmid chacham. She felt that the two were in competition. It was important to her that I sit and learn yomam valailah. At the same time, she was normal and down-to-earth. For the last six years of her life she worked for Ichud Hatzalah. She was in charge of their entire information system. The department heads said that her desk was always like an aliyah laregel, because everyone came to discuss their problems with her. When we made a wedding, everyone from her job was invited. The following day, some of the non-frum people said, “We didn’t realize that you’re a Rebbetzin—we thought you’re a regular woman.” During the last three weeks of her life there were all kinds of people who came into her room for consultations, one of whom was extremely
She gave every child a tzavaah on how to behave and what to do.
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secular. When she was very sick, they sent out WhatsApps to the oilam to daven and say Tehillim for her. This same person made a point of coming in every morning and saying that he had put on tefillin because he respected Rebbetzin Kaplan. She had an influence on everyone. She never let me do anything for her during her lifetime, so I figured that at least for her levayah I would do something nice. But the people from Ichud Hatzalah insisted on doing everything down to the loudspeakers. I felt like she had buried herself—she didn’t even let me make her levayah! The people she took care of took care of her in the end. That was the other side to her. Where is she buried? On Har Hazeisim. Because we’re kohanim, we made sure that she’d be buried in a place where the children would be able to come near her kever. She wanted to be buried next to a chashuve relative of hers who passed away without children, so that when our children came they would also visit the grave of that person. That didn’t work out for several reasons, mainly because it would have meant that the children wouldn’t be able to come, and that was very important to her as well. It turned out, through great siyata dishmaya, that she is right next to a childless woman.
Yeshivah How much was your wife involved in the founding of this yeshivah? One of her friends told the following story, which I think sheds light on her involvement and is very important for all women to hear. I was in Toronto to collect money for the yeshivah when she was admitted into the hospital. The doctors thought she was going to pass away within hours, but she recovered a little bit. Her friends advised her to tell me to come back. They said, “You’re right that it’s important for him to be collecting for his yeshivah, but right now he needs to be with you.” She replied, “He’s there for our yeshivah, not for his yeshivah. I’m also collecting money.” This was always her attitude throughout the years. I opened this yeshivah a year and a half ago,
and it was her life’s dream. She pushed me to leave the Mir and open a yeshivah because she felt that it was the right thing to do. By Simchas Torah she could hardly breathe, but I asked her to come to the yeshivah to see the hakafos and watch the bachurim dance. So she came and we ate in one of the rooms, because it was too hard for her to go back and forth to our apartment. Then she went up the steps to the ezras nashim. She was too weak to stand, so she sat in a place that was higher up where she could see everything. She was there for four hours watching the hakafos, and when she came down she said, “We opened a yeshivah.” When she said that, I knew we had achieved her goal. In what way do you feel she influenced the direction of your yeshivah? The goal we both had was to bring Torah to klal Yisrael on a very high level that is also filled with love. She felt that there are a lot of people who give a lot of love, but they only give it to the underachievers and those who fall through the system. The metzuyanim also
want love, but that almost doesn’t exist in our generation, even though now is exactly when they need it. In the previous generations the metzuyanim didn’t need that hug, but today they do. Throughout the years we initiated various projects to help talmidei chachamim quietly, behind the scenes. She wanted me to bring this love for every talmid and encourage them to become gedolei Yisrael. A 16-year-old bachur once came to my shiur. He looked crude and uncouth, and his father told me to just make sure that he stayed frum. When I spoke to him I realized that he was very smart, so I asked him what he wanted that would keep him learning. He told me he wanted a racecar—I think he said a Ferarri—so I said that if he knows all of Shas he’ll get one. “But what happens before I know all of Shas?” he wanted to know, so I told him that when he knows 300 blatt he can get something small. He said he wanted a Mini Cooper. I didn’t know what it was, but he explained that it’s a small car. So I told his father that that was the deal. The boy learned, got his car, and every time my wife had a baby I would call him to pick her up from the hospital and take her to the convalescent home. I would hold the bags and he would hold the baby, and we all went together. Today, this same person gives a Daf Yomi shiur in Spanish to over 5,000 listeners. When our youngest baby was born I wanted to call him, but my wife said, “Why can’t you just call a taxi?” I said, “I don’t understand. We’ve been doing this with the last few children.” She said, “With the other babies he was young and needed attention, and I wanted him to feel good about himself. Now that he’s learning, I don’t want to bother him.” When he came to the shivah, he said that he and my wife even discussed what color couch to buy. We ourselves never bought a
It was important to her that I sit and learn. At the same time, she was normal and down-to-earth.
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couch, but she would call him to discuss couches to make him feel important. She had a few thousand talmidim like that. Your yeshivah is at the top of a hill, so I had to go up a lot of steps in the rain to reach it. Halfway up, a bachur who was walking down stopped me and asked if I needed an umbrella, and he turned around and walked me all the way back up. There was also another bachur who stopped me to ask if I needed anything. I’ve been to many yeshivos, and I’ve never had an experience like that. Maybe I just happened to meet two exceptional talmidim, but there’s no such thing as coincidence. I was wondering if you attribute their kindness to the warm environment here. It’s definitely the atmosphere. I told the bachurim that a bachur who doesn’t know Shas will be asked to leave, but a bachur who isn’t nice to his friend will be expelled. We demand both. I’ll give you an example. Last Shabbos a lot of the bachurim from the middle shiur went away for Shabbos. There are 50 bachurim, and 30 went away for various reasons. On Friday, I met one of the 20 bachurim who stayed behind, and he told me that they were very downhearted because so many bachurim were gone, and he asked me if I could make an oneg. I said no, because we have a six-hour seder after the seudah every Friday night. They learn from 7:00 p.m. to 1:00 a.m., at which time they aren’t fleishig anymore so they bring in some milchige food and I come down to say a dvar Torah while they eat. Because they have to finish in six hours, they rush the seudah. Last week the seudah ended at 7:30, so they learned until 1:30. In any case, I told them to give me five minutes to think about it. Then I called my children and said, “The bachurim are feeling lonely. Are you moichel me if I eat with them this week in yeshivah instead of with you?” They said, “Abba, this is what Mommy would have wanted you to do. Eat with the bachurim.” I wanted to do the mitzvah myself, so I went and bought some nuts and drinks for the seudah, and we ate together in one of the shiur rooms. Our seudah finished at 8:00
Entrance to Yeshivas Daas Aharon. Also visible is a poster for Rebbetzin Kaplan’s shloshim.
p.m., so we all stayed together to learn until two. After the learning was over, we sang zemiros together until 2:45. But that is exactly the ruach: Warmth, having a seudah with the rosh yeshivah, and also six hours of learning. The bachur with the umbrella told me that you have 150 bachurim in the yeshivah, so it seems to be growing very quickly. This is our second year, and we had over 800 applications. Tell me about the derech halimmud of the yeshivah. The derech halimmud is to learn Rishonim and Acharonim on the sugya with lomdus and without any krumme zachen. The shiurim have to be straight and clear. Where did you yourself learn? I learned in Kol Torah by Rav Shlomo Zalman Auerbach, and then in Ponovezh by
Rav Shach and Rav Dovid Povarsky, zt”l, as well as ylcta”u Rav Gershon Edelstein and Rav Berel Povarsky. I consider Rav Shlomo Zalman to be my rebbe. I was told that aside from being a great lamdan, you’re also a big baal halachah. Do the bachurim learn the sugyos l’halachah? Not at all. The point is for them to obtain clarity, which is why we learn Rishonim and Acharonim glatt. There’s a lot of lomdus, but it’s yashar. I deliberately don’t mix halachah into the seder. But I do give a halachah shiur on Leil Shishi at 11:15 p.m. Do they also learn halachah on their own? Of course. There’s a halachah seder, and they also have unofficial shiurim at night from various people whom I vet before they come in. So again, the halachah doesn’t go into the derech halimmud, but because I love halachah,
I’ve had over 15,000 talmidim over the years, and I keep up with every one of them.
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the bachurim are very medakdeik kalah k’vachamurah, and they like to discuss halachah with me outside of seder as well. Is your cheilek hahalachah from Rav Shlomo Zalman? Yes, and also from the baal Shemiras Shabbos K’hilchasah, Rav Neuwirth. I learned with him b’chavrusa for over 20 years. I also got my derech from Rav Nissim Karelitz. What do you feel is unique about this yeshivah? We are trying to create talmidei chachamim who enjoy learning and have real ahavas haTorah while also having a pleasant personality that exudes a positive ruach. My hope is that they will then take this ruach with them, and it will have a snowball effect on the next generation. If we will manage over the next ten years to produce 1,000 chashuve talmidei chachamim like that, and people will feel ahavas haTorah as well as ahavas habriyos, I think the whole metzius will change. I call it “trying to bring the warmth of America into the lomdus of Eretz Yisrael.” Do you feel that there is more warmth in America? I’m not saying more, but there’s a certain warmth for Torah and mitzvos in the US. So you want to create a mizug. Exactly. My hope is that if I will have siyata dishmaya and people will help me run this moisad the way it needs to be run so that I can give it my all, I will open another moisad like this elsewhere in Yerushalayim that’s geared specifically for American bachurim. I can’t do it now when I’m having a hard enough time managing one, but when I’ll have the yishuv hadaas… Are any of your children involved? They’re young. And having a second yeshivah wouldn’t present a conflict? I don’t think so. My idea is to situate them near each other. I’m also the rav of Givat Hamivtar, although I’m not doing my job right now because I just can’t.
Do you go there for Shabbosim? Officially, but right now it isn’t very practical. It’s an hour’s walk, and when I go I have to stay there for Shabbos. I see a picture of Rav Aharon Yehuda Leib Shteinman in this room, and your yeshivah is called Daas Aharon. Was this yeshivah established in his memory, or was he involved in its founding? It’s l’zichro. My father has two yeshivos; this one, and another in Ramot Polin. His first yeshivah was founded in the lifetime of Rav Shteinman, who was very involved. This yeshivah, which I founded together with my father, was founded right after Rav Shteinman passed away. Where did your father learn? In Baltimore, where he was also a rebbe and a rosh mesivta. Then he was the mashgiach in Kol Torah for a number of years. Were the Kaplans American? Yes. My grandfather was born in Chicago, where he was one of the only shomrei Shabbos in the city. My mother is a daughter of Rav Yehuda Leib Nekritz, rosh yeshivah of Novardok. Rav Yechiel Perr is my uncle. My father came to Eretz Yisrael many years ago, and over the years he became very close with Rav Shteinman. But in a certain sense Rav Shteinman was also the founder of this yeshivah, because he represented its ideals. He learned day and night and demanded kedushah and taharah from himself, and at the same time he also made sure that everyone got whatever he needed. That’s the kav of the yeshivah. Last year on Erev Rosh Hashanah I felt that the bachurim were all very tense after a full Elul of learning plus twice daily mussar shm-
uessen from my father, not to mention the three-hour Selichos of Erev Rosh Hashanah. It felt like if I lit a match, the whole beis midrash was liable to blow up. So I arranged for each bachur to receive a nice bag containing two bottles of soda and some cake and snacks, and I told the bachurim that it was a pekele from the Rebbetzin. A few minutes later I got a call from my wife. “What did you do to me?” she asked. “I just got a bunch of phone calls from parents saying that their children hadn’t called them a whole Elul, but they just called to tell them about the pekele from the Rebbetzin.” But the truth is that I wanted it to come from her. If it came from the Rosh Yeshivah it wouldn’t have the same meaning, and that was also her style to take care of everyone. That’s the idea of the yeshivah. Learning day and night and taking care of them. You left the Mir to join your father here? I left the Mir and then we opened this yeshivah together. How long were you in Mir? Twenty-eight years, and I gave a shiur for around 23 years. I’ve heard very nice things about you as a maggid shiur from Mirrer talmidim. “Yehalelcha zar v’lo picha.” But I can tell you that I’ve had over 15,000 talmidim over the years, and I keep up with every one of them. Do you see this object that’s in the shape of a fountain behind me? It was presented to me as a gift at a dinner when I left the Mir, and it’s inscribed with the words “yafutzu mayenosecha chutzah.” That was the kind of relationship I had with the Mir. I keep it in this room so I can always have that memory.
In a certain sense Rav Shteinman was also the founder of this yeshivah, because he represented its ideals.
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Is there a hemshech between your shiurim there and here? It’s the same derech, but now it’s for bachurim from Eretz Yisrael. I felt that there was a very big need for such a place. Along with a dormitory and everything. Exactly. The yeshivah is in Har Nof, which is a great location, yet it’s also removed from the street because you have to go up a lot of stairs. You’re right. In a way it’s in the neighborhood, and in another way it’s separated. From what you said before about fundraising in Toronto, I understand that the financial burden of running such a moisad and its magnificent building falls on your shoulders. Yes, and it’s not an easy thing. Especially since, as I mentioned before, my Rebetzen took over the responsibility of the house and the children and enabled me to sit and learn and also have time to fundraise for the yeshivah. It was never easy, and it’s certainly much more difficult now. I have some good friends and close talmidim who have extended themselves to help me now, and I would appreciate any further help very much. When I learned in Lakewood by Rav Shneur Kotler, I saw how a rosh yeshivah must struggle in order to support his yeshivah. That’s something the bachurim have to appreciate. The Chofetz Chaim has a maaneh about this. He says the fact that the people who run universities don’t have to run around collecting money while the roshei yeshivah do is that if the roshei yeshivah didn’t have to travel, all of these far-flung places would never see talmidei chachamim. That’s why I also make sure to say shiurim wherever I go and keep up with the oilam. Have you traveled at all since your wife passed away? Twice. Once was with my children to my in-laws in Gateshead. They couldn’t come to
the levayah or to the shivah, so I took the children to visit them. The other time was three weeks ago, when I was the guest of a family in Lakewood that was making a Shabbaton for yesomim. But I didn’t take my own children along; I just went to be there with the other yesomim. I had a feeling that it would be a good thing, and I became very close to a group of about 50 bachurim between the ages of 13 and 20, all of whom had recently lost their fathers. It was Parshas Shemos, so I spoke about shishah b’keres achas and told them that that Shabbos I felt as if I was the father of another 50 children. I learned a lot from them, including that no matter how much people want to help them, they still don’t realize how much they need. I must share with you a story the Munkatcher Rebbe told me. As you may know, he lost his mother, who was the daughter of the Minchas Elazar, when he was very young, so he takes anything related to yesomim very personally. He related that one Motzaei Shabbos during the Shovavim
weeks of 5720 he was at the bar mitzvah in Boro Park of a boy who was his relative and had lost both parents in a plane crash. The Satmar Rebbe came to the bar mitzvah very late at night, after the Rebbe had said a long Shovavim Torah. At one point someone came over and took a picture of the Satmar Rebbe. As soon as he realized it, the Rebbe made it very clear that no pictures should be taken. A few minutes later someone else came by and also took a picture. This time, the Satmar Rebbe said in an agitated tone, “I was matriach to come to a bar mitzvah on a Motzaei Shabbos, and I can’t even get the little bit I asked for in return—that no one should take any pictures. The Rebbetzin asked me not to come because of the lateness of the hour, and I don’t even get the simple courtesy every other guest receives.” The Rebbe was visibly becoming more and more upset. He turned to his gabbai, Reb Yosef Ashkenazi, and asked him to give him his tilep [a satin coat or rezh-
I became very close to a group of about 50 bachurim, all of whom had recently lost their fathers.
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The beis midrash of Yeshivas Daas Aharon
volke with a fur collar and sleeves]. The Rebbe then stood up and walked out. As the Rebbe was walking down the hall, Reb Yosef whispered something in the Rebbe’s ear. The Rebbe suddenly calmed down and returned to the bar mitzvah as if nothing had happened. The Munkatcher Rebbe was very curious to know what Reb Yosef had said, so he later asked him about it. He replied, “All I did was remind the Rebbe that the bar mitzvah bachur was a yasom.” That’s a beautiful story, but people don’t understand it unless they’ve lost someone. No one can imagine what it feels like.
Pesach and Emunah I would like to ask if we can conclude with a vort in connection with Pesach. Let me share this gedank. How can a person be mechazeik himself after losing his wife? He has so many responsibilities. Life is hard, and then Pesach comes. However, Pesach is the source of emunah. Moshe Rabbeinu said, “Kachatzos halailah ani yotzei—shelo yitu itztagninei Pharaoh v’yomru Moshe bada’i.” Let’s say there would be a mistake and the people would die a minute
early or a minute late. If all the bechoros would still die, what difference would it make? The answer lies in the real argument between Pharaoh and Moshe. Everyone knew that Moshe was a superman; look at what he did. But Pharaoh claimed that Moshe was a magician who was simply better than his own magicians. However, Moshe insisted that he was a shaliach of Hashem. What’s the difference between being a shaliach of Hashem and a magician? If the meteorologists say that tomorrow at three in the afternoon there will be two feet of snow and they’re off by an inch or two, everyone thinks they’re fantastic. But if Hashem says it and it’s not exact, it’s nothing. Moshe said “kachatzos” because if he had said “bachatzos” and it occurred a minute early or a minute late, they would have said that Moshe was amazing, but he wasn’t a shaliach of Hashem. On Shabbos Parshas Beshalach we give the
birds food because they ate the mann that Dasan and Aviram left in the fields. Moshe said that there wouldn’t be mann on Shabbos, and Dasan and Aviram tried to trick the Yidden. We have amazing hakaras hatov for the birds for eating it all before anyone could see it. Now, what would have happened if the birds hadn’t eaten it? It says that every morning the mann was two amos high across an area of three parsa’os. All Dasan and Aviram had was their own portions for Shabbos, so what would have been the problem? People would have laughed at them the next morning if all they saw was those two portions of mann. The answer is that if Moshe said on his own that there wouldn’t be any mann, there could be some leeway if a small amount of mann fell, but if Hashem said there wouldn’t be any mann, then there couldn’t be even one piece. Even a single crumb would mean that it wasn’t coming from Hashem. Yetzias Mitzrayim teaches us that every single thing that happens is from Hashem. There isn’t one small pain or one small burden that isn’t from the Ribbono Shel Olam. When you have that emunah, you can get through every hardship in life. You can even get through the galus. All we have to know is that it is from Hashem. When my wife was in her final moments, it seemed that the neshamah wasn’t ready to leave right away, so I told my son, “Let’s talk in learning; let it happen mitoch divrei Torah.” My son said that he couldn’t, but I told him he had to. So he made a siyum on Horayos and recited the Kaddish for after a siyum, and that is when her neshamah departed. That is the koach of emunah. As my wife said, “When things are difficult and there’s nothing left, a Yid says, ‘Shema Yisrael, Hashem Hu Ha’Elokim.’” That’s the message. ●
My wife said, “When there’s nothing left, a Yid says, ‘Shema Yisrael.’”
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F E AT U R E
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MYRabbi ZEIDE Aryeh Kanievsky gives us a peek into the holy world of his grandfather, Rav Chaim, shlita BY CHAIM FRIEDLANDER
14 NISAN 5780 // APRIL 8, 2020 / AMI MAGAZINE
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Feature: Rabbi Aryeh Kanievsky
‘‘T
wo yeshivah bachurim came to my grandfather one after the other and asked for a brachah for a shidduch. To the first he replied, “Brachah v’hatzlachah,” but to the second he said, “Refuah shleimah.” The second bachur couldn’t understand the Rav’s reply. He ran out of the house to catch the bus back to yeshivah. On his way to the bus station, he ran across the street without looking. Unfortunately, he was hit by a car because the driver didn’t see him. The bachur was very emotional when he called me from the hospital: ‘Please tell your grandfather that his brachah protected me. I was able to walk away from the accident with a few minor injuries.’” The person relating this story to Ami is Rabbi Aryeh Kanievsky, the beloved grandson of Rav Chaim Kanievsky, who stands by his grandfather’s side throughout the day to serve him and bring him questions that arrive from around the world. There is no need to waste words on Rav Kanievsky’s greatness in Torah. It is not for nothing that many refer to him by the title “Sar HaTorah” because of his bekius in all areas, including unknown midrashim and obscure halachah sefarim. This time, however, it is about another side to him, thanks to his grandson, who gave us an opportunity to take a rare peek into the Rav’s daily conduct with his family, as well as the hundreds of petitioners streaming to his door. 88 A M I M A G A Z I N E / / A P R I L 8 , 2 0 2 0 / / 1 4 N I S A N 5 7 8 0
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4/1/20 10:25 PM
Feature: Rabbi Aryeh Kanievsky
Rav and Grandfather Rav Kanievsky’s hasmadah and bekius were well known even when he was a young avreich, but Rabbi Aryeh relates that when he himself was a child he didn’t understand his grandfather’s greatness. “We knew that Zeidy was a great tzaddik whose only interest was Torah and more Torah, but to us he was a grandfather in every sense of the word. I would daven Maariv next to him every night, and he would make sure to send my father a note about my conduct: ‘Today Aryeh davened nicely,’ or chalilah, ‘Aryeh was daydreaming a bit.’ When we started learning mishnayos and then Gemara, we would proudly tell him what we had learned, and he would take an interest and ask us questions. Similarly, before I got married, he would ask me about what was happening with regard to shidduchim. He didn’t pry, and in any case he’s busy learning Torah all day. As we grew older, we came to understand who our grandfather was, and began to be in awe of him. It’s not easy to know that your grandfather is a giant who is followed by the entire world, and you’re bothering him with minor things.” With his grandfather sitting and learning around the clock, his grandmother, Rebbetzin Batsheva, a”h, was the loving matriarch of their many grandchildren and great-grandchildren. After she passed away eight years ago, Rav Chaim’s interaction with his family members was affected. “You might say that he became more of a grandfather. He started asking more questions and taking a greater interest. His tests for the grandchildren also became easier. There were times when he would quiz us without us having the slightest chance of passing because we felt very pressured. There were also questions to which only he knew the answers, such as how many times does the name of a certain Amora appear in the perek we were learning.
Now the questions became much easier. He never explained the change, but we grandchildren believe that after the Rebbetzin passed away, he took it upon himself to play a greater role as our grandparent.” The Rebbetzin, the daughter of Rav Elyashiv, zt”l, was famous for the listening ear she provided to the many women and girls who flocked to her door. She was sought out for her advice and brachos, and aside from being an eishes chaveir, she became a respected figure in her own right. At her levayah, which took place late at night, the streets of Bnei Brak looked black because of the tens of thousands of people who came out to pay their final respects. “The year after her passing was very difficult for the Rav. People had no idea of the
depth of his connection with the Rebbetzin. They had been married for decades, and he never ate breakfast, lunch or supper without her. He would always wait for her to finish with her students, and only then would he sit down to eat with her. I would often tell him, ‘Saba, eat by yourself. Savta will come along later and eat then.’ And he would always reply, ‘I know that if I don’t wait for her she won’t eat.’ It was the same thing when it came to going to sleep at night. He wouldn’t go to sleep until the Rebbetzin came home. Now, don’t forget that the Rav wakes up every night for Tikkun Chatzos, and the Rebbetzin would often go to weddings and sometimes come home very late. But he always waited up for her. When we would urge him not to wait he would say, ‘If the Rebbetzin would
“AFTER THE REBBETZIN PASSED AWAY, HE TOOK IT UPON HIMSELF TO PLAY A GREATER ROLE AS OUR GRANDPARENT.”
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Feature: Rabbi Aryeh Kanievsky
know that I’m not waiting for her she would stay and listen to people’s tzaros until the morning.’ They had a very powerful kesher, even though we weren’t fully aware of how strong it was. It was only after she passed away and we saw the great void that was left, and how difficult it was for our grandfather, especially on Shabbos and Yom Tov, that we finally understood the meaning of ‘ein ishah meis ela l’baalah’ (Sanhedrin 22b), that only a husband can truly mourn for his wife.” The grandchildren, who loved their grandmother very much, also took her passing very hard. Rabbi Aryeh relates that after the conclusion of shivah, he went to his grandfather and asked what he should take upon himself l’iluy nishmasah. “He replied, ‘Baruch Hashem, there is enough Torah and chesed in our generation. But there is a problem: people don’t know how to conduct themselves. Take upon yourself to strengthen your study of mussar. If it won’t help those who learn it, at least it will help the maggidei shiur.’ He then told me that this was the reason he had published the sefer Orchos Yosher, which is a collection of divrei Chazal about strengthening one yiras shamayim and the acquisition of good middos.” As a result, Rabbi Aryeh decided to found the Orchos Yosher organization for the dissemination of the study of mussar. This or-
ganization, which had very humble beginnings, has turned into a respected institute that prints booklets of mussar according to a daily study plan with more than 35,000 subscribers. It also has special yemei iyun and distributes funds before Yom Tov to the families of the maggidei shiur and those who are in need, whom the Rebbetzin secretly supported for many years.
Yomim Tovim, Brachos and Klalos
Seeing the Rav cut his own s’chach, grind flour for matzah and being involved in all the preparations for a Yom Tov were common sights in Bnei Brak in years past, before the 92-year-old gadol reached the age of gevurah. Rabbi Aryeh opens a small window into Rav
Chaim’s conduct at home: “On Shabbos and Yom Tov he sings zemiros to the niggunim that his father, the Steipler Gaon, brought from Pinsk, and he relates vertlach on the parshah or Yom Tov in his father’s name and in the name of his uncle, the Chazon Ish. He also tells sippurei tzaddikim. We have a zechus that all of his grandchildren’s families join him for the Seder. There’s a special niggun that his father sang for ‘V’hi She’amdah.’ When our grandfather sings it, he cries and turns red like a fire. His eyes roll upward, and at that moment he looks like an actual malach. I’m not a chasid and I don’t study nistar, but once a year I feel like I’m not seeing a man next to me but a saraf.” I ask if Rav Chaim understands his power as a manhig. “It’s hard to know for sure. My grandfather doesn’t talk much about his feelings, and it’s rare for him to even reveal his thoughts. But from what we can understand, it seems that unlike in the past, when he was less at peace with people coming to him for brachos and advice, in recent years he has been increasingly accepting of it. On the night of Rosh Hashanah, the street outside his house is filled with people who want to be blessed with a good year. Once, after greeting people non-stop for ten minutes he turned to me and said, ‘Aryeh, these are probably the same people who came back for a second round.’ I said, ‘Saba, these are different people.’ I could see that it was hard for him to accept. There are still times when he’ll suddenly ask, ‘What are all these people doing here?’ Nevertheless, when I would ask him if he wanted me to stop them from coming he would say,
“I’M NOT A CHASID AND I DON’T STUDY NISTAR, BUT ONCE A YEAR I FEEL LIKE I’M NOT SEEING A MAN NEXT TO ME BUT A SARAF.”
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Mesamche Lev would like to thank
for graciously working along with us during this challenging Erev Pesach season. At Mesamche Lev we witnessed how those behind Bingo had one goal: to enable thousands of Lakewood families to bring in Pesach with dignity and serenity. Although cost prices did go up, Bingo never increased their prices and continued to serve the community with efficiency and professionalism. 'ישלם ה' פעלכם ותהי משכורתכם שלמה מעם ה
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Feature: Rabbi Aryeh Kanievsky
‘My father used to say that one must dedicate maaser from his day to the public, and even if it ends up being more than maaser it’s not terrible, because we don’t know in whose merit we are alive.’ “The same goes for the many answers that he gives people every day. It’s a burden that takes up numerous hours. There are many times when he’ll answer questions whose answers are written clearly in the Mishnah Berurah, even though it’s difficult for him. ‘This is chesed,’ he explains. I remember there was once a child who sent him a question on the parshah that he was learning in cheder. It was an easy question that his teacher could have answered for him. When I saw him answering, I asked him why he was bothering to do it. He said, ‘Aryeh, you don’t know what can happen to this child in the coming years. Perhaps this answer will help him be mischazeik.’ “It’s very difficult for me to describe my grandfather’s labors to listen patiently to ‘torchachem, masaachem v’rivchem,’ your trouble, your burden and your strife. One time, after a particularly long day of seeing people, he whispered into my ear, ‘If I could spend more time without having to see people, I could write a number of sefarim.’” On that note, Rabbi Aryeh relates, “I once entered his room with an older bachur who told my grandfather that he had once gotten a brachah from him for a shidduch, but it still hadn’t been fulfilled. He was therefore asking for another brachah, but this time with more force. My grandfather replied, ‘You see that my brachos don’t work, so why are you bothering to come here again?’ When the bachur left the room after a warm brachah, my grandfather turned to me with wonder and said, ‘It’s true that it says that the brachah of a hedyot shouldn’t be taken lightly, and that’s why people take the trouble to come here, but why do they assign so much importance to it? It says that you shouldn’t take it lightly, not that it should be important.’ “In recent years he has become more accepting of the situation, but if someone decides to be a smart aleck and recite the
brachah ‘Shechalak meichochmaso liyrei’av,’ he always gets angry and exclaims, ‘Brachah l’vatalah!’ Another thing that really bothers him is when people come for a brachah, but when he tells them to do something they refuse to commit themselves. He has often asked me, ‘If they don’t want to listen to me, then why do they come here?’ He once explained, ‘If a person comes and asks for a brachah and I tell him to start growing his beard, it’s because I think that he has to make a small effort. He has to overcome his yetzer hara a little bit, and Hakadosh Baruch Hu will grant him his yeshuah.’” Rabbi Aryeh relates that people don’t just come for brachos and advice, they also come to have curses removed. But Rav Chaim isn’t concerned about such things. “Terrified people come to the Rav and tell him that they were cursed by an evil neighbor or some other person. My grandfather always calms them down and says, ‘Don’t worry. An unjustified curse always returns to the one who curses. You have nothing to fear.’ However, I do remember that someone once came and related that there was an unfortunate almanah in his neighborhood whom his family always helped, but due to various problems they were no longer able to help her as much as they used to. In response to their cutbacks, she threatened them with all the curses mentioned in the Torah. My grandfather calmed him down, as he did with everyone else, but this time he added that because she was an almanah, he should go lifnim mishuras hadin and do whatever he could to appease her until she took back her words.” To understand what Rav Chaim thinks
about klalos, his grandson points out that every year on Parshas Bechukosai the Rav relates that he once knew a Yid who was a great talmid chacham, who said that he wasn’t afraid to get the aliyah of the klalos. Years later, he received a very large inheritance and left Israel for business reasons, became a wealthy man and went off the derech. The Rav concludes that that person’s end proves how important it is to be careful with the minhag of not receiving the aliyah of the klalos. At this point I want to go back to something he said previously. “You mentioned your grandfather’s instruction about growing a beard. It is known that in recent years he has also been telling men not to wear a watch. Why is that?” “It’s a relatively new thing that started a few years ago when he heard from a trustworthy person that his uncle, the Chazon Ish, considered wearing a watch to fall under the prohibition of lo silbash. He instructed us to stop wearing wristwatches and carry them in our pockets instead. More recently, he started telling people who come to him to do the same thing. I don’t know his reasoning, but perhaps it can be explained by something else he once told me: ‘If someone comes to me when he is in trouble and wants a brachah, and I tell him to do something small in exchange but he is unable to overcome his yetzer hara, what can I do? He wants Hakadosh Baruch Hu to take care of all of his tzaros, but when he’s asked to strengthen himself in a small area he doesn’t think that he can do it.’ This was a rare expression of pain through which we can perhaps understand his instructions to the public, because
“HE HAS OFTEN ASKED ME, ‘IF THEY DON’T WANT TO LISTEN TO ME, THEN WHY DO THEY COME HERE?’”
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Feature: Rabbi Aryeh Kanievsky
he wants them to work on themselves.” “Does he have any particular segulos that he instructs people to do?” I ask. “Usually, when people ask him for a segulah for a refuah or any other problem, he either tells them that they should daven or they should learn, and he’ll connect the learning with the kind of yeshuah the person needs. For example, if a person needs a refuah for some sort of blemish or injury, he’ll tell him to learn Maseches Bechoros, which deals with mumin that invalidate korbanos or kohanim. Or sometimes he’ll tell someone to learn Zevachim or Chulin for the same reason. If someone asks for a brachah that his wife should carry a pregnancy to term, he’ll tell him to learn Perek Hamapeles in Maseches Niddah. If it’s a person who suffers from several maladies, he’ll tell him to learn Maseches Makkos. To women, he’ll usually instruct them to say ten perakim of Tehillim or to read Tze’enah Ure’enah. Of course, the answer varies from person to person, but his answer always involves Torah and tefillah.” There are times when people to whom the Rav has told to daven reply with disappointment: “Just tefillah?” In such cases, Rabbi Aryeh relates, “The Rav replies with pain, ‘What do you mean just? Tefillah is everything!’ Nevertheless, there have been lots of people who insisted that they wanted to do something in addition to tefillah. After they left he would tell me, ‘He simply doesn’t believe that tefillah alone will help him.’ Incidentally, when people ask if they should daven for their tzaros at home, in shul or at the Kosel, he usually answers that it doesn’t matter, because tefillah helps everywhere. It depends on the person’s feelings. If someone feels that he can daven better at the Kosel then he should go there, and the same goes for any other place. He also sometimes sees what the person truly wants and tells him to do the opposite, in order to get him to break his yetzer hara. Sometimes people come with grand ideas about going on trips to kivrei tzaddikim, and he’ll tell them to stay home. Or if someone says that he wants to daven at
home, he’ll tell him to travel.” “How can the Rav answer people’s mundane questions when he lives in a completely different sphere?” I wonder. “I don’t know, but he has siyata dishmaya. I remember one incident when a bachur in shidduchim came and asked what to do if he liked the girl who had been suggested to him but he wasn’t drawn [lo nimshach] to her appearance. My grandfather replied, ‘A beheimah gasah is acquired through meshichah. Get engaged; it’ll pass.’ I said, ‘Saba only cares about Torah, but bachurim in our generation are interested in Olam Hazeh. It’s hard for them. How can Saba tell him that?’ He didn’t explain much. All he said was, ‘It shouldn’t interest him. It’s shtuyot.’ Sure enough, the bachur got married to her and later came back to say that he was very happy. My grandfather explained, ‘It’s not that she changed; his approach is what changed,’ meaning that once that bachur understood that she was his zivug all of his objections disappeared.” “What was the hardest question the Rav was ever asked?” “Every day there’s a question that is harder than the questions that were asked the day before. These are questions of life and death,
whether to undergo one treatment or another. He thinks, dissects and then answers. He can answer two people who come to him with the exact same medical question with totally different answers. I remember one time when a medical adviser told someone who was ill to travel outside the country for surgery, and the Rav told him to remain in Israel. The adviser insisted, and came to the Rav to explain that the Israeli doctors were cobblers and shoemakers. My grandfather replied, ‘There’s no such thing as a good doctor, not here and not there. Everything is min hashamayim.’ The person ended up traveling and passed away. After the shivah, the niftar’s mother-in-law came to the Rav said that the almanah feels like she killed her husband because she pushed him to listen to the adviser instead of the Rav. He replied, ‘Tell her not to be concerned. It was his time to pass away, and Hakadosh Baruch Hu therefore sent him to travel. It has nothing to do with her.’ It’s important to point out, though, that my grandfather doesn’t insist that all sick people stay in Israel. It varies.” About people who come back to the Rav to apologize for not listening to him, Rabbi Aryeh says, “Whenever people apologize and
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Feature: Rabbi Aryeh Kanievsky
ask if my grandfather has a kpeidah against them, he always replies, ‘I’m not makpid, and I have never been makpid on anyone.’” As we are talking, he suddenly remembers a story that involved one of his relatives: “The man didn’t have children and came to ask for a brachah. The Rav bentched him and instructed him to make Havdalah on wine. My relative replied that he already made Havdalah on wine. The Rav thought for a minute and then said, ‘Perhaps it’s yayin nesech?’ My relative insisted that he didn’t have yayin nesech and that he only made Havdalah over kosher wine. Nonetheless, the Rav said, ‘Drink kosher wine.’ The next day I got a phone call from my relative. He said that when he got home and told his wife what happened, they started thinking about what it could mean until they realized what the Rav meant. It turned out that once a week a non-Jewish cleaning lady was coming to their house and cleaning the cabinet where the wine was kept.” “Why does the Rav often answer ‘buha’ when people ask him for a brachah” I want to know. “It’s the roshei teivos of ‘brachah v’hatzlachah,” he explains. “He started to bentch people that way on Chol Hamoed Sukkos seven years ago when hundreds of people came for brachos and he didn’t have the koach to tell each one ‘brachah v’hatzlachah.’ He was already abbreviating it that way in his letters. But sometimes he’ll use another nusach. “Another interesting thing happened when David Bitan, the police commander for the Southern District, was in the running for the position and came for a brachah. My grandfather asked, ‘Are you a kohen?’ No one knew why he was asking this. A few weeks later it all became clear when Bitan was passed over in favor of Motti Cohen, who was originally not considered a strong candidate. A similar story took place when Eli Avidar, who was then the managing director of the Israel Diamond Exchange, came to ask for a brachah to enter politics. The Rav replied, ‘Don’t go.’
“I PERSONALLY PASSED ON MORE THAN 300 QUESTIONS ON THE CORONAVIRUS. THEY RANGED FROM HALACHIC SH’EILOS TO FINANCIAL QUESTIONS.” But Avidar insisted, ‘It’s pulling me in.’ ‘Are you crazy?’ the Rav replied vehemently. When he left I asked, ‘Saba, why do you care? What else can he do that’s better than politics?’ ‘Politics is where he can harm us the most,’ he replied. Now we are witness to the results. Avidar joined Yisrael Beiteinu and in the last election cycle led the incitement campaign against our community.”
The Coronavirus Pandemic The Rav surprised many when he instructed the residents of Bnei Brak to daven biyechidus, when he had previously said that people should continue learning in the batei midrash after the authorities suggested that the educational institutes be closed. Rabbi Aryeh describes what took place behind the scenes. “In the past, whenever I asked him about certain wars that seemed imminent he was disinterested and continued learning. But everything changed when it came to the coronavirus. When the Twin Towers fell, we thought that World War III was about to break out. I told him what happened, and he sighed and asked if any Jews were killed. When I told him that there were, he said, ‘Hashem should help,’ and then continued learning as usual. However, as I said, this time was different. “From the very beginning he instructed everyone to obey the orders of the Health Ministry, and he even said that anyone who violated the order to self-quarantine should be informed upon. At the same time, he said that as long as it wasn’t absolutely necessary
to close the mosdos Torah they should be left open in accordance with the orders— meaning that people should learn only in small groups and with distancing between the students. Sadly, as the pandemic continued to spread and it was no longer possible to obey the orders, he instructed that the mosdos be closed. On the other hand, when someone from another country where it was still permitted to gather asked the Rav whether he should daven in a shul that hadn’t been disinfected, he replied, ‘It’s a time of sakanah. Daven at home.’” There have been many sh’eilos in connection with the coronavirus. “I personally passed on more than 300 questions on this topic. They ranged from halachic sh’eilos regarding what to do with people who had passed away to financial questions about whether to sell off stocks in the falling markets. In case you’re wondering, the Rav’s response to the latter was, ‘Shev v’al taaseh.’ Many other questions were about backyard chasunos, which became very popular. People asked if they should move up the weddings out of concern that a lockdown would be imposed or they should wait or even push them off. In general, the Rav said that they should either be moved up or held on the original date. I don’t recall a case in which he said that they should be postponed. “One of the effects of the pandemic is the terrible toll it’s taking on the economy. Stock markets are crashing around the world, people are being laid off and businesses are closing down. As a result, support for the mosdos has suffered. Aside from the fact that the roshei yeshivah can’t visit other countries to raise funds as they usually do, there are also many wealthy people who are afraid for
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L-R: Rav Gershon Edelstein, Rav Chaim Kanievsky, Rav Berel Povarsky
their financial future. People asked the Rav if their concern is justified. He replied, ‘Of course they have to donate!’ With regards to the fear that they wouldn’t be left with enough money for themselves, he bentched them and said, ‘They will end up with double!’” The nature of the questions being asked over the last few weeks shows that the Rav’s address serves a barometer for how things have changed. “Three weeks ago the questions were whether or not to leave the country. The following week they were mainly about continuing the learning in the mosdos and yeshivos, and this past week the questions decreased and the main requests were to submit names for brachos for a refuah. The whole world is in turmoil and people everywhere want to know, ‘What does Rav Chaim say? Has he offered any calming words?’ The painful answer is no. We haven’t heard any ‘promises’ or ‘nevuos’ about what will happen. But my grandfather keeps saying, ‘Hakadosh Baruch Hu wants us to daven. We must increase in tefillah and strengthen ourselves in Torah, and in the end, with Hashem’s help, all will be well.’ “Rav Chaim’s son-in-law, Rav Shraga Shteinman, the rosh yeshivah of Orchos Torah, asked Rav Chaim if what we are seeing is an
expression of ‘shafach lo rabbo kiton b’fanav,’ meaning that Hakadosh Baruch Hu, k’vayachol, doesn’t want our tefillos in shul. My grandfather replied, ‘Perhaps there is a remez that we have to strengthen ourselves in our fear of the “mikdash” and guard ourselves from speaking in shul.’ He also said that we can see Hashem’s hand because the weather in Eretz Yisrael is very mild right now, and even those people who are quarantined at home can go out on their porches and in their backyards to get some fresh air. In his words, ‘It says in the Gemara that Hakadosh Baruch Hu could have taken am Yisrael out of Mitzrayim during a snowstorm or a heat wave, because their joy in being able to escape captivity was so great that they wouldn’t have even noticed. Part of Hakadosh Baruch Hu’s chesed was to take them out in the chodesh ha’aviv, which is neither hot nor cold. We see the same thing now; even during the hastarah of this gezeirah there
are all kinds of nissim that Hakadosh Baruch Hu is performing for us.’” As a final question, I ask Rabbi Aryeh whether there are any episodes that stand out in his mind. “My grandfather once visited his son, my father and teacher Rav Avraham Yeshayahu, and asked for a private room. He walked into the room and ran out as if he had been bitten by a snake. “Someone is in there,” he said. My father entered the room and didn’t see anyone. After he checked again he realized that there was a mirror on the wall, and that was apparently what his father was referring to. From then on my grandfather refused to go into that room. It’s not that he doesn’t have any mirrors in his house; there is one, but it’s inside a cabinet. The Rav doesn’t know what’s in his cabinets; there’s nothing surprising about that. The same goes for meals—he doesn’t know what he’s eating. Foods don’t have names as far as he’s concerned; the only questions are about which brachos to say. One time when we were eating he smiled and said, ‘I’m already full; I’ve already eaten 80 kezeisim of afikomen,’ meaning in the course of his life.” In conclusion, Rabbi Aryeh says, “I have merited to stand by the side of the giant of giants, whose blessings and advice are sought by hundreds of thousands of people around the world. It has been a privilege that not many others have merited. And although his ‘head is in shamayim,’ I receive personal attention from him about everything: a child who doesn’t feel well, which yeshivah ketanah to choose for my son and how did my older son’s test go in yeshivah. Sometimes, when I already want to go home and he wants me to feel good he’ll say, ‘Aryeh, don’t leave. How will I manage without you?’” ●
“I HAVE MERITED TO STAND NEXT TO THE GIANT OF GIANTS, WHOSE BLESSINGS AND ADVICE ARE SOUGHT BY...PEOPLE AROUND THE WORLD.”
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F E AT U R E
The Tale of the
RABBIS’ SUITCASE AN AMAZING DISCOVERY REVEALS A TROVE OF IMPORTANT LETTERS BY ELIEZER BRODT
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Rabbi Yaakov Reinowitz
A
Rabbi Susman Cohen
FEW YEARS AGO, while doing research for a series of articles about the Netziv, I came across an article written by a Rabbi Dr. Eugene Newman. In the article, he recounts the life stories of two rabbanim in London who had enjoyed frequent correspondence with the Netziv and other gedolim of the time. I asked a few people, who might have information, if they were aware of any such correspodence. They had heard about the two rabbanim, but the trail to the actual documents was cold. A few months ago in shul, a friend mentioned to me that someone had sent him an article that might be of interest to me. Soon after receiving the article, I recognized the great siyata diShmaya that had just come my way. I had discovered the lost trail I had been seeking. The article described a suitcase, buried in an attic, that contained over a thousand documents, as well as numerous letters from many gedolim around the globe. The correspondence belonged to two Litvish rabbanim in England who had been dayanim on the chief rabbi’s beis din during the years 1879 to 1905. The two rabbanim were Rabbi Yaakov Reinowitz (1818-1893) and his son-in-law, Rabbi Sussman Cohen (1841-1907). The letters were written by the Netziv, Rav Yitzchak Elchanan Spektor, Rav Shmuel Salant, Rav Yehoshua Leib Diskin, Rav Yisroel Salanter, and Rav Eliezer Gordon, to name just a few. 14 NISAN 5780 // APRIL 8, 2020 / AMI MAGAZINE
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Feature: The Tale of the Rabbis’ Suitcase
I immediately reached out to the author of the article, Eli Friedwald, to ask if he intended to publish these manuscripts. He replied that he had just completed a book that was in the final stages of publication. The book was an overview of the documents, with an emphasis on the social and historical aspects of the correspondence rather than on the detailed halachic content. The main project had been the cataloguing and imaging of the correspondence; the book was actually an afterthought. The catalog, arranged in an Excel database, incorporates all the letter images and would enable others, such as Torah scholars and historians, to read the full content, subject to his agreement. Following is an interview with Eli Friedwald, author of the book The Rabbis’ Suitcase: Letters from a Turbulent Age, along with some excerpts from the book, translated into English; they provide a glimpse into the fascinating lost world discovered in these documents.
Top row, right to left: Rav Eliezer Gordon, Rav Azriel Hildesheimer, the Netziv Rav Naftali Zvi Yehuda Berlin. Bottom row, right to left: Rav Yitzchak Elchanan Spektor, Rabbi Yechiel Brill, Rabbi Nathan Adler.
In the Beginning
How did you get involved in this project? Often over the years, I had heard that there was a suitcase someplace that contained correspondence from my wife’s great-grandfathers, Rabbi Reinowitz and Rabbi Cohen. About 20 years ago I was helping my motherin-law in London during a house move when I noticed an old suitcase. I thought it might be that suitcase, and I carefully opened it up. I was so overwhelmed at the sight of so many old, faded, handwritten letters and crumbling notebooks that I quickly shut the suitcase. After my mother-in-law passed away, the suitcase passed into the possession of my brother-in-law, Rabbi Michael Newman, who was concerned that the documents be properly catalogued and researched. At that time,
I had already moved to Jerusalem, and I suggested to my brother-in-law that he send me the documents to work on. About five years ago he agreed to do this, and he sent me the collection in small parcels over a period of about three years. Did you have the knowledge and expertise to understand the documents and catalogue them? Actually, no! The letters and documents are handwritten and difficult to decipher. The material is mostly halachic and well beyond my personal level of Torah scholarship. I also had no previous experience indexing and cataloguing document collections. Originally, I was planning on having others work on it. But the documents came from London in small, manageable batches, and Heaven intervened, blessing me with a neighbor by the name of Mordechai Zucker who was an expert in deciphering old Hebrew scripts. Together, we spent hun-
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TOV V’CHESED PESACH EFFORTS STRONGER THAN EVER DESPITE INTERNATIONAL CRISIS R’ Yaakov Eliezer Shisha declares: I can’t let thousands of Israeli almanos, yesomim and poor families go hungry this Pesach! The coronavirus is raging around the world and no end appears in sight. Everyone is suffering but the most vulnerable among us are suffering even more as workers are laid off and many organizations are unable to fundraise and distribute food. Tov V’chesed, under the leadership of R’ Shisha, is running towards the fire while everyone is running away. The following is a brief overview of this year’s massive Pesach activities:
THE ORGANIZATION WILL BE PROVIDING FOOD COUPONS
THE COUPONS WILL BE VALID IN 200 STORES AROUND THE HOLY LAND AND TOV V’CHESED
IN VALUE OF 1.5 MILLION DOLLARS IN PLACE OF THE
ARRANGED SO THAT EACH FAMILY WILL BE ABLE TO CALL IN AND HAVE THEIR ORDERS
REGULAR FOOD DISTRIBUTIONS! THE COST FOR THESE
HOME DELIVERED. THE COUPONS WILL ALSO PROVIDE FAMILIES WITH FOOD SUPPORT
COUPONS IS 35 PERCENT HIGHER THAN THE COST OF THE
PRIOR TO YOM TOV WHEN THE CHILDREN ARE AT HOME AND IN NEED OF FOOD.
ACTUAL FOOD OFFERED IN YEARS PAST WHICH ARE BOUGHT IN BULK AT A DISCOUNT.
THOUSANDS OF FAMILIES AND TENS OF THOUSANDS OF INDIVIDUALS WILL BE RECEIVING CRITICAL FOOD AID THIS PESACH SEASON. THIS INCLUDES MANY GEDOLIM AND LEADERS, AMONG THEM R’
FAMILIES WHO REACHED OUT FOR ASSISTANCE AFTER THEY LOST THEIR
CHAIM KANIEVSKY SHLIT”A, R SHIMON
INCOME SOURCE DUE TO THE VIRUS.
GALEI SHLIT”A, AND R’ YAAKOV MEIR SHECHTER
SHLIT”A
IMPLORED
THE AS IN YEARS PAST, TOV V’CHESED
INTERNATIONAL JEWISH COMMUNITY TO
TOV V’CHESED PURCHASED 2 TONS
SUPPORT THESE EFFORTS GENEROUSLY.
OF MATZOHS TO DISTRIBUTE AROUND
THEY ASSURED THOSE WHO TAKE PART
THE COUNTRY! THE GROUP RECEIVED A
ARE DONE WITH UTMOST DIGNITY. A
IN THIS MITZVAH THAT THEY WILL GAIN A
SPECIAL GOVERNMENT PERMIT TO RUN
CONVOY OF 45 CARS SPREAD OUT THROUGHOUT
TREMENDOUS ZCHUS AS KLAL YISROEL
THIS OPERATION DESPITE THE NATIONAL
ISRAEL AND DELIVERED THE COUPONS IN THE
BATTLES THIS EPIDEMIC.
LOCKDOWN.
MANNER EACH FAMILY REQUESTED.
ENSURED THAT ALL DISTRIBUTIONS
BUNEINU/BNOSEINU ACTIVITIES DURING THE CORONAVIRUS OUTBREAK Tov V’chesed operates comprehensive orphan support programs for boys and girls all year round. With the Buneinu/Bnoseinu centers closed and the traditional services unavailable, the organization still works to ensure that the children aren’t left without their crucial support system.
A
SPECIAL
HOTLINE
UP,
A PHONE SYSTEM WAS SET UP SO THAT YESOMIM AND YESOMOS CAN CALL IN WHEN IN NEED
SEPARATE FOR BOYS AND GIRLS, WHERE
OF SUPPORT, AND ONE OF THE GROUP’S HIRED SPECIALISTS OR THERAPISTS WERE AVAILABLE
THEY WERE ABLE TO CALL IN AND HEAR
TO HELP THEM DEAL WITH THEIR ANXIETY AND WHATEVER CONCERNS WERE ON THEIR
THE
MIND. FOR THESE VULNERABLE PEOPLE, THIS SUPPORT IS CRUCIAL, ESPECIALLY IN SUCH
WORDS
LEADING
OF
WAS
SET
CHIZZUK
RABBANIM,
AS
FROM
WELL
AS
TOUGH TIMES.
INSPIRATION FROM THE ORGANIZATION’S
PROFESSIONAL
STAFF.
THE A PROGRAM FOR BACHURIM WAS SET UP WHERE THE BOYS
HOTLINE ALSO PROVIDED INTERESTING
ANOTHER SYSTEM WAS SET UP FOR THE SURVIVING
ACTIVITIES TO KEEP THE CHILDREN
HEADS OF HOUSEHOLDS WHERE THEY COULD CALL
ENTERTAINED
IN TO DISCUSS THEIR EMOTIONAL AND LOGISTICAL
SIYUM AND SEUDAS HODA’AH ONCE KLAL YISROEL SEES
NEEDS DURING THIS CRISIS.
ITSELF OUT OF THIS TERRIBLE PANDEMIC BEZ”H.
THROUGHOUT
STAYS AT HOME.
THEIR
A more detailed report on these Pesach activities will be shared after Yom Tov IY”H.
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Feature: The Tale of the Rabbis’ Suitcase A letter from Rav Azriel Hildesheimer
free society also took their toll on the younger immigrants in the form of assimilation. Throughout this period, England was regarded by suffering world Jewry as an oasis of stability and fairness. Jews there had risen to prominence through merit and hard work, and were protected by the laws of the land. The content of much of the correspondence reflects the history of the period.
dreds of hours deciphering the documents, indexing them and summarizing their contents. I had help and advice from others along the way, such as Rabbi Berel Wein and Rabbi Reuven Butler. My wife, Adele, also helped with the project by photographing the 6,500 pages in the collection, recording them for posterity. My original goal was just to index and catalogue the documents. Along the way it was decided to turn it into a book, which has just been published by Mosaica Press. The whole project would not have been possible without a large dose of siyata diShmaya. As I worked through the mass of difficult, aging documents, I was gripped by an obsession and by greater powers of concentration than I have ever experienced. It was as if the great rabbis themselves were urging me to release their writings and correspondence from the obscurity to which they had
been subjected for over a century. The letters and documents date mostly to the last quarter of the nineteenth century. How do they characterize this period of Jewish history? I would say that the last quarter of the nineteenth century was a period of much unrest, suffering and upheaval for the Jewish people. Pogroms, persecution, and poverty in Eastern Europe led to the first waves of emigration to the West—to Britain and her colonies, to the United States, and also to Israel. Those who managed to leave competed for economic survival in their new lands, where the Jewish infrastructure was often not up to the task of absorbing them and [accommodating] their halachic requirements. In Israel, the yishuv was struggling simply to survive amidst harsh conditions and internal divisions. The challenges of a
What can you tell us about the two main characters in this story, Rabbi Yaakov Reinowitz and Rabbi Cohen? Rabbi Yaakov Reinowitz was born in 1818 in Wilkowisko, Russia, where he was the moreh horaah, dayan and maggid for 30 years. His daughter Bertha married Rabbi Sussman Cohen of Kinishin (Poland), who was a rosh yeshivah for 14 years. In 1875, Rabbi Cohen became the rav of Park Chapel, later to become the Central Synagogue, in Manchester. In 1876, Rabbi Reinowitz visited Manchester to see his daughter and son-in-law. While he was there, he accepted a job as rav of the Chevrah Shas synagogue in the East End of London. His piety and great learning soon drew the attention of Chief Rabbi Nathan Adler, who appointed him as dayan to the London Beis Din in 1879. Rabbi Reinowitz served as the leading arbiter of halachah to both chief rabbis—Rabbi Nathan and Rabbi Herman Adler—until his death in 1893. Rabbi Cohen succeeded his father-in-law as dayan on the London Beis Din in 1893. At first it was a one-year contract, but then it was extended. He retired from the London Beis Din in 1905. Rabbi Reinowitz was the original “Reb Shmuel” in Israel Zangwill’s famous novel about England over a hundred years ago, Children of the Ghetto. Zangwill describes Reb Shmuel as follows: “[A]n official of heterogeneous duties, he preached, he taught, he lectured. He married people and divorced them… He superintended a slaughtering department, licensed men as competent killers of animals, exam-
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Feature: The Tale of the Rabbis’ Suitcase
Gifts for government officials Can you describe one of the more fascinating letters in the collection? After the first wave of pogroms in Russia in 1881, Rabbi Yechiel Brill, a frum Jew and journalist, wrote a fascinating letter to Rabbi Cohen describing these terrible events. In his letter, Rabbi Brill describes the impact of the pogroms that had recently erupted and had been tacitly supported, if not actually encouraged, by the Russian state. He calls urgently on Rabbi Cohen to collect funds in England and to remit them to Rav Yitzchak Elchanan Spektor, to enable him to bribe the requisite Russian government officials to restrain the perpetrators of the pogroms.
Alexander II (above) Grand Duke Vladimir Alexandrovich (right)
ined the sharpness of their knives so that the victims might be put to as little pain as possible… He had added a volume of sh’eilos u’teshuvos to the colossal casuistic literature of his race. He also acted as shadchan, though he forgot to take his commissions. In fine, he was a witty old fellow, and everybody loved him. He and his wife spoke English with a strong foreign accent.” Rabbi Reinowitz arranged and edited the commentary of Rabbeinu Chananel on various masechtos, which was incorporated into the Vilna Shas. But sadly, after his death in 1893, none of his numerous letters, drashos, hespeidim or kuntresim and chiddushim on various aspects of Torah were published. Rabbi Cohen also had a great deal of
material that was not published. It was much of this lost material that was found in the suitcase. Can you name some of the people whose correspondence you found? There are over a hundred rabbanim, many of them famous gedolim, but here are just a few. There are many letters from Chief Rabbi Nathan Adler (1803-1890), Chief Rabbi Naftali Adler (1839-1911), numerous letters from Rav Naftali Zvi Yehudah Berlin (the Netziv, 1816-1893), Rav Yitzchak Elchanan Spektor (1817-1896), Rav Shmuel Salant (1816-1909), Rav Yehoshua Leib Diskin (1817-1898), Rav Chaim Leib Tiktinsky (the rosh yeshivah of the Mirrer Yeshiva, 1823-
1899), and Rav Azriel Hildesheimer (18201899), among many others. What are some of the places the letters in the collection came from? In England, letters came from Leeds, Manchester, Liverpool, Hull, Bradford, Leicester, Coventry, and of course, from London. Globally, the two rabbanim received letters from rabbis in Paris, New York, Philadelphia, Sydney, Melbourne, Rotterdam, Cape Town, Denver, Hong Kong, and Argentina, as well as across Eastern Europe and Eretz Yisrael. The yishuv’s need for tzedakah was very great, but the needs of Russian Jewry and their yeshivos were equally pressing. In 1881,
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BRAND
INFANT FORMULA
...שבכל הלילות
.כולנו מסובין
CHOLOV YISROEL
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Feature: The Tale of the Rabbis’ Suitcase
Here are some excerpts: Your precious letter of last Sunday arrived yesterday evening. I thank Your Honor with all my heart for making place for my request to him on behalf of our desperate brothers in Russia, who are now in great danger… Since Your Honor has informed me that the prince wishes to send my letter to the hands of Baron Günzburg, I fear adverse consequences therefrom. Behold, two days ago it became known to me that the rabbis have become involved through the letter that these great rabbis have sent through me to the great Rabbi Dr. Mayer Lehmann... And the following is the situation, but please do not make the matter public: Without doubt, Your Honor knows that our forefathers in Russia have always averted evil decrees only by means of paying bribes to those close to government and by stopping up the mouths of critics with mounds of cash. But from the day that the reformers, who have rejected the customs of Israel, have risen to the fore, they have chosen for themselves new ways in this matter. On several occasions, our wise leaders, who are able to see the future, have paid bribes to the persecutor of Israel, Suvorin, publisher of the newspaper Novoye Vremya, to persuade him against stirring up hatred against the Jews… Yet those who now set themselves up as the “guardians of Israel” (Baron Günzburg and his colleagues) in Russia say that they fear not the voice of a “blown leaf” and they trust in the power of “haskalah” to avert any trouble from reaching them. But if only these mighty ones from Kiev had stopped up the mouths of the persecutor of Israel, the publisher of Kublin, through bribery, there would not be the conflagration in Kiev today... And in this way go the new guardians of our people in Israel; and through this and through many more bad devices, they have brought on our desperate brethren the great evil from which they are now unable to escape. But behold, Baron Günzburg is an exception; he remains a Jew, with warmth and compassion for his brethren, but his colleagues, such as Zak and particularly Leon Rosenthal, declare that if only the Jews would cast their Torah aside, things would be good for them. And these two are influencing Baron Günzburg and turning his head against his Creator. There-
fore, our brethren in Russia cannot now rely on Baron Günzburg for their salvation. Behold, today it is known to the rabbis in Russia that the wife of the governor in Kovno...was gracious to [Rav Yitzchak Elchanan Spektor] and spoke kindly with him. Whilst in conversation, she complained to him that the wealthy Jews did not show appreciation to those who were dealing kindly with them by returning their favors, in the way that their fathers had done in previous generations... It seemed from her words that she was offering to work for the benefit of Israel in return for financial favors. Consequently, the great rav of Kovno gathered together the great rabbis and the men of wealth who were familiar with the governor, and together they decided to procure valuable jewelry to bring as a “gift” to the wife of the governor. This they did, bringing her a gift valued at 5,000 rubles, which she graciously accepted, and she promised to speak well of the Jews before Prince Vladimir (the brother of the tsar). She also advised the great rav [Rav Yitzchak Elchanan] to travel to S. Petersburg and present himself before the prince’s adjutant, and she gave him a letter of introduction for this purpose. But since greeting this nobleman empty-handed is not done, the great rav is collecting funds from his acquaintances in order to procure a “gift” for the adjutant… Therefore, I implore Your Honor, who has already embarked on this mitzvah, to speak once more with the prince and stir him to fulfill this great mitzvah that has come into his hand. And if he does make available the funds needed on behalf of those who are aflame in Russia, then he will become greater still, for the hearts of kings and princes are in Hashem’s hands, to enable the great rabbis to turn the hearts of the great Prince Vladimir and his advisers to the benefit of the Jews; only then will we save our brethren from the flames. For because of our sins, the flames continue to spread each day, and the government knows who is fanning these flames but shuts its eyes, for there is none to speak up for the Jews in the high places. But if just a wind should come from the government in favor of the Jews, the conflagration would subside of its own…
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To all the selfless doctors, nurses and hospital workers who have been working tirelessly and heroically throughout the current crisis… To all the government officials, police, fire fighters, emergency personnel, mail carriers, sanitation workers and essential service providers who have done the same… To all our fellow Americans who have reached out to help their neighbors and assisted others in myriad ways to face the challenges of recent days…
Thank you.
You are more than just inspiring and appreciated.
You are cherished. Agudath Israel of America
ה בן שלמה אלימלך ורדיגר-לזכר נשמת ר‘ נחמי
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Feature: The Tale of the Rabbis’ Suitcase
Fundraising for various causes
Can you point to another interesting theme in the letters? Yes—the competition for funds. Many competing worthy causes ended up on the doorstep of Rabbi Reinowitz and Rabbi Cohen. Specifically, there is a fascinating letter from Rabbi Cohen to his father-in-law, Rabbi Reinowitz, in 1883. This letter highlights the tensions in Jerusalem following the founding of the Diskin orphanage by Rav Yehoshua Leib Diskin. In particular, Yeshivas Eitz Chaim, a major Torah institution, would no longer be the only one gathering much needed funds from abroad. Here is an excerpt from Rabbi Cohen’s letter:
A letter to Rabbi Reinowitz from Rav Shmuel Tiktinsky about a fundraising matter
In relation to the request of the gaon Rav Yehoshua Leib Diskin that we should support his emissary, who has arrived to collect for the orphanage, the matter is extraordinary in my eyes. Just this week a letter arrived from the gaon Rav Moshe Nechemya Kahana of Jerusalem, and this is what he wrote to me: “Behold, an organization [the orphanage] has been founded, against the wishes of our sages, and the inhabitants of Jerusalem are displeased with it. And now, behold, they are sending an emissary to gather funds for this organization. And where? To England! It is likely that this emissary will be successful there. And if he should arrive at your camp and set up a charity fund there, where will Your Honor place the needs of our Talmud Torah and the Yeshivas Eitz Chaim?”
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Feature: The Tale of the Rabbis’ Suitcase
Rabbi Cohen wrote to the Netziv, seeking his guidance in responding to a letter he had received from a collector for the yishuv who had complained that the funds being collected in England for the great yeshivos of Eastern Europe were depriving the yishuv of funds that it needed so badly. The Netziv responded to Rabbi Cohen as follows:
On that which the co llector from the yishuv accused you—that by tzedakah [the Volozhin supporting my Yeshivah], the funds of th e ye shi va h are being filled by emptying out the funds du e to Yerushalayim—I wish to inform Your Ho cusation has been sen nor that this act to me on previous oc casions. [The accusation to the lashon hara of th ] is in part due eir collectors, who ha ve mischievously claim vah emissary is emptyin ed that a yeshig out the yishuv collecti on bo xe s for its own benefit. And I have responded to th em that this accusation is a lie … An d th ey complained, too, that the same misappr opriation was occurri ng in Manchester [whe was then the rav] and re Rabbi Cohen I realized that their rea l co mp lai nt wa s sim ply that the yeshivah had set up a colle ction fund there. But in fact, the success of any collection box is always something th at is hidden from our view; the blessing or th a consequence of G-d’ e lack thereof is s hashgachah on the rec ipients…
Hashkafic Debate: Did you find letters discussing hashkafic debates? Definitely. One such debate was regarding evolution. In order to understand it, some background is needed. In 1859, Charles Darwin published his work On the Origin of Species, which set out his theory of evolution. The reception in [non-Jewish] religious circles was generally cool. However, one Orthodox Jewish scholar named Naftali Halevi was excited by the theory and considered it to be an extraordinary validation of Sefer Bereishis. Naftali Halevi (1840-1894) was born in Poland and received a traditional Torah education. In 1874, the publication Hashachar published a Hebrew essay by Halevi called “Toldos Adam.” This was later published as a book. In the essay, Halevi sought to demonstrate in detail how remarkably well Darwin’s theory could be reconciled with Sefer Bereishis, midrashim, and the early commentaries. In 1876, Halevi sent Darwin a copy of his book Toldos Adam, together with a cover letter, both in Hebrew. In his letter, he addresses Darwin as “the lord, the prince, who stands for an ensign of the people… Charles Darwin, may he long live!”
A letter to Rabbi Reinowitz from the Netziv
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Feature: The Tale of the Rabbis’ Suitcase
Rabbi Joseph Kohn-Zedek (1827-1903) was born in Lemberg and learned under Rav Yosef Shaul Nathanson, chief rabbi of Lemberg and author of Shu”t Shoel U’Meishiv. He came to London in 1874 and was a speaker in various East London synagogues. He wrote numerous works in Hebrew and even in English. When Rabbi Kohn-Zedek became aware of Naftali Halevi’s writings, in particular Toldos Adam, he single-handedly ran a lengthy campaign against him, speaking and writing against his ideas, which he considered heretical. Rabbi Kohn-Zedek recruited Rabbi Reinowitz, as the senior Lithuanian dayan of the London Beis Din, to use his considerable influence with the great Lithuanian rabbis to come out in strong condemnation of Halevi’s ideas. The controversy dragged on for a number of years. The collection contains a number of letters from Halevi to both Rabbi Reinowitz and Rabbi Cohen. Another letter that stands out is from Rabbi Shmuel Mohilever, who wrote to Rabbi Reinowitz in 1889 in response to the latter’s inquiry about the haskamah he was said to have provided for Halevi’s Toldos Adam. In his response, Rabbi Mohilever clarified the nature of his haskamah, but more significantly, he explained his attitude toward the whole question of how Torah and science should be reconciled. Rabbi Mohilever admitted to Rabbi Reinowitz that he had corresponded with Halevi in the past, during the latter’s stay in Radom, but had not had any contact with him since. During the early period, Halevi had sent Rabbi Mohilever a manuscript of his Toldos Adam and asked for his comments. He had read the manuscript and found many unacceptable statements, and he had pointed these out in his response to Halevi. Following is an excerpt from Rabbi Mohilever’s letter to Rabbi Reinowitz:
[Halevi] claims that he received a haskamah fro m me on his work Toldos Adam; if so, it pe rplexes me why he do es no t publish the haskamah. I would inform Your Excellency that he do es have a haskamah from me, but th e haskamah is that he is an apikores [heretic]. When he sent me his unpublished manuscr ipts for my opinion, I sponded with a long let reter (because at the tim e [1 87 4] , I sti ll be lie him to be a wise, G-dved fearing Jew). So I respo nd ed , ch ap ter by chapter…
Rabbi Mohilever writes further in his letter to Rabbi Reinowitz:
The first three chapter s of Toldos Adam held no heretical content, bu in chapter 4 there we t re already statements th at are totally antithetical the foundations of ou to r beliefs… You appear to hold that everything that Moshe or the Prop hets who followed him understood was based on their own perception , to which they then att ached the seal of G-d, and they [Moshe and the Prophets] wrote it as “G -d said, or G-d spoke.” What then be comes of our tenet “T ora h min haShamayim (Torah is from Heaven )”? … But I know you alr eady for some years an consider you to be a sho d mer mitzvos and follow er of our Sages. There fore, I am forced to say that I must have misu nderstood your word and your intent must s, have been different. If so , you must express yo self differently to avoid urbeing misunderstood.
Rabbi Mohilever’s letter to Rabbi Reinowitz quotes the central criticism in his response to Halevi—namely, Halevi’s embrace of Darwinism. He first gives Halevi credit for good intentions:
Now I come to the ma in theme of your publi cation [Toldos Adam], which is to explain the Creatio n story using the conjectures and th eories of the recent na tural scientists. Now, I cannot deny th at your intent is to rai se up the Torah so that today’s natural scientists should not rid icule it, as you yourself wrote in your work.
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4/1/20 10:25 PM
Feature: The Tale of the Rabbis’ Suitcase
Rabbi Mohilever’s response to Halevi continues by stating an important Maimonidean principle related to the reconciliation of Torah and science:
Shemittah Controversy
Certainly, if these scien tific opinions had alrea dy been validated and doubt, then it would proven beyond be our duty to toil to int erp ret the words of our To conflict with the scien rah so as not to tific facts… In contras t, Darwin’s theory, thou up the world and stirre gh it may have shaken d all those who thirst for the novel to strength an immutable fact—it en and establish it as still has many doubter s, and even those wh that it has no proof, o su pport it admit but remains just theo ry and conjecture… [your attempt at recon Th is being so, not only is ciling Darwinism with the Biblical Creation ac the Torah, but it is a dis co un t] not an honor to honor in the opinion of right-minded, hone and add a comment at st pe ople… Heed me the end of your work that your intent is not, the Biblical Creation tex Gd forbid, to explain t through the Darwini st theory—for after all the grasp of mere mo , Gd’s words are above rtals whose intellect ca n lead them astray—bu deflect the ridiculers of t th at you wish only to the Torah who follow Darwin, by saying, “D know that our Torah on ’t mock; do you not text expounds your th eory?” being a throwa them aside. way comment, to push
Are there documents related to life in Eretz Yisrael at the time? Yes. Several documents discuss the halachic issues of shemittah in Eretz Yisrael. These problems were significant in the run-up to the 1889 shemittah year as a number of religious agricultural communities had been established. The gedolim in Europe were divided, but Rav Yitzchak Elchanan Spektor permitted the sale of land to non-Jews, known as heter mechirah, subject to a number of provisos. The Ashkenazi rabbis of Jerusalem were strongly opposed to the heter mechirah, particularly Rav Yehoshua Leib Diskin and Rav Shmuel Salant. The collection contains an 1888 letter from Rav Diskin conveying to Rabbi Reinowitz his strong opposition to Rav Spektor’s heter. He suggests that Rav Spektor was misled by exaggerated claims of the threat to the settlers’ livelihoods if shemittah were to be observed fully. Here is a passage from the document:
And today, our great an d righteous teacher [R av Diskin] has instructe to inform you about th d me e shemittah, of which it has been heard that have given their appr pio us rabbis oval to [the heter mech irah]. Your Honor wish my own view and the es to kn ow view of the rabbis in Jer usalem on this matter. Honor should know th Yo ur at the great and sincere sages of Jerusalem are distressed by this brea deeply ch of leniency on a ma tter that has brought ab struction. And the gre ou t deat rabbis of chutz la’are tz have been misled by cophony of claims that th e cathe lives of many peop le depend on [the use mechirah], even the su of a heter rvival of the yishuv an d other such exaggerat this is why they search ion s, and ed for a leniency. But in reality, there is no tru claims. On the contrar th to their y, cultivators themselve s ad mi t th at th e ground requires rest. The sages of Jerus alem have met on sev eral occasions to discu might convince the rab ss how they bis of chutz la’aretz, an d may the Lord assist mercy on His people and have and send us his Moshia ch.
Rav Diskin’s response ends with a final request of Rabbi Reinowitz:
Here [in Jerusalem] th ey say that it would be helpful if the elderly sag e Rabbi Nathan Adler would write to the ba ron [Rothschild] in Pa ris that it is improper to seek a heter; rather, th e shemittah should be ob served in its fullness. This would be of great merit to him in the ey es of the whole world.
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Feature: The Tale of the Rabbis’ Suitcase
Special guests at Rav Yehoshua Leib Diskin’s Seder
One more very interesting historical footnote appears in a letter from Moshe Zvi Levinson to Rabbi Reinowitz, dated 1882. Mr. Levinson was a pioneer settler in Eretz Yisrael who was close to Rav Yehoshua Leib Diskin. He wrote to Rabbi Reinowitz to wish him mazel tov on the marriage of his daughter and to update him on his situation in Jerusalem. In this letter, Mr. Levinson adds a fascinating historical footnote.
On Pesach night this year, at the house of our rav [Yehoshua Leib Diskin], the sons of the Prince of Wales were at his table; they had come to obs erve the customs of Jews on this night. The rav explained the Haggadah to them, focusing on the way the paragraph “V’hi She’amdah” is so relevant to these times. There was an inte rpreter with us [to translate for the princes]. The princes wer e moved and brought to tears. They enjoyed and were charmed by the whole spectacle. They even drank the first two cups of wine and joined in the eating of matzah and ma ror before departing in a mood of friendship and respect .
Historical accounts confirm the authenticity of Mr. Levinson’s letter. The two young princes were Albert Victor and George. George would later become King George V, who reigned as the king of Britain from 1910 to 1936. The two young princes were naval cadets at the time, and they were in the middle of an educational world tour that included a visit to the Holy Land.
A letter to Rabbi Cohen from Rav Eliezer Gordon of Telshe
A letter from Rav Yehoshua Leib Diskin
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Feature: The Tale of the Rabbis’ Suitcase
Eulogy for Tsar Alexander II of Russia You mentioned that there are many eulogies among the documents. Can you share one with us? Yes. One that stands out is the eulogy for Tsar Alexander II of Russia. Alexander II was a liberal tsar who reversed many anti-Jewish decrees during his reign. His assassination in 1881 was followed by turmoil in Russia and brought in its wake the first wave of pogroms. In his lengthy eulogy, Rabbi Reinowitz said the following:
A letter about an agunah case from Rav Shmuel Salant to Rabbi Cohen
I will recount to my brothers some of the kindnesses that [Alexander II] extended to our Jewish brethren in particular, as well as to the people in general, by releasing great numbers of peasants from slavery to freedom, as is well known. Moreover, when I was but 20 years old, I recall the terrible decree when they forcibly shaved peyos and beards, and we became like sheep awaiting the shearers. We were chased in the markets and on the streets; we were smitten on the cheeks, and our hairs were plucked off. We were treated like animals and like the mud on the roads. My beard was then just beginning to grow, and I plucked the hairs off my own beard, one by one, so that the hands of the strangers would not be upon me. We were then like a flock delivered to the slaughter, to be beaten and disgraced… [There was] terrible and bitter suffering when our brothers were forcibly conscripted into military service and forced to violate the commandments by eating forbidden foods, transgressing the Shabbos and festival laws, and shaving off their beards… They were forced to serve for 25 years or more, for as long as they retained an ounce of strength and a drop of blood in their veins. And now, with the help of G-d and through the compassion of Tsar Alexander, our Jewish brothers are now free to observe the laws of the Torah in all their details… Their military service has been made lighter, and their dignity is preserved. Now any Jewish soldier who wishes not to defile himself through forbidden food is allowed to buy his own portion, as he desires. And certainly no Jew is now compelled to forsake his religion.
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There's a social
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_Ami463-PartnersTorah-1.indd 1
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(anonymous)
4/1/20 9:23 PM
Feature: The Tale of the Rabbis’ Suitcase
Metzitzah
Are there any documents or teshuvos on controversial topics that are pertinent today? Yes, many. There are over 300 pages in the collection on the topic of bris milah. Rabbi Reinowitz authored a lengthy kuntres on the topic, which included an analysis of the requirement of metzitzah. In his kuntres, he noted that in England the practice appeared to have been discontinued, which he assumed to have been officially sanctioned by Chief Rabbi Nathan Adler. Rabbi Reinowitz proceeded to provide an in-depth bedi’avad justification for the abandonment of metzitzah to defend the current practice. However, when he submitted his kuntres to Chief Rabbi Adler in 1884, he received a scathing response in which Rabbi Adler accused him of having initiated the discontinuation of metzitzah. The heated written exchange between the two makes interesting reading, and it is a rare exception to the usually respectful relationship found in all other correspondence between them.
The collection contains numerous correspondences with the Netziv. Are there any historical anecdotes among them? Yes, there is actually a fascinating story related to the example that follows. In his letters to Rabbi Reinowitz, the Netziv often included reports on the latest problems facing the Volozhin yeshivah and his hopes and anxieties about its future. The yeshivah had many enemies who wished it ill and tried to bring it into conflict with the Russian authorities. In a letter to Rabbi Reinowitz in 1879, the Netziv wrote that an enemy of the yeshivah had forged a letter from him to Rabbi Reinowitz:
A letter about a question concerning a get, from Rav Yehuda Lubetzky
I see fit to give thanks to G-d for His kindness to me. For th e past month, I have been in a state of fear and anxiety, for government officia ls surrounded me and took all my letter s away for examination. Afterward, I be came aware of the reason. A wicked person had forged a letter in my name, ad dressed to Your Honor [Rabbi Reinowi tz]. And he wrote therein matters that were untrue. He then sent this letter to a high government authority. Th rough G-d’s help, the officials discovered the contents to be a forgery, and they did me no harm.
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There's an author
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_Ami463-PartnersTorah-2.indd 1
(Blimie Weiss)
4/1/20 9:24 PM
Feature: The Tale of the Rabbis’ Suitcase
This incident is described in greater detail in an article entitled “Three Lists of Students Studying at the Volozhin Yeshivah in 1879,” authored by Agronowsky and Leiman. The article describes the incident as follows:
close the Volozhin A major attempt to 1879. A file preserved yeshivah took place in te Archives notes that in the Lithuanian Sta ral, Petr Albedinsky, the Vilna governor-gene tion that Rav Naftali became privy to informa e famed head of the Zvi Yehudah Berlin, th s involved in a “secret Volozhin yeshivah, wa unter-governmental society engaged in co on originated from activity.” The informati egedly signed by Rav an intercepted letter, all to a rabbi in London Berlin and addressed to an investigation of (Reinowitz). This led h. A special agent, the Volozhin yeshiva to Volozhin, where Krylov, was dispatched h, students, and local the heads of the yeshiva iewed. The upshot of residents were interv ter was found to be a all this was that the let n was vindicated. forgery, and Rav Berli
The file in the archives provided no details about how the forgery was exposed. Fortunately, a student who was studying at the yeshivah and who was close to Rav Berlin left a memoir about this event. His name was Eliyahu Aharon Mileykowski. He later became chief rabbi of Kharkow and finally settled in Palestine in 1928, where he was appointed rosh beis din of Tel Aviv. The Agronowsky and Leiman article cites Mileykowski’s full account, in an English translation, from his Shu”t Ohalei Aharon (pp. 218-220): Lastly, I wish to record here an astonishing event that took place in Rav Berlin’s house during my time in the Volozhin yeshivah. At the time, the very existence of the yeshivah hung in the balance. The event had to do with the form of Rav Berlin’s [Hebrew] signature... Rav Berlin used to sign his names Tzvi and Yehudah, with only one yud shared by both names. He signed all letters in this manner, as is well known. It is astonishing that this small letter [yud] saved Rav Berlin from great misfortune. The event occurred in 1880 or thereabouts [actually 1879]. I was by then a frequent visitor to Rav Berlin’s home. One bright day, the chief of police of the Vilna Gubernia, surrounded by other officers and policemen, appeared at the entrance to Rav Berlin’s home and informed him that they had come to search his home… The chief of police began his search. All the rooms, bookcases…were searched. All written documents were confiscated. All the letters on the rabbi’s desk were taken…and all the handwritten manuscripts. After the chief of police completed his search, Rav Berlin asked him what it was all about. The officer removed a letter from the cuff of his sleeve… He asked Rav Berlin, “Is this your signature?” The rabbi examined the signature and said, “Yes, that is my signature” [so masterful was the forgery]. The officer then said to the rabbi: “Read the letter and see what you wrote!” Rav Berlin read about how he had allegedly informed someone in London [Rabbi Reinowitz] that he [Rav Berlin] had received the forged Russian currency that had been sent to him… and now asked that more be sent to him… The forged letter also spoke about students who dodged army service and instead were attending the Volozhin yeshivah… Rav Berlin informed the officer that although the signature appeared to be his, he had never written or signed such a letter… The officer informed Rav Berlin that he was under house arrest. Rav Berlin then reminded himself of something that could perhaps prove the letter was a forgery…that he always signed his first names, Tzvi and Yehudah, with only one yud. He asked that the signature on the questionable letter be compared to those on the other letters that the officer had impounded to see whether the forger had paid attention to this detail. Indeed, the questionable letter had the two names written with two separate yuds. Clearly, Heaven had interceded to expose the forgery… After several months of great anxiety, Rav Berlin was called in to the chief district officer, who informed him that he had been found innocent of all the charges against him that were based on the forged letter. All the impounded letters and documents were finally returned to him.
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Feature: The Tale of the Rabbis’ Suitcase
Among the many documents found in the suitcase, there are numerous drashos. Can you share with us an important lesson from them? Yes. A recurring theme in Rabbi Reinowitz’s sermons is the importance of avoiding chillul Hashem and adherence to the principle of dina d’malchusa dina, observing the laws of the land. He constantly adjures his community to leave behind the tactics that they had needed to survive in Eastern Europe and to respect the laws of the new, egalitarian land that had welcomed them. He was deeply hurt by the disputes he observed in the immigrant community, many of which were winding up before the secular courts. He feared that such problematic behavior might prompt the British Parliament to halt further immigration of Jews from Eastern Europe.
A letter from Rav Yitzchak Elchonon
Agunos Can you share with us any of the interesting documents related to agunos? The collection contains 550 pages related to agunos questions. The mid-19th century had seen the beginnings of largescale ocean travel using steamships, and it is not surprising, therefore, that the two rabbis were presented sh’eilos involving ships lost at sea. For example, in August 1881, the SS Teuton struck rocks and sank while on a voyage from Cape Town to Port Elizabeth; 236 passengers lost their lives. The wives of two Jewish passengers approached Rabbi Reinowitz in 1885, asking to be released from their marriages given that no trace of their husbands had been recovered. Rabbi Reinowitz wrote a 42-page teshuvah and submitted it to the Netziv, Rav Yitzchak Elchanan Spektor, and Chief Rabbi Adler for their endorsement, which he received. In his lengthy response to Rabbi Reinowitz, Rav Yitzchak Elchanan approves of Rabbi Reinowitz’s heter but expresses his initial reluctance to rule on the case. He writes:
In truth, when I read your letter regarding the agunos, I was of a mind to back away fro m the matter because the gates of len iency appeared to be shut befor e me; but in the end I involved my self due to my feelings of compassion [for these women]…
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Feature: The Tale of the Rabbis’ Suitcase
In his detailed response, the Netziv emphasizes the importance of the case and his heter for the agunos as a model for future such questions that might arise:
[T]herefore, I have put all other matters aside to conce ntrate my attention on this case. And may the Lord be bless ed that I have found it possible to permit the women to rema rry… But the heter is a novel one, which will be a model to apply in other events concerning seafarers. Therefore, it is my ferve nt wish that Your Honor should copy this teshuvah and send it to other great sages of today to see whether they concur.
Another fascinating case that came before Rabbi Reinowitz in 1884 concerned a Jewish man who was reported to have fallen (or jumped) into the River Thames from London Bridge. The body was recovered a few days later, and a photograph was taken before burial. The man’s wife claimed that the body recovered was that of her husband, based on the photograph and some trinkets he carried on him. The case was novel since it involved the early question of the acceptability of photographic evidence, which was made more difficult by the fact that the body was partly decomposed. Rabbi Reinowitz submitted his teshuvah to the Netziv and to Rav Yitzchak Elchanan, and he received their approval to release the widow. He set out the whole case, including the responses he received, in a 31-page Kuntres Agunos. Some of the halachic issues he raised were whether a drowning victim can be adequately identified from a photograph taken three days after he was pulled from the water, and whether a photograph is a halachically valid piece of evidence. (For example, reflection, or sighting through a lens, is not valid as evidence of the new moon for Kiddush Hachodesh). This case may be the first agunah sh’eilah in which photographic evidence was a central
component in the identification of the victim. An interesting historical tidbit in this batch of documents is Rabbi Reinowitz’s confidence in the scrupulous integrity of the English police force and judicial system. He writes:
Particularly in this country, should some untruth or even the appearance of some distortion be found in anyone, whoever he is, no matter how elevated in stat us, even in the highest of judges, his disgrace will be exposed and pub licized in all the daily newspaper s. His misdemeanor will not be covered up, even if he would pay all his fortune…Therefore, one can rely on what they publish in the court and judicial journals.
Which topic in the collection is covered at the greatest length? An unusual agunah sh’eilah occupies more than a hundred pages of halachic correspondence. Here is a short summary of the case: Around 1871, Berlin was struck by a major smallpox epidemic. A woman in London approached Rabbi Reinowitz, claiming that her husband was one of the victims of the outbreak. He had been on business in Berlin and had abruptly ceased all contact with her. She had heard from non-Jews with whom her husband had been familiar that he had died in the epidemic, and she now wished to be released from her marriage. The case was one of meisiach l’fi tumo— evidence inadvertently given by a non-Jew. Rabbi Reinowitz wrote a lengthy teshuvah, which he then submitted to the Netziv, Rav Azriel Hildesheimer of Berlin, and Rav Yisrael Rappaport of Czortkow, and in Jerusalem to Rav Shmuel Salant, Rav Yaakov Orenstein, Rav Moshe Eliezer Don Ralbag, Rav Avraham Ashkenazi and Rav Baruch Pinto. All their responses are in the collection. The last two respondents are Sephardic poskim, who were not usually referred sh’eilos from Rabbi Reinowitz.
Future plans for the documents
What are the plans for these documents, now that the book has been published? We have created a very organized database of all the documents and will make it available for scholars to study. Looking further ahead, we would really like to transcribe the major sh’eilos and notebooks into Hebrew sefarim.
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THAT’S (KOSHER) AMARONE! by Joshua E. London
Italy is the source of an astounding diversity of wines, yet only a glimpse of these is available to kosher consumers. Thankfully, the newest kosher Italian wine to hit the market is a step in the right direction. The newly released Aura di Valerie, Amarone della Valpolicella, DOCG Classico, 2017 ($75)—courtesy of The River Wine, a small but critically successful NY-based importer, distributor and producer of kosher wines—isn’t merely new, but the first ever kosher Amarone. “Amarone is one of the most notable Italian wines,” says Larissa Nahari, the Marketing Director of The River Wine. “Its popularity around the world has grown recently, and for the kosher world to be able enjoy this unusual wine is very significant and extremely exciting.” Kosher productions of prestige wines are always of interest, but Amarone makes for an especially cool “first”. “Amarone is one of the biggest, most intense wines made in Italy,” says Nahari. All local to the Valpolicella area, the grapes of Amarone are Corvine, Corvinone Veronese, and Rondinella. Amarone is the only serious, full-bodied, top-flight, dry red wine in the world vinified from grapes that have been purposefully dried. Known in Italian as appassimento or rasinate (to dry and shrivel), the process entails air-drying the grapes for 120 days after they have been harvested—traditionally on straw mats in special drying sheds—so that their remaining juices have become highly concentrated essences of the original grapes. “Exposed to cool breezes,” explains Nahari, “the grapes gradually lose water, leaving sweeter and sweeter juice behind.” The resulting wine produced from such dried grapes tends to not only have higher alcoholic content than most red wines, but usually also results in a wine with more residual sugar too.
According to Nahari, the Aura di Valerie, Amarone is “’jammy’, with flavors of dried fruit, chocolate, vanilla, cherry, and plum. The dried grapes create interesting, rich tastes such as toasted almond and chocolate, but also an unexpected level of freshness and amazing complexity.” Since Amarone is subject to the myriad rules associated with the local protected and regulated wine zone, The River Wine had to navigate both the regional rules of production and the logistically difficult and expensive rules of kashrus. As Nahari points out, “it was difficult to find a winery that would be willing to deal with all the kosher requirements, and to be dependent on mashgiach visitations and o t h e r constraints.” The River Wine partnered with C r i s t i a n Tombacco, of Vi n i c o l a Tombacco, at the well regarded Guiseppe Campagnola winery (established in 1907), and under the strict supervision of Rabbi Akiva Osher Padwa, senior certification consultant with the K a s h r u t Division of the London Beth Din (KLBD).
Italians conventionally serve Amarone della Valpolicella to accompany a course of strong, old cheeses, but its legions of fans have successfully argued for pairing Amarone with appropriately robust main courses. As Nahari puts it, “with flavorful foods like steaks and heavy meats; pastas in rich cream sauces, as well as spicy arrabiata dishes.” The new Aura di Valerie will be released slowly over the next three years. “We know collectors will buy it up immediately,” explains Nahari, “but we wanted to make sure there would be enough available for everyone to have a chance to experience this new and unique kosher wine.” While the $75 price-tag may seem expensive to those unfamiliar with Amarone, it actually represents substantial value: “the wine could have been sold for over $150, but we decided to price it to allow as many people to try it as possible.” The price is not only reflective in the quality of the wine, but in its presentation as well, including individually boxed bottles that come with an explanatory booklet to educate consumers. Over the years there have been multiple attempts by others to produce kosher Amarone, but it seems rather fitting that The River Wine is the first to actually succeed in doing so. For one thing, The River Wine was actually established in 2010 by Ami and Larissa Nahari specifispecifi cally to introduce new wines to the kosher market. While their portfolio has popular wines from Israel, Italy and California, their primary goal is to introduce unique wines—such as their Twin Suns MourveMourve dre from Paso Robles, CA, and their Italian Gavi Di Gavi, to name but two examples. The River is working on a variety of other exciting wines too, (Super Tuscan,anyone?). While all of those will undoubtedly be pretty cool too, for now one need look no further for excitement than the world’s first kosher certified Amarone. L’Chaim!
“Producing this wine was challenging throughout,” notes Nahari, “but we had the ongoing support of all of the partners, who understood the magnitude of this achievement and its place in history.”
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F E AT U R E
The
HAGGADAH THE BLACK PLAGUE
of
A MANUSCRIPT HUNDREDS OF YEARS OLD RECALLS THE MOST HORRIFYING PLAGUE IN HISTORY BY ISAAC HOROVITZ
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O
ne of the oldest Haggadahs in the world can be found today in Jerusalem. This ancient manuscript is composed of 36 pages and is almost seven centuries old. It has traveled through the ages from Provence in southern France to its current location, where it has found peace. The Haggadah is written on thick, high-quality parchment in the fancy, ornate letters of a sofer. In the margins are listed ancient customs written by the French scholar Rabbi Yaakov ben Shlomo Tzarfati. One of the most beautiful and prominent pages contains the story of the ten plagues with which Hakadosh Baruch Hu afflicted the Egyptians. But in the margins, between stains that may be water or tears and others that may be wine or blood, Rabbi Yaakov wrote penetrating words that scream out in pain, adding to the timeless words of the Haggadah his anguish about the horrific plague of his day, which killed three of his children; they died in severe agony from the black spots that covered their bodies. This is the horrific story of one of the most horrible epidemics that mankind has ever experienced. It defied borders, destroyed cities and altered the face of Western history. It caused huge destruction among the Ashkenazi Jewish communities, changing them forever. This is the story of the Haggadah of Rabbi Yaakov Tzarfati, written while the plague was consuming Europe. Despite incredible personal tragedy, he continued to spread the words of the Torah in the face of the horrors surrounding him. In 1347, Messina was a busy seaport in Sicily, the equivalent of a bustling airport in our day. Ships navigated their way to the docks, workers loaded and unloaded goods, and passengers came and went, trading news from the farthest reaches of the known world. There were rumors that
in the faraway lands of silk and paper, an epidemic was raging; entire cities across the seas were reportedly desolate. One day, 12 ships appeared on the horizon, returning from a voyage, the flag of Genoa flying on their masts. No one really noticed as dozens of sailors were taken off the ships on stretchers. They were suffering from a strange malady, with dark purple lumps on their skin and a terrible stench emanating from their bodies. They were extremely weak and had high fever. The sailors were taken straight to the hospital, where doctors examined them, drained their blood, and smeared their pustules with salves and ointments. Nonetheless, the sailors died in agony within a few days. They were hurriedly buried in one of the churchyards, and it seemed that the strange affair was over as quickly as it
14 NISAN 5780 // APRIL 8, 2020 / AMI MAGAZINE
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Feature: The Haggadah of the Black Plague
Depiction of the burning of Jews in Germany during the Black Plague
had begun. What no one knew was that the sailors had brought with them the Angel of Death, an invisible passenger that would ravage Europe. The Black Plague had arrived from China and spread its wings over Italy, just like the coronavirus epidemic of today. The plague began to weave its web of death. The Black Plague, also known as the Black Death because it blackened the victim’s skin, is considered the deadliest epidemic in history, killing about 30 million Europeans in the fourteenth century— between a quarter and a half of Europe’s population. (Many millions more died in Asia, but there is little documentation from those regions.) Like the coronoavirus, the plague broke out in China and found its way across Asia when the Mongols engaged in campaigns to conquer the Eurasian tribes. They found themselves in the Crimean Peninsula, where they used the bodies of their comrades who had died of the plague as weapons against their enemies, possibly the first known case of biological warfare. Italian cargo ships then carried the disease
from the Black Sea to the ports of southern Europe. The consequences were disastrous. Whole villages disappeared from the map; London and Paris became wastelands, and piles of bodies lined the roads across the continent. The plague struck everyone equally—nobles and serfs, peasants and priests. Churches filled up with crowds who came to pray for salvation and exacerbated the plague by spreading it. When King Philip VI of France asked medical experts at the University of Paris to explain to him the cause of the epidemic, they said that it was due to an unusual astrological configuration of Saturn, Jupiter and Mars. As a solution, they tried a number of options, including various magic potions, drinking mercury, and drowning chickens—especially black ones. They also advocated for the killing of black cats, or any cats, which were “known” to be in cahoots with the devil. What those doctors did not know was that the cause was a bacteria, Yersinia pestis, which is spread by fleas that acquire the bacteria from infected rodents. Bites from infected fleas quickly spread the
plague to the human population. When cats were eliminated, things got worse— no cats, more rodents. Across Europe, villages sat deserted and untended crops rotted in fields, resulting in mass famine and adding to the death toll. People with the illness were isolated, locked away in their houses to die alone. Corpses piled up everywhere; bodies were burned, filling the air with rancid smoke. With the cats dead, the chickens depleted, and the potions useless, Europe turned to the traditional remedy for all that ailed them—blaming the Jews. Rumors were started that the Jews were poisoning the wells. Jews were arrested and brutally tortured until they were forced to plead guilty. In the French city of Chambray, one of the torturers reported that the Jews of Toledo and their rabbi had sent packets of poison to Jews in various countries. He said they prepared dried snakes, frogs and scorpions to add to the bread used in Christian services or to throw into the wells. When the plot was “exposed,” cities started campaigns to burn their Jews. In Basel, a city with about 600 Jews, the
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Feature: The Haggadah of the Black Plague
Images from the Wolff Haggadah showing a Provençal Jew holding marror and wine
entire community was burned to death inside a wooden building. In Strasbourg, Jews were forced to gather in the cemetery and were burned to death in a wooden shed when none of them agreed to renounce their faith and convert. In the cities along the Rhine River in Germany—traditional centers of Ashkenazi Torah—riots broke out and Jews were burned to death. In Mainz, the Jews rose up to defend themselves. They gathered weapons and managed to kill hundreds of their enemies, but in the end, the Christian masses succeeded in subduing and massacring them. In Konstanz, one lone Jew agreed to convert to Christianity, but he later regretted his shameful act and in a fit of insanity set fire to his house, killing his whole family and calling out tragically that at least he would “die like a Jew.” Not all cities participated in rioting against the Jews. Some mayors and government officials protected their Jews and forbade sermons, incitement and propaganda against them. But the lower classes, filled with longstanding hatred and superstition, blamed the Jews for the plague and continued to riot. Of course, there was another reason for this animosity; Jews across Europe were moneylenders, and they were owed a lot of money. Killing Jews was a way to void these debts— no Jews, no loans to pay back, and the debtors also had the benefit of plundering
their homes and property. Meanwhile, the plague raged on intensely. In the cities of Bologna, Venice, Montpellier, Avignon, Marseille and Toulouse, a thousand people died each day. The plague continued on its deadly path to Normandy, England and Ireland. The medieval Germans—like their future descendants—had their own solution to the Jewish problem. They created gangs called “flagellants” who would wander from town to town, whipping themselves into a religious frenzy until they bled and calling out for people to repent. Only through repentance, they claimed, could the plague be stopped. Of course, there was no more Christian way to repent than by killing Jews. Everywhere the flagellants went, rivers of blood flowed. Alongside the corpses of the victims of the Black Death, there were now Jewish corpses to place beside them. The German Jews who managed to survive the pogroms fled east to Poland, which was less anti-Semitic and did not suffer as badly from the plague. The great centers of Ashkenazi Torah learning were orphaned, but the seeds of new ones were planted. At first, Pope Clement VI supported the flagellant movement, until its members turned against the Catholic establishment and began to attack monks and priests whose religious behavior did not
conform to their extreme standard. He also believed that the Jews were a valuable commodity—a source of taxes, business savvy and economic power—in the countries under his domain. He tried to protect them and issued a decree absolving Jews of any guilt regarding the plague. He issued two papal letters against attacks on the Jews and rejected the libelous accusations made against them, specifically vilifying those who wanted to kill Jews to rid themselves of their debts. He pointed out that both Jews and non-Jews were dying from the Black Death and that people were dying in lands where there were no Jews. He said that it was totally unreasonable to accuse the Jews of these horrific crimes. However, despite his decrees, the incitement against the Jews continued. The Jews suffered twice—from the disease and from the riots. However, in Avignon—the seat of the popes for much of the fourteenth century—the Jews were safe, and many moved there. But the plague arrived there, too, and the city’s river became its cemetery. The plague was so bad that Louis Sanctus of Avignon was recorded as saying, “Fearing infection, no doctor will visit a patient, no matter the compensation offered. Neither will the father visit his son, a mother her daughter, or anyone visit a relative or friend unless they want to die with them.” At least half of Avignon’s resi-
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Feature: The Haggadah of the Black Plague
dents died. One of those Jews who took refuge in Avignon was Shlomo Tzarfati, who survived the first wave of the Black Plague and then fled to the area under the pope’s protection. It was there that his son Yaakov was born. In addition to learning Torah, Yaakov studied medicine and calligraphy. He wrote sefarim, including Yeshuos Yaakov, which deals with the Egyptian plagues and the nature of miracles. He also studied safrus and artfully penned beautiful machzorim for himself. He married and had several children, including Yisrael, Esther, and Sarah, his youngest. He also began writing an ornate illustrated Haggadah that included notes about Jewish life in Provence, where he lived. In 1382, while he was in the midst of working on the Haggadah, the plague reappeared and blanketed Europe with death once again. Hundreds died in the city of Avignon, and thousands perished in agony across southern France. Rabbi Yaakov himself was covered with the dreaded black spots. Members of his household tried everything possible to save his life, and for a number of months he hovered between life and death. When he finally recovered from the illness in the autumn of 1382, he learned that his beloved son Yisrael was dying of the plague. Yisrael was buried in Tishrei. Like Iyov, the rabbi continued to suffer. After losing his son, the disease took his young daughter, who died in Adar of 1383, exactly one year after her wedding. He was barely out of shloshim when his illustrious daughter Esther became ill. She was a righteous woman who was very involved in chesed even while she was on her deathbed. Though her father was trained in medicine, he could not save her. Upon her death he wrote a manuscript called Evel Rabati, meaning “great mourning,” describing the pain of losing a child. He wrote, “Because of the plague, I will be in pain for the remainder of my days.
Illuminated pages from the Wolff Haggadah
Even Shabbos and Yom Tov are days of mourning and weeping as I write amid my tears.” He describes in loving but pained detail the events leading up to the death of his holy daughter, who, like her sister Sarah, was learned and wise, and who used to read the parshah with Targum twice a week. He referred to the two girls as “Beis Yaakov.” As she weakened, Esther requested that her uncle, who was a kohen, leave the room so that he would not become tamei from a meis after she died. Since no notary would come near her bed to write her will, she declared her wishes out loud for all to hear. She left all of her estimable wealth to tzedakah and her clothes to those who needed them. She asked to be buried next to her beloved sister. Since she was young and childless, she announced her wish that her husband remarry, and that if he had a daughter, she should be named Esther, to be a comfort to her bereaved parents. She blessed her family members and said Viduy before she died. Rabbi Yaakov mourned for his three children but maintained his emunah in Hashem. His daughter’s death was a decree from Above. Even though he was a physician, all his medical knowledge
had no effect. The plague was an “etzba Elokim,” sent to teach a lesson. “I accept the pain with love because it comes from Hashem,” he wrote. “He is the One Who told the plague to come, told it whom to smite and whom to heal.” He took comfort in the fact that he and the rest of his family survived the disease and the antiSemitic riots. Although the makkah that struck Egypt killed cattle and livestock, and the Black Plague that struck Europe killed humans, Rabbi Yaakov saw a relationship between the two catastrophic events as he completed his beautiful Haggadah, in which he included some of the laws of Pesach and notes about the minhagim of Provençal Jews. When he came to the page with the Ten Plagues, the grieving father was compelled to include the plague he had personally experienced as well. But he also took comfort in the nachas of his remaining children and in the fact that despite the long period of pain and agony, the kehillah in which he lived was slowly recovering, reclaiming the glory of its earlier days. He blessed klal Yisrael and recalled Hashem’s blessing during yetzias Mitzrayim: “Ani Hashem Rofecha.”
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4/1/20 10:23 PM
Feature: The Haggadah of the Black Plague
The Long Life of the Haggadah Rabbi Yaakov ben Shlomo Tzarfati’s Haggadah is a painful reminder of the tragedies that befell Ashkenazi Jewry in the Middle Ages. What happened to it after he wrote it? After the author passed away, the Haggadah passed from family to family over many generations, until one day in the 1890s it showed up in a Berlin auction house. The Haggadah caught the eye of Albert Wolff, a Judaica collector from Dresden, Germany. He possessed one of the largest Judaica collections in the world, and in 1907 he donated his collection to the Jewish community of Berlin. It was placed in the care of the city’s Jewish Museum and has since been known as “The Wolff Haggadah”— one of the best known in the world. In 1933, Adolf Hitler came to power and began to torment the Jews. In 1938, during Kristallnacht, the Nazi Party launched riots against Jewish communities throughout Germany. More than a thousand synagogues were set on fire, and Jewish businesses and homes were vandalized. As part of their anti-Jewish operations, the Nazis expropriated much of the art and antiques owned by Jews and Jewish libraries and organizations. The treasures of the Jewish Museum in Berlin were taken and stored by the Reich Security Office, headed by Reinhard Heydrich, for future use in a museum to commemorate the extinct Jewish race. After the start of World War II, Heydrich relocated his office’s valuable book collection to a remote village in Silesia, away from the bombing. Toward the end of the war, when the Russians conquered Silesia, they discovered the rare Haggadah and handed it over to the Jewish Historical Institute in Warsaw. When the Iron Curtain
The Ten Plagues as represented in an old Venetian Haggadah
descended on Eastern Europe, the Haggadah disappeared into oblivion. In 1984, as the Iron Curtain began to lift, a special exhibit of stolen treasures recovered from the Nazis, called “Fragments of Greatness Rediscovered,” traveled to the United States. Most of the items on display came from the Jewish Museum in Warsaw, and the Wolff Haggadah, among other unique items, was among them. After touring the US, the exhibit returned to Warsaw and disappeared behind the Iron Curtain once more. Five years later, the historic Haggadah suddenly appeared at a Geneva auction house, prompting claims that it had been stolen from Warsaw. The Canadian seller, who asked for hundreds of thousands of dollars for the rare manuscript, denied the charges and claimed legal ownership. It became clear that no museum would ever sell such a treasure, and the Haggadah was declared most assuredly stolen by greedy officials in Poland.
The World Jewish Congress and the National Library of Israel embarked on a legal battle to prevent the Haggadah from falling into private hands. They had to negotiate with the Jewish communities in both East and West Berlin and get all the other parties involved to agree to allow the Haggadah to return to its rightful place in Jerusalem. The legal battles continued for seven years and involved three separate cases. During this time, the Communist bloc collapsed. The Haggadah was returned to Poland in 1997, during the same month that Poland’s Prime Minister Cimoszewicz made his first state visit Israel. He presented the Haggadah to the director of the National Library of Israel at an official ceremony. The Wolff Haggadah, one of the rarest manuscripts of its kind, now resides in Jerusalem, reminding us that “in every generation they rise to destroy us, and Hakadosh Baruch Hu saves us from their hands.” ●
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4/2/20 11:08 PM
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F E AT U R E
From
BRESLOV ISHBITZA
to
A CONVERSATION WITH PROFESSOR ORA WISKIND BY DEBRA HELLER
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Feature: Professor Ora Wiskind
Part I:
BRESLOV
You combine many worlds. You hail from Ohio in the United States and now live in Telz-Stone, Israel. Additionally, you are a chareidi who is also a professor. I’m now an associate professor at Hebrew University. I’m one of the first chareidi women to have a professorship in Jewish Studies. I do a lot of things within the field of Jewish studies, but my doctorate is in chasidic thought. When I began my journey I wasn’t frum. I come from a Reform background. So the beginning of my academic education was all secular. When I first started studying literature at Hebrew University, I took a class on Rebbe Nachman, and that was when I discovered his stories. I encountered them strictly as stories, because I didn’t know anything about the Kabbalistic aspects of his tales, so it was a very personal intellectual journey where I was discovering Jewish tradition as I was uncovering these stories. Did Rebbe Nachman’s stories speak to you in a way that brought about your embrace of Yiddishkeit? That was the first chasidus I dealt with. As I started to be more interested in Jewish sources, I was very captivated by the stories of Rebbe Nachman of Breslov. So it was certainly a factor, but it wasn’t the factor. You said that you encountered them as stories. Do they work purely as stories and a work of literature? Yes. I wrote my doctorate on his thought, specifically the stories, and I used the tools of literature and applied them to those stories. My whole background is general liberal arts. My bachelor’s and master’s degrees were in comparative literature. I did my bachelor’s at Northwestern University, and then I made aliyah and did my master’s at Hebrew Uni-
Sign for visitors in Uman
versity. For my doctorate I moved to the department of Hebrew literature. The stories of Rebbe Nachman are veiled mysticism; he conveyed Kabbalah and chasidus in story form. Can you divorce Rebbe Nachman’s stories from the messages he’s conveying? No. That was exactly what I wrote about, because one of the most important tools of literature is symbolism. I wrote my dissertation in the late ’80s and finished it in ’91, and at the time there was not a lot written about the literary aspects of Rebbe Nachman’s thought. I used the traditional Breslov sources as well as doing a lot of detective work. There is a wonderful book written by Rabbi Aryeh Kaplan on the stories, and Art Green had at the time just written his book, Tormented Master. But there was not much more.
people doesn’t have to do with all of the Kabbalistic symbolism. It’s important to know what it is, but even if you don’t know it intellectually, it still affects you emotionally. It was a very immediate meeting with things. It’s very powerful. Afterwards, when you apply your mind, you still don’t lose that beginning acquaintance that you had with the stories themselves.
I thought Professor Yosef Weiss did some important studies about Rebbe Nachman. He did, but he didn’t deal much with the stories, he dealt more with the ideas. For me that was the second stage of my research; the first stage for me was just experiencing the stories on an existential level. The first story Rebbe Nachman told started with “On the way I heard a story, and everyone who heard this story decided to do teshuvah. And this is the story.” That sort of staging is what I had in mind—these stories are supposed to affect people in some way, and the way they affect
He indeed put his own existential twist on chasidus, and he was highly criticized by many for misrepresenting chasidus. Right, but for me and many others our first meeting with chasidus was through Buber. I didn’t know Hebrew when I started, so he was the one who gave me access.
I thought Martin Buber was one of the first; after all, he translated the stories from Hebrew to German. He was really responsible for bringing Rebbe Nachman to the modern audience, but of course he had his own interpretation. One of the first expressions that I learned they say about Buber is that “he translated and improved them.” I think that is very telling.
He also had a very good friend who wasn’t a chasidic thinker, Franz Rosenzweig, and I believe I read that you were influenced by him. He was his partner in translating the Torah,
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but they were very different types of thinkers. Right. Rosenzweig was more of a philosopher, whereas Buber was more of an existentialist. But Rosenzweig was a very big influence for me. Buber was non-observant, while Rosenzweig did adopt mitzvos, although I believe he said he was still on a journey of discovering Yiddishkeit through Hermann Cohen and others when he passed away. It’s interesting that you left your Reform background while in Germany— where the Reform movement began. It’s all very ironic. There’s a famous story about Rosenzweig when he almost converted to Christianity, but then he had a moment of revelation on Yom Kippur in a shtiebel in Berlin. Were both Buber and Rosenzweig influential forces in your journey? They were, in different ways. After I finished my bachelor’s degree I wanted to do a doctorate in literature, and for that I needed a second foreign language. I already knew French and had spent a year in France, so I went to Germany, thinking I would learn German and then return to the States to continue my academic career. While I was in Germany I studied in a school for Jewish Studies in Heidelberg. It was there that I met a wonderful man named Yehoshua Amir, who had translated Rosenzweig’s Star of Redemption from German to Hebrew. He was born in Germany and moved to Israel right after Kristallnacht. He lived in Israel for the next 50 years, but was in Heidelberg that year, on sabbatical from teaching at Hebrew University. He was one of my professors there. I learned Kuzari with him, and he also taught Star of Redemption. So my very immediate “meeting” with Rosenzweig was through his translator. When I decided to go to Israel rather than returning to the States at the end of that
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year, he and his wife really welcomed me, and they were very influential in my decision to change my plans. Was Amir frum? He was profoundly spiritual, but at the time I wasn’t very knowledgeable, so I’m not sure what he held or how to describe him. I don’t think he was Orthodox. And you discovered Breslov through Buber. I wouldn’t say that. I discovered Breslov at the university in a completely neutral setting, without any religious context at all. But at the same time, I also heard one of the stories being read aloud, while I was at a kibbutz for Shabbos. It was a profoundly awakening experience—listening, I felt that the story was all about me. That’s when I started learning more about them on a deeper level. Which story was it? It was the story of the two sons—one was a simple baal emunah and the other was a cynic who ended up being an apikores. The first one accepted everything that happened to him and was always good-natured, whereas the other one was endlessly tormented by philosophical questions. That “clever son” was on an impossible search, but the “simple son” lived in tranquility because he had found everything he needed. It was very poignant for me, because I had been searching for a long time. There are many books about the stories of Rebbe Nachman. What was the chiddush of your book? I was in university, so my first book was actually my dissertation. I wrote and submitted it in Hebrew, and then I later translated it into English for publication. I presented Rebbe Nachman’s stories—or I tried to frame them—as belonging to a certain genre of literature called the literature of the fantastic. It’s a genre that was very popular in the 19th century—at roughly the same time
when Rebbe Nachman was telling his stories. This was particularly so in Germany and France. These are stories that are based on imaginative, surreal, or supernatural elements. Like fairy tales? Sort of like fairy tales but more sophisticated. For my master’s degree I compared two German short stories by E.T.A. Hoffmann that are considered part of this genre to the stories of Rebbe Nachman. I wasn’t trying to claim that there was any sort of influence. Rebbe Nachman never read German literature, of course. But in early 19th-century Europe, there was a great deal of interest in the imagination and the power of the imagination, alternative ways of perceiving reality through symbols and things like that. I described the tools and tactics of this literary genre and tried to discern the ways they also appeared in Rebbe Nachman’s stories. What interested me was seeing the ways that Rebbe Nachman used existing sources from within Jewish tradition while transforming them, and discovering the logic he used in order to create these stories. Although you were focusing on the literature aspect of it, you probably had to study a lot of his Torah to be able to understand what he was alluding to. There was definitely a lot of detective work, and a lot of it had to do with Likkutei Moharan and trying to identify ideas that he used that came to the fore in the stories. In his early years, Rebbe Nachman focused on Torah teachings. It was only in the last years of his life that he said, “My Torahs haven’t brought Moshiach, so now I’m going to start telling stories in the hope that this will work better.” So they’re definitely interconnected. I think academia has much more interest in the teachings of Rebbe Nachman than of any of the other chasidic masters if only because
4/3/20 1:01 AM
Feature: Professor Ora Wiskind
When you teach about Rebbe Nachman, do you do that strictly as a scholarly subject or are you also teaching it as a way of life? Truthfully, I have not taught a class on Rebbe Nachman in quite a few years. I sort of bowed out, because there were so many people bringing new energy to the field. Once you write a dissertation and then a book about something you want to move on.
Breslov crowds in Uman
Rebbe Nachman reveals his entire personality through his Torah. Do you agree with that? Rebbe Nachman has incredible appeal to people who aren’t frum or are looking for an interesting kind of spirituality; he has that draw that no other chasidus has, except perhaps Ishbitza, although it’s a much smaller chasidus. But Breslov has enjoyed a popularity far beyond anyone’s dreams. And it also ranges from common people to academics. It’s very broad. How well-received was your Breslov book by the scholars? You’re touching a bit of a sore point. I didn’t get any negative attention, but academics tend to be very narrow disciplinarily. In other words, if you do the theoretical aspects of chasidic teaching you’re in one niche. If you do the messianic aspects you’re in a different niche. And very few scholars of chasidus have anything to do with literature. There are people in literature who are very interested in chasidus but don’t know much about it; they are only interested in the literary aspect. In a sense, I was too interdisciplinary for most people, so I think a lot of academics just chose not to deal with
me, because they were lacking one set of tools or another to really understand what I was doing. Do you feel that you were understood at all by anyone? Definitely. It has taken a number of years, but the field has broadened a great deal. First of all, because of the increasing interest in Breslov—even when I wrote my dissertation people would ask me what there is to write about Breslov that hasn’t been written before; but now there’s ten times as much written as there was then, so people are much more open-minded about trying to understand things in different ways than they used to be. I find that Breslov has not only been studied so much, but there are also many debates amongst the scholars regarding how to interpret Breslov. Right. But that’s just like anything else that is enigmatic. Rebbe Nachman left everything open, which invites people to jump in and take it anywhere they want, and no one can prove them wrong. I think that’s also why the secular interest in Rebbe Nachman is so great, because it’s so open-ended.
But you did teach the teachings of Breslov at a certain point in time. Yes. When I first came to Israel I didn’t know any Hebrew, so I spent a year just learning Hebrew; and after that I did my master’s studies, and then I had a lot that I needed to learn. It was a long period of time when I was earning money in other ways besides teaching. When I finished my degree, I started teaching at Michlalah. I didn’t start teaching chasidus for another couple of years, until I was at a level where I could actually teach. What exactly do you teach at Michlalah? I’ve been teaching there for 25 years. I started out in the undergraduate program, where I taught many things for many years. About seven years ago they started a graduate program for Jewish Studies, and I’ve been teaching in that program ever since. The degree is in Jewish Thought and Oral Torah—Machshevet Yisrael and Torah Sheb’al Peh. It’s an interdisciplinary Jewish studies program, and in it I teach modern Jewish thought and especially chasidic thought, which is my professional specialty. So I can answer your previous question in terms of my teaching in general, because the teaching I do now takes two directions. Some of my classes are historically-based, so I’ll discuss various chasidic schools or approaches in a more conservative, academic kind of framework. But the kind of teaching I’m most interested in now, and which is in demand, goes beyond the bounds of regular academic inquiry.
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MEN’S COHORT
T H E
Or to use the oft-repeated example, you can be a human being and write about frogs. Yes. To be a mathematician, you don’t have to be a triangle. In terms of religious mindset, though, I believe a person can’t truly understand a religious heritage without living it actively. In my own teaching, I do my best to connect things to living Jewish tradition. I’m not willing nor able to teach things in an abstract way. I try not to be dogmatic or pedantic, but I definitely present whatever I’m teaching as something that’s relevant and meaningful for Jewish life. Living in Israel, my students are all Jewish. I do teach in nonreligious frameworks as well, which at this stage in my career I find particularly exciting and rewarding. I enjoy teaching traditional Jewish sources to people who aren’t necessarily shomrei mitzvos. While, as an academic, my job is to teach courses worth college credits, at the same time, presenting traditional texts like Sefer Iyov and reading them for what they can teach about pain, suffering and faith—you’re teaching what’s written in the text, but if you can do it in a way that will get your students to come back to you afterwards and say, “When I was sitting with my dying mother, your class meant a lot to me,” that’s very meaningful.
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In fact, in my most recent book, Hasidic Commentary on the Torah, I combined not only chasidic thought and a literary approach but also some psychology and cultural history, all of which I think can greatly enhance the general study of chasidus. Even after so many years, academic Jewish Studies still very much incorporate a Wissenschaft approach, like the 19th-century German school, which completely divorced the lived aspects of religious tradition from its formal ideological and practical facets. There are scholars who have no interest in keeping mitzvos yet are writing studies about Mishneh Torah. The conviction is that it doesn’t matter what you do in your private life; you apply your intellect to analyze the topics at hand.
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W W W.T H E N E W S E M I N A RY. O R G
4/3/20 1:01 AM
Feature: Professor Ora Wiskind
Do you think chasidus has a universal message? Rather than talking about it in the abstract, I’ll answer by giving you an example. The Sfas Emes of Gur lived in Poland at the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century in a time when a lot of the youth were leaving Jewish tradition. The young people were not keeping Shabbos, and they were moving on to involvement in secular culture and politics, but it was these people, in part, to whom he was saying his drashos. It was to their parents and grandparents, but it was also to a lot of these young men. This was the reality he had to deal with. So when he was trying to explain to people what Shabbos means, it was definitely to try to get them to keep Shabbos, but it was also something much more all-encompassing about Jewish identity and covenental faith. He was willing to counsel them even when he knew they weren’t keeping Shabbos. In that sense, I do believe that ultimately one of the big messages of chasidus is how to be a Jew; but there is also the element of being able to see the good in people no matter what they’re doing, because they may come back someday. So you have the aspect of chesed, and you also have the aspect of acceptance. Another issue that concerns me, though, is the distortion of chasidus; I won’t mention names, but there are certainly a number of scholars who try to present various chasidic schools as condoning behavior that negates halachah. That is a complete misrepresentation. They weren’t universal in the sense of “everything is okay.” Rather, some chasidic masters had the broad vision to see larger historical processes and that there are stages when the Jewish people are alienated from Hashem, and there are stages when they come back, and we have to continue to teach Torah in a way that doesn’t drive people away.
Part II:
ISHBITZA
Today you’re no longer focused on Rebbe Nachman? After a couple of years, I wanted to move on to other aspects of Jewish tradition and chasidic teaching in particular. My second book is on a different school of chasidic thought—Ishbitza and Radzyn, which is a completely different time period and mindset from Breslov. My third book, which I published last year, is about chasidic interpretations of Torah. My contention in that book is that a lot of what the chasidim do is a form of parshanut. The goal was to try to understand what they were interpreting, why they were interpreting and how they were interpreting, etc. The dominant view in the academic world is that chasidic writings do everything but interpret the text itself. You, however, contend that they engaged in parshanut. When people think about parshanut they usually see it in a very narrow way—as an attempt to discover the most direct, immediate meaning of the Torah. In fact, though, interpreting the Torah always involves a combination of ways of thinking, whether they are philosophical, Kabbalah or chasidus, paired with that interpretation that they are offering. You and I seem to think the same
thing on this, but many people don’t see chasidus as parshanut at all. The dominant view of chasidic writing is that it’s all ideology. One of the things I was trying to show was how closely the chasidic masters use traditional interpretations of the Torah while infusing them with new ideas. It’s exactly that combination that the Rambam and others have done throughout history, but scholars of chasidus persist in thinking that it’s something else aside from parshanut. The Midrash, which is full of philosophical ideas and hidden meanings, also does parshanut, although there is no attempt made to make it seem like it is presenting a literal translation. Right. When most people say parshanut they mean pshat, whereas it doesn’t mean pshat at all. As we see in the Midrash and even in Rashi, the pshat is only one aspect of the meaning that the Torah conveys, while there are many other aspects that are perhaps even deeper or more significant. What was your second book about? It was about Ishbitza and Radzyn. The Mei Hashiloach of Ishbitza is more famous; he was a talmid of the Rebbe of Kotzk. Yossi Weiss wrote an important article about him; but when I wrote the book, most of the at-
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The Imrei Emes with some of his followers
tention paid to this dynasty was to the Mei Hashiloach, whereas I wrote about his son, the Beis Yaakov. If I’m not mistaken, scholars claim that he had a deterministic approach regarding the principle of free will. Right. Determinism was Yossi Weiss’ big chiddush about Ishbitza. The scholars, like most people, are interested in sensational things, so if you read the texts and interpret them with a certain agenda, you can come to the conclusion that he was radical in various abstract philosophical questions. In fact, the book Mei Hashiloach was burned by other chasidic groups, so it wasn’t only scholars who interpreted him in that way. But certainly in the modern academic frameworks, he has gotten most of his attention because he was supposedly iconoclastic.
Right. But as far as his teachings are concerned, do you agree that there is an element of determinism? There have been religious philosophers who were determinists, such as Rav Chasdai Crescas. I can say that the sentence from the Ishbitzer that caused people to call his school deterministic was “hakol biydei shamayim, v’af yiras shamayim—everything is in the hands of Heaven including fear of Heaven.” Going back to my own work, I didn’t focus on the Mei Hashiloach; I focused on his son, the Beis Yaakov. My contention is that we need him in order to understand what his father was really saying. The same scholars who claimed that the Mei Hashiloach was radical rejected his son because they said he was just conservative and tried to paper over all of the radical things his father said. I don’t think that’s true, and one of the purposes of my book was to reframe him as a continuation of the same line of thinking of the Mei Hashiloach and to bring his ideas into perspective.
From the way you’re saying it, it seems that you don’t agree with that assessment. First of all, I don’t appreciate the reason that people are interested in it. I also believe that people who think that haven’t read his sefer very closely. The major reason why I oppose the whole line of thinking is because people assume that if indeed you can read the teachings in a way that sounds deterministic, you can come to the conclusion that the Rebbes themselves lived by these teachings, didn’t keep halachah and followed their yeitzer. People have gone very far with translating theoretical ideas into practice, which as far as I’m concerned is really crossing a line. However you interpret it, the Rebbes were halachic Jews.
You said that there isn’t a lot of scholarly work on Ishbitza. Again, some years ago that was true, although recently there have been a couple of excellent new dissertations on the Ishbitzer, and there’s quite a lot more material than there used to be, although no one has written anything substantial about the Beis Yaakov besides me. Then, of course, there’s the grandson (of the Mei Hashiloach), who continued the line of Radzyn started by his father (the Beis Yaakov), and I wrote about him in my book, as well.
Absolutely. You say absolutely, but unfortunately there are a lot of scholars who actually contended that they weren’t.
Your third book, on parshanut, seems to be more encompassing than your first two books. Is that correct? Yes. It’s definitely my most ambitious work. A lot of what I did in that book was about when talking about interpretation, what exactly is being interpreted in chasidic commentary on the Torah, and how the chasidic masters interpreted things. But I
think in terms of my innovation in this book, the additional element that I tried to include in the discussion was the cultural and historical aspect. In other words, I tried to connect whichever chasidic master I was writing about to what was going on in the Jewish world or in the world at large at the time that he was teaching. Just as any person who gives a drashah in shul might combine current events or the things people are concerned about with the way they’re reading the Torah, I tried to show the connection, as well—not necessarily with specific events, but with larger cultural issues. It might have been assimilation, secularization, urbanization or whatever the larger trends in the world were and how they would impact the way chasidim interpreted the Torah.
Part III:
LIFE AND THOUGHT
You mentioned before that living this life makes it easier to convey these messages, but on the other hand, you probably get more resistance in various ways because you’re chareidi. Truthfully I feel that I belong everywhere, but you can’t ever really understand the way other people experience the world. Do you get more resistance both as a woman and as someone who lives a chareidi lifestyle? Baruch Hashem, I feel that I’ve been blessed and have never encountered resistance from anyone. There are certainly people who won’t talk to me because I’m a woman, there are people who won’t talk to me because I’m frum, and there are people who don’t talk to me because I’m not frum enough. There’s no end to it. I think everyone in one way or another suffers from something like that. I mentioned before that one of my
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Feature: Professor Ora Wiskind
The shul in Izhbitza, Poland
most empowering experiences was being able to teach in a completely secular Israeli environment and having people say things to me like, “You’re frum, but you’re really a cool person.” I enjoy being able to break down those barriers. Just because you’re frum doesn’t mean that you have to be boring or irrelevant. And the opposite applies as well. I think I’ve spoken in more chareidi environments where people have asked me whether it’s okay to be doing what I’m doing. I asked my rav before I started teaching, but I’m sure there will be people who say that I shouldn’t be addressing certain audiences. I just came to the conclusion long ago that you can’t please everyone or even most people, but if you think you’re doing what Hashem wants you to do, that’s really all that matters. You have to follow the truth, and those people who do are ultimately the winners, so to speak, in every aspect. Both your life journey and your intellectual journey have been truly unique. You’re constantly teaching, but do you think that your life journey is a teaching in itself? There are certain motifs that I use a lot, and my journey is certainly very important. In other words, in all of my teaching, I try to encourage people to realize that they’re on a journey and to be willing to change. I think the potential of change is a very powerful and empowering idea—whether we call it teshuvah, transformation or whatever it is. The intellectual and the emotional are bound up together—intellectual challenges need to be experienced, and life experiences need to be understood. For better or for worse, a lot of people’s connection to Judaism is formal—through school, shul or what they’re told to do. I think if we can help the people we come in contact with to understand that Jewish tradition can actually help them with their life’s questions— not that I have all the answers, but at least I know where to look, how to look, and how to help people gain the tools to look—
they may find what they need to help them on their journey. To put it a different way, my own encounter with religion has shown me good ways to go about integrating religion into life and also less successful ways. You can encounter all sorts of people who have had both positive and negative encounters with Judaism that have either pushed them away or brought them close. One of the problems is giving people answers without listening to their questions. When kids or young people feel that their teachers know all the answers—when they themselves haven’t even figured out the questions yet—then you aren’t using the sources in the way they were meant to be used. When I’m teaching, I try to help people understand how this can be integrated in a greater way and why they need this. I think that there’s a much bigger quest for spirituality among Israelis— even secular Israelis—than there is among secular Americans. Someone involved in kiruv told me that there is a spiritual quest in Israel, and I also find that Israeli music—even secular music—is very spiritual. Rav Shamshon Rafael Hirsch pointed out that
religion comes from the East, not the West. There’s something spiritual in that part of the world. Do you find that as well? Definitely. I think that was one of the reasons why I made my way to Israel. I was looking for something spiritual, and I certainly found it in Israel long before I became frum. I don’t know the reason, but I definitely think that it’s true. It seems that academia is also flourishing in Israel, and there is great interest in Jewish studies there from an academic perspective. I would say even more than that. Since I entered academia, I believe that there is a growing recognition that you can combine spirituality with academic search in a way that used to be completely unacceptable. Again, that’s the German scholastic approach where religion and academic study are divorced from one another. Although there are still certainly many secular Jews who are studying religious subjects, I think it has become more acceptable for people to believe in what it is they’re researching. What do you think you’ve contributed to Jewish studies?
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I recently spoke at Chabad of Oxford University in England on the subject of academia and the heart. In answer to your question, I don’t know what my contribution is, but I try to teach things in a way that is engaging, both from the head and from the heart. I truly believe that Jewish tradition needs to be taught as Toras chayim—as something that is practiced—but I believe that any Jew can come closer to Jewish tradition by learning more about it. There are a lot of languages that appeal to people, and I feel that it’s something I can contribute to sort of bring the heart into academia without compromising on academic standards. That’s very important, but sometimes academic demands may push you to come to conclusions that you may not feel comfortable with as a religious
Jew. Do you ever have that challenge? No. It’s a challenge that you sometimes have to read things that don’t correspond with your personal beliefs, but certainly in the fields that I deal with, if you read a text and try to understand it as best as you can, assuming that it’s a text that was written by someone with yiras shamayim, it’s not going to take you to a place where you don’t want to go. In fact, I feel that an academic who is a believing Jew can make everything pure. There’s nothing that in and of itself is treif. The challenge is just to see what we can do to bring things into the realm of kedushah. Did you face any specific challenges from being one of the first female chareidi professors in Jewish Studies? After all, there are always challenges from being a pioneer. The biggest challenge is one that anyone
faces: Do I know my stuff? Certainly in terms of Jewish Studies, to come from outside without a yeshivah education and having to learn everything from scratch, I had many years of questioning whether I really knew what I was talking about and whether I had really learned it well enough. I would check myself many times more than other people would, just to make sure that I wasn’t making any mistakes, because I didn’t have any girsa d’yankusa—I didn’t have anything I could fall back on to ensure that I had gotten things right. That journey really taught me anavah and that you really can’t depend on yourself easily in any way, and as far as I’ve gone in my career I still feel very cautious about any move that I make. The benefit has been that it has enabled me to advance further, because everything is built on a really solid foundation. ●
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preventative health information to members of the Jewish community. To learn more or to request a talk on a specific health topic email health@jowma.org J E W I S H O R T H O D O X W O M E N ’ S M E D I C A L A S S O C I AT I O N jowma_org w w w. j ow m a . o r g | 14 NISAN 5780 // APRIL 8, 2020 / AMI MAGAZINE
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Feature
A documentary about chasidim that cuts through the stereotypes
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Filming the Rebbe of Belz in the city of Belz, Ukraine
A conversation with Israeli filmmaker Uri Rosenwaks By Rabbi Yitzchok Frankfurter
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U Feature: Chasidic Kingdoms
Uri Rosenwaks, who was born in Yerushalayim, grew up in Be’er Sheva and currently resides with his wife and three children in Ramat Gan, recently produced a unique film about the chasidic world, with a special focus on the Belzer community in Yerushalayim. Malchuyot Shel Matah, or Kingdoms as it is entitled in English, adopts a neutral perspective and is always sympathetic and respectful of its subject, and has gotten rave reviews in both the secular and chasidic communities. Having allowed his interviewees to voice their opinions and points of view without interference or attempt at objectification, many of the voices in the film articulate an unwavering trust in the miraculous. However, the biggest miracle is probably the film itself, which received the tacit approval of the Belzer Rebbe. Most films about chasidim produced by Israeli filmmakers are critical and condescending towards chasidic beliefs, and are outright disdainful of its way of life. Secular viewers, who have no way of knowing how accurate or representative the portrayal is, are usually shown behavior that appears outlandish, pagan-like and primitive. That the Belzer Rebbe wasn’t apprehensive that Uri would produce another film that is grounded in ridiculousness and that talks over the heads of the chasidim to whom he was given access is simply astonishing. Perhaps more astonishing is that Uri, a secularist and self-defined rationalist, doesn’t view his film as a tool that would cause a secular viewer to embrace Yiddishkeit. Nonetheless, he may have unwittingly produced just such a kiruv tool, something the Belzer Rebbe may have keenly foreseen. But regardless of whether it serves as a kiruv tool or a means to quench one’s curiosity about the chasidic way of life, Malchuyot Shel Matah will undoubtedly be an informational source about Judaism for many people. As such, Uri Rosenwaks’ documentary has already left an indelible mark on Jewish research and studies for years to come. When we met in Yerushalayim during my recent visit there, we sat under a large window that was facing the majestic shul of Kiryas Belz.
Malchuyot Shel Mata almost seems as if the chasidim produced this film themselves. It certainly doesn’t come across as something made by an outsider who is looking in. That’s true. Someone told me, “This is truly chasidic filmmaking, because you subdued your ego.” At the last screening in Michlelet Yerushalayim there was a woman in the audience who is an academic researcher into chasidism. Afterwards she came over to me and said, “You did a maaseh chasidi, because you were metzamtzeim [constricted] yourself.” Yedidya Meir told me that it was the first time he saw chasidic Jews on television who didn’t seem to feel threatened. They weren’t sitting there expecting to be attacked. They spoke freely and were sometimes asked difficult questions. You said that it almost felt as if they shot it themselves, but they couldn’t have done
it because they couldn’t have asked many of those questions. It’s a different perspective. I interviewed the filmmaker Eyal Datz, who made a brilliant documentary on chasidut Sanz. He’s also secular, but he did something different from what you did. His was also a very positive film, but it was still from the perspective of an outsider. You kept yourself and your ego almost entirely out of it. One reason is that I didn’t want to be just another outsider portraying chareidim in a way that had already been done many times before. I left all my stereotypes and presumptions at the door and just let the people speak for themselves. That was the way I approached it. I really wanted to hear them; I was curious about what they had to say. Everyone knows what secular people and academics say about them. I didn’t want to be just another person adding to that.
In allowing them to speak, you became them in a certain sense. That’s what’s so new about it. It’s not just another television program about chasidim. During the first year of this project, when no one in the chasidic community was willing to talk to me, it was because of all kinds of programs that were being aired that really attacked and blackened them. The fact that you were able to get Belz to cooperate like that is nothing short of a miracle. I agree. But the one who facilitated this cooperation was the Ruv [sic] himself. Did you ever speak with him? I shook the Ruv’s hand a few times. I saw him in Canada, in the city of Belz and here in Yerushalayim, but I never had a conversation with him. But he knew who you were?
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erything myself,” I reassured them. “But who’s going to be the editor?” they wanted to know. I told them that I would be the editor as well, but it didn’t help. They were convinced that either I or someone in the broadcasting company was out to get them. It was very well filmed and edited. Did you do all of that on your own? No. I worked with very good people, but I was in complete control, and there were a few scenes I did shoot myself. I was essentially the producer. At the end of the day, I was in charge of everything.
Uri Rosenwaks speaking with Rabbi Frankfurter in Yerushalayim
I believe so. His gabbaim know me very well because I sat with them a lot. Even after the Ruv opened the doors for me, getting each individual to trust me and be willing to participate took a couple of meetings. I know the Belzer Rebbe, and it’s not surprising that he understood that a positive film like this can turn secular Jews on to Yiddishkeit, which to him is invaluable. But the fact that he trusted that you wouldn’t produce something negative is amazing. To my mind it’s a neis, or ruach hakodesh, and I mean that in the literal sense. That’s what the Belzer chasidim said. I
could have certainly done something different, but he trusted me, and he trusted a Belzer chasid named Yitzchok Alchemeister, who worked with me. But you didn’t sign any contract that you would make a positive film. The only contract I signed was with the broadcasting corporation to make sure they wouldn’t interfere with my artistic license. Other people in the chasidic world said it was very risky, but it was a brilliant PR move, and he did it just like that. I went to a lot of different chasidic groups, but I couldn’t get my foot in the door. They were all suspicious and thought I was going to trick them. “I’m going to film ev-
Someone told me, “This is truly chasidic filmmaking, because you subdued your ego.”
Who introduced you to Belz? After about a year of trying to get access to the chasidic community, one of my two chareidi researchers—a Litvak named David Deckelbaum—met Yitzchak Alchemeister, who was one of the first chozrim biteshuvah of Belz. He had been very involved in kiruv in the past, and he understood that a project like this could be very instrumental. So he went to the Ruv, and the Ruv said, “I don’t have any personal interest in this. I don’t need to be promoted. But if this can create some sort of dialogue between the people here”—this was during a time when there was a big outcry over whether supermarkets should be open on Shabbat in Ashdod—“then I’m all for it.” He opened the door for us after that one meeting and without even meeting me personally. It’s a mark of great boldness on the Belzer Rebbe’s part. He’s always been that way. A lot of people are saying that only he could have done it. He allowed his tishen to be filmed 20 years before everyone else, except for Chabad. He also promoted producing music on discs. And bringing social workers into the yeshivos. Yes, and everything else he does for children in the field of education. He’s an amazing person, and so is his life story. Af-
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Feature: Chasidic Kingdoms
ter he opened the door, it became easier to approach other chasidic groups. Were you given free access in Belz? Yes. I could go wherever I wanted, but I had to show the film to them before it was released, and the agreement was that they could ask for anything to be deleted if they felt it was improper. After I showed them the first part they said, “It’s very nice, but where’s the catch?” “What do you mean?” I asked. “When are you going to stick it to us?” I said, “I’m not going to stick it to you. You’ll see everything.” The documentary is in three parts. Which one got the best reception? The second part elicited the strongest emotional reaction from secular people in Israel, especially because of the ending with the chasid who lost his son. I have two thoughts about that part. One is that it starts off with people who believe that everything is miraculous and then it becomes complicated, and in the end you find out that it isn’t about miracles, it’s about solidarity. As a secular person, when I look at all these people who don’t have children even though they have a brachah from the Rebbe, it means that it isn’t about miracles, it’s about the mindset. From my perspective, the scene in which the Pittsburgher Rebbe visits the house of the person with the mezuzah is one of the best in the whole series, because it shows how it’s all about solidarity. The third part is also excellent because it’s the least obvious. In the third part, which deals with family life and with earning a living, you also filmed women and concentrated on their role in the community. It was a little controversial, but the most moving thing for me was to watch the women seeing themselves. We held two large screenings, one in Ashdod and one in Yerushalayim in Belz for women. There were about 1,000 women at each screening.
When I first made the documentary I didn’t think that the Belzer chasidim themselves would ever see it, because the attitude was, “Well, if it’s for the secular community, then no problem.” A lot of people were surprised about how much excitement there was in Belz itself. There are almost no Belzer chasidim who haven’t seen it yet. After the screening in Ashdod, a lot of women came over to me and said that they wanted their husbands and sons to see the documentary. They asked if I could take out the third part with the women so they could see it, but I said no. Did you get any complaints? In one part of the documentary a chasid says that Aleksander is a very small chasidut today because of the Holocaust. Some Aleksander chasidim called me afterwards because they were insulted. You can understand them to a certain extent, but the whole thing is very complicated. My own great-grandfather was an Aleksander chasid, and my father is named after him. It’s also about the lesson of the Holocaust. Did you expect the film to be so well received in the secular community? Actually, I had a lot of fears about that, because I knew that people would be upset that it wasn’t critical. I knew they’d want to know why I didn’t ask them about serving in the military and other points of contention. But the response was amazing. It went viral, and people just saw them as human beings. To me, that’s the biggest achievement. For a lot of secular people
it came as a surprise that all of a sudden they weren’t this black, monolithic group. Of course, I was criticized as well. What was the biggest criticism you received from the secular community? The usual thing: how dare I portray them so nicely when they’re ugly and parasites, etc. I also got criticism from historians who thought that I whitewashed the fact that many Rebbes fled Europe while their chasidim were left behind to burn. I touched upon that in the very first story about Rav Aharon of Belz, which was the only thing the people in Belz were concerned about, because they weren’t sure how I was going to present it. I wasn’t familiar with the story before, but you would need to have a separate series just on that. I also read the writings of Rebbetzin Farbstein about what they did to save others, and how by saving themselves they tried to preserve the culture and traditions, which makes sense in a certain way. So I knew how to answer the historians. I never knew how much chasidim avoid discussing the Holocaust. Rav Aharon of Belz spoke about the hester panim and the hester b’toch hester before he passed away, but I didn’t want to get into that because it’s not something you can portray in five minutes. I’d heard a lot of explanations in my life about why the Holocaust happened, but then I heard that the Rebbe of Belz said that anyone who tries to explain it is a rasha. What astounded me the most when I shot the film was the acceptance of the Holocaust by the people who went through it.
The Belzer Rebbe allowed his tishen to be filmed 20 years before everyone else, except for Chabad.
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L-R: Yitzchak Alchemeister, David Deckelbaum and Uri Rosenwaks
Were there other surprises? I think my biggest surprise was that while chasidic society is quite insular, after the documentary was released, everyone was interested in knowing how it was being received by the secular community. It was really important to them to know how they were being seen. All of a sudden they were not so inward-looking. The chareidim in Israel are transitioning from being a minority to a major faction within society, so they are becoming far more influential. The fact that they wanted to know what people were saying really amazed me. You’ve attended screenings in both the secular community and with the chasidim in Yerushalayim and Ashdod. Which one did you feel was the most powerful? Nothing could compare with the screenings for the Belzer women. I was afraid that no one would show up, but hundreds of women came to the one in Ashdod, and you could really feel the electricity in the audience. I think they were thrilled by the way they were portrayed, as if they were finally seeing themselves being depicted as likeable rather than being used or humiliated. That was a shock for them. One of the Belzer rabbis wanted to know why the broadcasting corporation would be interested in such a portrayal. Did you feel that electricity in Yerushalayim as well?
Even more so. As you probably saw, I filmed the Rebbetzin lighting Shabbat candles, and she came to the screening in Yerushalayim. I was really nervous before the screening, because in Ashdod they didn’t know what to expect. But the women in Yerushalayim were there because they’d already spoken to their friends and family in Ashdod. Having expectations is a recipe for disappointment, but it ended up being amazing. So your biggest surprise didn’t come during the filming, it came from the way the documentary was received. Yes. Before it came out I told people that it could either end up flying under the radar or being torn apart. I was very surprised by the way it went viral, even among chasidim. We were under the impression that the chareidim wouldn’t see it. The thing is that the public broadcaster puts everything on YouTube so I had to block it abroad, because I want to take it to other countries and hold screenings. When you’re in the middle of the process you can’t really assess how things are going. One amazing screening was before a mixed audience of about 400 chasidic and secular people in Tel Aviv. Several chareidim spoke on stage and I did too. A couple of people complained to the Belzer Ruv about how he could allow such a thing, but he completely ignored it.
How did you choose the people you interviewed? Or did Belz tell you whom to speak to? No, they didn’t. There were certain types of people I was looking for. Yitzchak and David, my two researchers, knew what I was looking for and went out to find them. We met a lot of people. Some were good, and some were good but didn’t agree to participate in the end. It was a process. It wasn’t as if we could just set a date and go shoot. Each person was given a list of questions he would be asked. They would then ask the Ruv if they should answer all of them, and the Ruv said yes. Did the Belzer Rebbe tell them what to answer? No, but he read the questions. There was no censorship. He isn’t afraid. Did you ask any questions to which they replied that they didn’t want to go there? I don’t remember anything like that, but there were a couple of times when they felt that the answers shouldn’t be broadcast. But 99% of the things they told me were kept in the film. Your interview of the elderly Belzer chasid Mr. Fried was fantastic. He’s an amazing person, and you captured him very well. Interestingly, he didn’t want to see the film. His children wanted to make a big
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deal out of it and invite all his grandchildren for a screening, but he said that if he was going to see it he would only do it at home. So we went to his house on Chanukah with a small projector and showed it on the wall. There was only a handful of people there. He sat in the front and was completely absorbed in it. When it finished he started to cry, and then he sang the Modzhitzer “Ani Maamin.” He was really touched. How long did you spend shooting the film? A year, but it took some time to get it off the ground. A year after I signed the contract with the Israeli Broadcasting Corporation (Kan 11) I still didn’t have anything, but in the end I delivered much more than I promised. I see that they had no problem sending you to Montreal or anywhere else. They gave me a budget and told me to do whatever I felt was necessary. Why did you think it was important to go to Montreal? Two months after we started filming I found out that the Ruv was going there, and I realized that it could be my breakthrough. I knew that if people saw me in Montreal and then again in Belz they would be more comfortable with me and also see how serious I was. I was surprised to see that the Belzer community in Montreal lives in a very mixed neighborhood. When the Ruv came, the police blocked all the streets, and the non-Jewish neighbors came out of their houses to watch his arrival. They also blocked all the main roads for a hachnasat sefer Torah and no one said anything. But on Shabbat all the roads were open and people drove freely. You also went to Auschwitz and filmed a visit there by a group of chasidim. Was it an emotional experience for you?
No. I just put on a cap. I never pretend. I have a very strict ethos of never letting people think that I’m something I’m not. I also never came for Shabbat because I didn’t want people to start thinking that I was going to be chozeir biteshuvah. I’m me. I’m a director, and I keep to that. It’s morally not fair to put on a disguise, and I don’t think you’ll find anyone who will say that I wasn’t fair. A still from the documentary. At left is Mr. Fried playing the violin at the Belzer Rebbe’s tish.
I was especially cold. (Laughs.) When I’m behind the camera I’m completely focused on shooting the scene correctly. You were behind the cameras? Yes. Sometimes we had two cameras and other times the cinematographer was shooting. The parts that weren’t shot that well were my contribution. But there were some places where I couldn’t go in with a cinematographer. For example, when I went in to see the kvitlach by the Pittsburgher Rebbe in Ashdod, I had to go in on my own. It was very funny, because afterwards he asked me who I was and what I was doing there. Did you go with a full-size camera? No, just a small one. What about when you filmed the Belzer Rebbetzin? That was also with a small camera. I knew that it wouldn’t be as disturbing. Were you dressed as a chasid?
This wasn’t your first film. No. I’ve been working for 30 years. I’ve made many documentaries, including one on Yeshayahu Leibowitz and another on Maimonides. Was this film unique? Very, because it was like a parallel galaxy for me. I’ve done a lot of things that were new and different to me, but this was the epitome of that. I’d grown up in a very rational culture and in the home of scientists, so this was completely different. It was mystical. Yes, and it’s a different life, with all its pluses and minuses. As you said before, it’s about solidarity or the merging of two souls, of the Rebbe and the chasid. I’ll accept that description. There’s a depth to their outlook that is Kabbalistic and mystical. Is your background completely secular? Yes, but my father’s relatives were chasidim two generations back. My grand-
After I showed the chasidim the first part they said, “It’s very nice, but where’s the catch?”
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mother was from a Gerrer family and my grandfather was from an Aleksander family, but they stopped being religious in Poland. My mother is from a completely secular Yekke family. That’s probably one of the things I’m trying to explore in this trilogy of Leibowitz, Maimonides and now Belz. I had thought of Leibowitz as a political figure my parents adored, but when I started to do research I discovered that there were other sides to him, such as the philosophical and the religious. I actually learned about Maimonides through Leibowitz, who saw himself as a modern-day Rambam. One of the main things I learned was that the Jewish religion and culture are very rich and interesting, but it’s presented to secular people in the most boring way possible. The first problem is that it’s taught by religious teachers, which is a mistake, and it’s relayed in a very dry way. It’s the most boring subject in the Israeli educational system. After 12 years in school I still didn’t know anything about Judaism, and what I did learn was uninteresting and brought to us from a religious rather than a scholarly perspective. It’s only recently that I’ve found it intriguing and full of drama. Judaism is what has always preserved the Jewish people, as there was no country or common language. Daniel Boyarin of Berkeley wrote an interesting article about how until the establishment of the State of Israel, the book was our homeland. What you are saying about the secular community not receiving a proper education about Judaism is very interesting to me. Right, because it isn’t done with a humanistic approach. There’s so much scholarship, but it hasn’t trickled down to the schools. But when you read the Moreh Nevuchim you see things that are unbelievable. The religious community has always been afraid of the secular
world encroaching upon it, but now the religious community is being mashpia on the secular one. And your documentary is one of the biggest influences, because you’ve humanized people who were only previously seen through the lens of stereotype. Would you agree with that statement? Not entirely. In the documentary on Maimonides I interviewed a Litvak named Danzinger. Afterwards, he told me that he was very worried about me. When I asked him why, he said, “Because you’re taking Judaism and turning it into culture. I don’t like that.” That’s one point. Another is that I don’t think any secular viewers are going to say, “It’s great to be a chasid! I’m going to be chozeir biteshuvah.” I don’t think they see it that way. You don’t have to accept anything; just come and listen and understand. It seems to me that you have a spiritual side, or maybe it’s just curiosity, but you clearly find something fascinating about these subjects. I spent at least two years on each one. Part of it is that I envision someone walking into his house after a long day and sitting down on the couch and saying to himself, “I saw so much garbage today; I want an hour of therapy for my mind. Is there something intelligent I can watch on this device?” That’s where I come in. In some ways, when making a series like this, you have to dumb down the subject matter a little, because even though you know that these are very deep concepts, the viewer will only encounter them once. That’s why it’s an art. So on the one hand you have to make it intelligent, but easily understandable on the other. But you really have to know your stuff for afterwards, when you’re giving talks and people are asking you questions. You mean that there’s still a lot more beneath the surface. I’m not referring to the information; I’m talking about the experience. The work of
the director is the alchemy of what floats up from the contact with the information. The information itself isn’t relevant. It’s about the viewing experience that will make the person interested enough to want to know more. In this case, the idea is for people to say, “I might not agree with a single thing they said, but they’re nice, and I can accept them.” One of the people I interviewed was very upset after I finished the interview. He said, “You’re so condescending and you’re filming us like we’re some kind of exotic creatures. Why are you doing this?” I replied, “I’m curious about other human beings.” There’s been a tremendous evolution in Israeli filmmaking about the Orthodox community. It used to be shallow, negative and racist. Israelis can get away with things that Americans can’t because of political correctness that’s taken to an extreme, although Trump is trying to fight that. I would say that Trump is the reaction to political correctness because it was taken to the extreme. In my opinion, there are two factors behind the recent change. Thanks to the growth of chareidi society, there are now many ambassadors who can act as bridges, like the people who made Shtissel. Second, a lot of thanks is due to the AviChai Fund, which supported this project. They’ve invested a lot of money in the filmmaking industry. Another thing is that Israel is one of the filmmaking capitals of the world. There is no major festival that doesn’t screen Israeli films. Yes, but the films used to be very twodimensional. It’s filmmakers like you who are part of the process of change. It’s a process that I believe started with the assassination of Rabin, because afterwards there was suddenly a push from the secular community to understand what could have led to it, and people wanted to learn more about Judaism. There was a
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pattern of discourse that opened up, and people began to learn things about Judaism in secular spaces, in a way they could relate to. I agree with Leibowitz’s famous quote about Ben-Gurion. There’s a film called Leibowitz in Maalot about his trip to and from a lecture there with Yisrael Eldad, who was a Lechi right-wing professor. In the film they mention Ben-Gurion, whom Leibowitz hated. Leibowitz said, “Ben-Gurion told me, ‘I understand why you want religion to be a free entity in Israel, which is why I will always hold it in my hand.’ That is how we got to where we are today: religious people working for a secular government instead of religion being in opposition.” This whole phenomenon of accepting Judaism as part of our culture and being less afraid of it is even more widespread when it comes to music. What’s happening with Jewish sources and piyut in Israeli music is amazing. Songs like “Shalom Lecha Dodi,” the words of which were written by ibn Gabirol, have become very popular. And there are so many different versions. There are also wonderful records being made by big stars, such as what Berry Sakharof did with ibn Gabirol. And chareidi society is changing as well, although I’m really jealous when I come here and see children playing outside rather than being glued to screens. One thing you kept going back to in the film is freedom, chofshiyut. You were contrasting the secular lifestyle and the chareidi one. Were you satisfied with the responses you got from the interviewees? There were a lot of things that intrigued me, but in the end I put in the things that were the most interesting. One woman, who gave a number of very smart answers, explained that it’s a matter of perspective. “You think that we have to measure up to the values of the secular world, but you’re mistaken.” That was amazing. A lot of sec-
ular people were shocked and impressed by that. We screened that part at the premiere in Tel Aviv, and the audience was very enthusiastic. She was totally unapologetic. Whoever was apologetic ended up on the floor of the cutting room. I wanted people who were frank. What message would you like people to get from this film? It’s fascinating that the minute you finish a film, it takes on a life of its own. Whenever we screen a film and people have things to say, I don’t argue with them because I’ve already given my side of the story. Now it’s their turn. My expectation is, as I mentioned at the screening in Tel Aviv, that we will evolve from this discourse of hate from all sides. We are a bunch of tribes that only meet when we’re in conflict. Most secular Jews and chareidim, or secular Jews and Arabs, or chareidim and Palestinians only meet in confrontation. We don’t live together and exist in different societies. That’s the tragedy. Your encounter with the chareidi world wasn’t confrontational. Neither was your film. That’s my way of life. At the same time, I don’t like to stay in the United States for more than two weeks at a time because of all the political correctness. I’m very liberal and all that, but I measure people by their deeds, not their rhetoric. Political correctness is solely about rhetoric. If you can say nice things about minorities and then shoot them in the street, what’s the point? What’s your next project?
I’m working on a couple of things, but I usually don’t talk about them before they’re out. Are you finished with Jewish topics? I’m not sure. I think I covered quite a bit, and it’s time to go on to other things. What I love about my profession is that once you’re done with a project, you can move on to something completely different. Do you work with deadlines? Yes. No one is going to give you money and then say, “See you in five years.” And you don’t get all of the money upfront. You have to show results. Maybe I’m overglorifying your accomplishments, but I really think you’ve done something unique. I see you as an artistic filmmaker who sees things through a different lens. One of my most powerful childhood memories is growing up in Be’er Sheva, which was a very integrated city in those days. In 1977, when the Likud first came to power, I woke up in the morning and saw my left-wing parents devastated because it was the end of the world that Begin was going to be prime minister. They never believed that someone like that could ever be prime minister. Then I walked to school and saw people dancing in the streets. The contrast amazed me. That’s when I started being interested in Israeli society and politics. Since I grew up in a city with such diverse perspectives, I’ve never looked at people with condescension. I always look them in the eye. ●
One of the main things I learned was that the Jewish religion and culture are very rich and interesting.
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Man on a
Feature Rebel Against Iran
MÄąssÄąon As a Muslim, Daniel Dana fought Khomeini; as a Jew, he is still fighting fo justice for Iranians By Eli Levine
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I
n the heart of Jerusalem, not far from the city hall complex, is Koresh Street, named after the Persian king who permitted the Jews to return to Eretz Israel to rebuild the walls of Jerusalem and construct the Bayit Sheini in the sixth century BCE. Koresh— Cyrus the Great in English, founder of the Persian Empire—was a king who showed kindness and compassion toward all his subjects. It is no wonder that this king of Persia has been honored with a street named after him in the bustling heart of Jerusalem.
What is doubly symbolic is that on this street is the office of Israeli lawyer Dr. Daniel Dana. His office is full of Iranian images and symbols, and pictures of senior Iranian officials. Even though he is approaching retirement age, Dana is full of energy, and despite his amazingly convoluted biography, he continues to charge ahead vigorously with programs related to his homeland, Iran. As he tells the story of his life, you might be left breathless by the roller coaster he has lived through, the many countries he has called home, and the numerous religions and dogmas he followed before settling in the warm embrace of Judaism, in the Jewish capital. Today he continues to follow closely what is happening in his native country and what the coronavirus is doing to the Iranian people. He is optimistic that the epidemic will bring an end to the brutal regime now in power. *** In northwestern Iran, halfway between
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Pro-governemnt parade in Tehran
Mashhad and Tehran, lies the city of Shahroud, known for its vineyards and as the location of the Iranian Space Agency. The city is home to many scientists and engineers. This is where Dana was born as Jamshid Hassani in 1945. His parents worked for the national railway company. Iran was prosperous under the leadership of Shah Mohammed
Reza Pahlavi, who sailed his ship of state toward Western ideals as he developed his country. Jamshid’s parents gave him a Western education, encouraging him to excel in his studies. “My parents did everything they could to educate me,” he says. “My father was very demanding. He wanted me to get good grades
WHEN JAMSHID WAS 15, HIS GRANDMOTHER DIED. HE MOVED AWAY FROM THE RELIGION SHE HAD TAUGHT HIM AND BEGAN TO DOUBT HER TEACHINGS.
and never to neglect my studies. It was difficult, but today I realize that in this way he instilled in me the motivation to succeed and believe in myself. On the other hand, his maternal grandmother pushed him in a different direction. “My grandmother,” he says, “was a devout Shiite Muslim. She encouraged me to pray with her five times a day, in accordance with the dictates of the Quran. She was extremely religious, teaching me Quranic verses and making me write them over and over. I became a zealous Shiite who believed wholeheartedly in her extremist version of Islam. She wanted me to train to be an ayatollah.” Despite this religious rigor, there were some things about his grandmother that puzzled him, such as her refusal to eat meat with milk, but the young boy did not ask any questions. When Jamshid was 15, his grandmother died. He began to move away from the religion she had taught him, and over time he began to doubt her teachings. He wondered why prayers in the mosque were in Arabic when the everyday language of the people was Farsi. When he asked his father about this, his father recommended that he study the history of Persia. “I soon understood that Islam was something relatively new that had been introduced to Persia from the outside more than a thousand years ago. I also noticed something fascinating. Before Islam took over, Persia was a leading country with a unique and progressive culture. We had an empire stretching halfway across the known world, with great cities and our own religion. Once Islam took over in the 1600s, we became stuck in the past as the rest of the world passed us by. Our Persian culture and peaceful way of life were irrevocably destroyed. “I discovered that under Persian rule, Jews were permitted to establish the greatest yeshivos of that era. I would never have known that. Under Shiite rule, of course, that wouldn’t be allowed. “My uncle, who was my mother’s brother, constantly tried to teach me to be a good,
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Accepting an award for excellence in sports
faithful man and to preserve the history of my people, the original Persians. In contrast to Judaism, which is a true religion based on faith, Islam is nothing more than a political system that uses zealotry and religious constructions to give power to individuals. I am not trying to generalize about a billion Muslim believers, but you can see how the fanatical Muslim regimes use religious ideology to govern.” Unlike his grandmother, who had pulled him toward religion, his uncle Musa pushed him toward secularism. “I became an Iranian nationalist, an atheist who didn’t believe in any religion,” he says. His uncle also encouraged him to get involved in sports. He participated in a variety of sports, including boxing, gymnastics and marksmanship, in which he won many medals. He represented Iran at the 1972 Student Olympics in Moscow. Jamshid served in the Iranian army and then worked for eight years for the Iranian police, where he was an outstanding sharpshooter. While in the police force, he completed a bachelor’s degree in law at the University of Tehran. In 1972, he married a
psychologist, and they had two children. In order to continue his studies, he went to Paris in the late 1970s to complete a master’s degree, followed by a doctoral degree in comparative constitutional law. While a young student and father in Paris, he received financial assistance from a member of the Iranian royal family with whom he had had contact since his days in sports competitions. Back then he had met the empress of Iran, who encouraged his legal studies; in return, he had agreed to assist her in her political work after he finished his degree. But destiny held something else in store for him, in the form of one of the most famous figures in Paris at the time—the Ayatollah Khomeini. Khomeini was a revered Iranian cleric who preached against the Shah’s rule and was deported to Iraq, where he incited the Iranian masses against the Shah, calling him a dog and a traitor, and demanding his blood. Khomeini aroused animosity not only toward the Shah’s rule but toward the Americans who supported him and the “cursed” Zionists. Tape recordings of his words were
smuggled into Iran and distributed all over the country. Even the Persian-language BBC radio program broadcast Khomeini’s speeches. The Shah asked the Iraqi authorities to expel the Ayatollah, and in September 1978, Khomeini was deported with great fanfare to France. He settled in a suburb west of Paris and continued to give interviews to the media and to spread his message among the Iranians who came to visit him. “That’s when I first heard his name,” recalls Dana, “and I went with some friends to hear him. We were 16 friends studying together in various fields at the University of Paris. Two days after Khomeini arrived in Paris, we went to hear him. I already had a negative opinion of radical Shia Islam, so when I heard him, I was concerned. I am proud to say that I was the first one to point out to my friends that this man was dangerous and that his intention was to destroy the Iranian nation, our tolerant culture, and Iran’s relationship with the West. On one occasion when I heard him speak, I stood up and told him clearly that he and his views were a danger to Iran. “The West, especially France, was very naive regarding the phenomenon that was
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Khomeini. They praised him and admired his ‘spirituality.’ But the West, and ultimately the US, supported him and his Islamic Revolution. We are paying for the stupid decisions of American politicians.” In 1979, after 38 years on the throne, the ailing Shah stepped down under heavy political pressure, both local and American. Khomeini arrived from Paris shortly afterward as the new leader of the country. Jamshid felt compelled to return to Iran and to contribute his knowledge and abilities to his homeland, but he found himself in a state he no longer recognized. His return was complicated by a rift with his wife’s cousin, Ebrahim Yazdi, a longtime Khomeini supporter. “He was a CIA agent who supported Khomeini as a force against communism, as did the US. I told him he didn’t understand the reality that Khomeini was a great danger. Sure, he spoke to the international media about human rights, equality and the fight against poverty, but I knew that if he came to power, you could forget about democracy and human rights. His government would be lethal.” Yazdi was an educated man, a pharmacist who had received much of his education in Texas. He had been active in Iran’s underground national resistance movement working against the Shah. When Ayatollah Khomeini arrived in Paris, Yazdi joined him there and became Khomeini’s adviser and
spokesman. He translated Khomeini’s words into English for journalists. When Khomeini returned to Tehran, Yazdi was appointed deputy prime minister and minister of foreign affairs. When his wife refused to join the revolution, he demanded that she leave him. “Yazdi would call me and try to coax me to join the revolution,” Dana continues. “But all his attempts and those of other members of my wife’s family to join the Islamic Revolution were pointless. I was not interested.” The discord in the family led to his wife leaving him and taking the children. “Just as I predicted, once the Shah was deposed and Khomeini was in charge, he killed his enemies. He shot 70 generals as soon as he arrived in Tehran. The government of terror had begun. However, in November 1979, following the takeover of the US Embassy in Tehran, Yazdi resigned from the government in protest, claiming it was ‘contrary to Iran’s national interest.’ In the end, Yazdi joined the opposition against Khomeini and was arrested several times, but the family rift never healed. *** The deposed Shah first flew to Egypt and then spent some time as a guest of Morocco’s King Hassan. Jamshid flew to Morocco to meet the royal family and offered to assassinate Khomeini. “I was very upset about the turn of events,” Dana says. “I was a trained sniper, so I offered to assassinate Khomeini. I planned to shoot
“THE SHAH OF IRAN DISAGREED WITH MY PLAN. THE EMPRESS SAID TO ME, ‘DO NOT ASSASSINATE ANYONE. WE ARE NOT TERRORISTS.’”
myself afterward so that there would be no way to trace my action to the royal family. The Shah disagreed with my plan. He argued that times had changed and that there was no need for such action. The empress also strongly refused to allow me to do it. She said, ‘Do not assassinate anyone. We are not terrorists, and I will not have you act that way.’ “I went back to Paris and joined other young activists. We made contact with military personnel from the Shah’s rule, and together we planned to take action against the Islamic government. We met with opponents of the government who had held key positions in Iran before the revolution and tried to raise funds from Iranian millionaires. We consulted with the Israeli Embassy for ideas for overthrowing the government in Iran. We devised a plan to blow up a large mosque built in the French village where Khomeini had lived when he was in exile. During the Iran-Iraq War, in August of 1981, we even managed to seize an Iranian gunboat that was on its way to Iran from France. It was the first time a Western country had agreed to transfer advanced weapons to Khomeini.” They planned their mission with a former Iranian naval commander. The intention was to commandeer three ships that were sailing in open water near Spain en route to Iran. (The ships had been ordered by the Shah in 1974 but were never delivered.) “We hired a fishing boat from a local fisherman and disguised ourselves as Spanish naval officers who wanted to board the ships for inspection. Two ships got away, but they did succeed in overtaking the third one, the Tabarzin. Five Iranian sailors joined our cause. The rest resisted and had to be tied up. We sailed first to Morocco, but they would not let us dock. We wound up having to dock in Marseille, which was a stronghold of the Iranian opposition. The French authorities demanded that we surrender and promised not to charge us with piracy or extradite us to Iran. The ship continued to Iran with its crew.” Under the mutineers’ agreement with the authorities, Jamshid was allowed to remain in France and finish his doctorate at the University of Paris, but he continued his
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The Shah of Iran with President Sadat of Egypt, after fleeing Tehran (above); Daniel Dana with Shimon Peres (right)
activity against the regime in Tehran. A few days after receiving his PhD, while driving, he realized he was being followed by assassins. As he attempted to speed away and escape, he lost control of the vehicle and rolled into a ditch. His front-seat passenger died, and the woman sitting in the back seat became paralyzed. Jamshid broke several of his vertebrae and was hospitalized for nine months. At around the same time, Jamshid learned from an Iranian friend that he had been tried in absentia in an Iranian court for his actions and had been sentenced to hang. He was declared an enemy of the Shiite regime, ranked near the top of the government’s most-wanted list. His former wife cut off all communication with him. “I lost my two children,” he says. “They both live in France today. The older one is 45. He’s a doctor. My daughter is 41, and she’s a lawyer. They were 12 and eight when I lost contact. They do not support my political position and have not forgiven me for what I did. They still don’t understand that what I did was for their benefit. In any event,
my relationship with my son has improved over time.” After spending five years in France trying to bring political change to Iran, his activities waned and he decided to return to his country, despite the obvious risks. “I said to myself, ‘I have to go back to Iran, and yes, they might kill me’—but I felt I had to go back, like a soldier who fights for what he believes in. I wanted to be a part of the Iranian people even if it required the ultimate sacrifice.’” He contacted his family to inform them that he was returning. His friends were angry with him and suspected he was planning to cooperate with the regime. When Jamshid finally returned to Iran, he was
amazed to find that no one was waiting to arrest him, let alone execute him. The authorities turned a blind eye to his arrival, believing that if they allowed him to live normally and work in Iran as a lawyer, they would send a message to all the other Iranian opposition leaders that they, too, could return to their normal lives in the country. Jamshid worked as a lawyer for several years, and although he ended his military provocations against the regime, he remained a source of irritation by taking on political prisoners’ controversial cases and filing corruption charges—including charges of embezzlement—against the government and the judicial system. Once again, the Iranian government deemed him an agitator, and he received death threats. When his personal assistant was arrested, he felt the rope tighten around his neck and realized it was time to escape Iran once again. He fled to Australia in the early 1990s and received political asylum there. Once he was safely settled in Australia, he decided to convert to Christianity and rebuild his life in a foreign land. Jamshid Hassani changed his last name to Dana, which resembled his mother’s family name, Dananda. In 1988, the Indo-British author Salman Rushdie published his book The Satanic Verses, in which he mocked the founding prophet of Islam. The Muslim world erupted in violent demonstrations around the world over Rushdie’s act of “blasphemy against Islam.” The Ayatollah Khomeini issued a fatwa calling for the execution of Rushdie and the book’s publishers. Dana was intrigued by all the furor. “I was curious to understand why Rushdie received a death sentence for writing a book. After reading it, I wanted to pass on Rushdie’s message to Iranians who don’t read English.” Dana began to translate the book into Farsi. “I contacted the publishers, but Australia’s intelligence services were alerted, and I was instructed not to continue with the transla-
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*** What happened next was shocking. Dana was in the middle of his conversion studies when one day his left leg went numb. He was rushed to Shaare Zedek Hospital, and after an extensive series of tests, he was diagnosed with a disorder called anemia thalassemia. The doctor explained that the diagnosis was quite understandable as it is a genetic disease often found among Jews from Middle Eastern backgrounds. “I explained to the doctor that I was born an Iranian Muslim. I was not Middle Eastern, certainly not Jewish, and I showed him my Australian papers. Undeterred, he did some genetic testing on my blood work and told me that not only was I of Middle Eastern background, but that I was genetically Jewish!” That was just the beginning. Soon afterward, his brother got married in the United States, and Dana went to the wedding. There he met his cousin Mariam, the daughter of his uncle Musa, who had already passed away. Mariam had immigrated to the United States many years earlier and had converted to Christianity to assimilate better in her new country; being Muslim was not as accepted then as it is today. At the wedding, Mariam approached Dana and told him an amazing story. Before her father—his uncle Musa— passed away in the hospital, in his last moments, he took his daughter’s hand and
“I WAS INSTRUCTED NOT TO CONTINUE WITH THE TRANSLATION. THEY TOLD ME THAT THERE WERE DEATH THREATS AGAINST ME.”
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tion. They told me that there were death threats against me. They told me that Rushdie’s Japanese translator had been stabbed to death in Tokyo, the Italian translator had been beaten and stabbed in Milan, and a Norwegian publisher of the book had been shot and seriously injured. I was now a target, and they warned me to stay alert. I didn’t finish the Farsi translation, although someone else in Europe did.” Shortly after that incident, Dana flew to Israel to complete a doctorate at Hebrew University. When he tried to return to Australia, he discovered that the country had revoked his asylum status, declaring him a risk to national security. “Instead of standing up to terrorism, they surrendered and threw me out of the country,” he says. The injustice pains him to this day. Dana was suddenly homeless and stateless. He applied to UN agencies in Israel that granted him documents allowing him to remain there. While in Israel, he slowly learned about Judaism and found himself attracted to it. He started studying the religion in depth and eventually began a path to conversion. “Today, as a believing Jew, I see the hashgachah from Above that brought me, step by step, to the place where I am now. Hashem brought me to Israel so I could connect with the Jewish nation, which I had not previously known.”
Feeling Canned?
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Rebel Against Iran
Wall of the former US Embassy in Tehran
asked why she became a Christian. She reminded him that she had converted to Christianity 35 years ago. Why was he asking now? He replied, “You didn’t have to convert. You are Jewish. Your mother and grandmother were Jews.” “I did the research,” says Dana, “and he was right! It turned out that my grandmother, the one who wanted me to become an ayatollah, was actually born into a Jewish family named Abayef, from Bukhara.” The story of this Jewish family began in the city of Mashhad in northeastern Iran, a Shiite religious center that attracts millions of Muslim pilgrims who come to pray at the golden shrine of Imam Reza every year. In 1839, after a blood libel, there was a brutal pogrom against the Jews of the city. Those who remained afterward had to convert to Islam or be killed. Many lived the double life of Anusim, but Dana’s ancestors fled to Baku in Azerbaijan, part of the Soviet Union, where they could live openly as Jews. A few generations later, in 1927, the family crossed the border into northwestern Iran. “My grandmother was born in the USSR, but as things got worse for the Jews, her family fled into Persia when she was just three months old. The immigration official at the border advised the young family that under
the circumstances, they would be better off getting rid of their Jewish name and adopting a Muslim identity. With their safety at stake and the need to remain in Persia, they changed the name on their identity card from Abayef to Dananda, which means ‘a person of knowledge’ in Persian, but in Hebrew, it can indicate belonging to the tribe of Dan. “I think my ‘Shiite’ grandmother knew the family secret, which explains why she would not eat meat with milk and why she checked the eggs to make sure they had no blood spots, along with other customs she must have learned from her parents, even though she became a diehard Muslim. As a child, I just assumed they were Islamic customs since my grandmother was a devout Muslim. I think she urged me to become an ayatollah as a way to prove that she was a good Muslim, as a way to eradicate our Jewish roots, but Uncle Musa, her son, always knew the family secret.” That is when Jamshid changed his name to Daniel, “because Daniel was a Persian Jew. This way I keep my connection between the Jewish people and the Persian people.” Dana is positive that his family story is true, but because he did not have any documentation, he underwent a halachic conversion and remarried his Russian-born wife.
“I try my best to keep Torah and mitzvot. I feel a need to fill the gaps in all that time when I was connected to Islam and Christianity and cut off from my Jewish roots. Today I keep Shabbat, tefillin and kashrut. I go to shiurim as often as I can. I am close with Rabbi Rahimi of the Persian community in Jerusalem and attend his classes.” Although Dana lives in Israel, he is still in close contact with Iranian friends and is active in the Iranian opposition. He founded an organization called PLIM and believes in overthrowing Islamic rule in Iran through cultural and non-military means. He travels to Iranian communities around the world to explain the dangers posed by the Iranian government. He also educates them about the 2,700 years of history involving the Jewish and Persian peoples, the fact that Israel is the only democratic state in the Middle East, and the benefits of a friendship between Iran and Israel. He also explains the tenets of Judaism to Iranians who have never had the opportunity to learn about a religion in which human life is supreme and sacred. He advocates for the nonviolent fall of the Islamic government and the restoration of peace and tranquility to Iran. And in his heart he dreams of becoming the first Israeli ambassador to Iran since the revolution. l
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aniel Dana supports American policy toward Iran, including strict sanctions, as they “only understand the language of power. The terrorist Iranian government is a danger to the world, but even worse is the damage they are doing to their people. I do not believe that they are a real danger to Israel. The real danger is the ongoing damage they are doing to their people. Iran is the world’s largest prison full of Iranian people.” Regarding the coronavirus epidemic, which has hit Iran very hard. he says, “There is no doubt that the regime is lying. There are thousands more patients and there are thousands more casualties than the regime admits. I also think they are using the epidemic as a cover to bury people who have died fighting the regime. “When the plague first broke out, the religious authorities told everyone that if they would pray at the tombs and shrines of their Shiite holy men, it would save them. But their prayers at the shrines have only made matters worse. “The Iranian medical system is good; it is modern and they have good doctors in Iran, but the system is affected by politics. Politics is preventing Iran from receiving aid, but they are not prepared to give up their nuclear development, so the sanctions remain in place. “Iran refuses to receive assistance from Doctors Without Borders because of its ties to human rights organizations. “I don’t know if the coronavirus will bring about the downfall of the government. The military is very strong and will oppose any
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popular uprising. They will not hesitate to spill blood. But the popular opinion among opposition activists is that the end of the epidemic will mark the end of the regime. The people are furious about the government’s response to the epidemic. I think the majority of the Iranian population is now convinced that the Islamic Revolution was a complete mistake. “Iran’s military is very close to China. After all the countries of the world stopped flights to and from China, Iran kept the flights going and thus certainly imported the virus to the country. Then the regime hid the fact that the virus was spreading from the Iranian people. One reason was because it was the fortieth anniversary of the Islamic revolution and they did not want to stop the festivities, plus it was the election season and they did not want to disrupt that either. So thousands were infected. Then they turned to religious belief to fight the virus. “They can expect tens of thousands of deaths before this is over. But it is not over. So I hope and believe it’s only a matter of time before the regime collapses.” What about the Jewish community in Iran? “For their safety, it is best that I do not speak in detail about them. The Jewish community refrains from interfering in Iranian politics. The community is shrinking year by year. They are being closely monitored, and anything they do might endanger them. Therefore, it is no wonder that they avoid any public attention and occasionally express opposition to the State of Israel. “As for the virus, I am aware that some members of the Jewish community are affected and some have died. I pray for the recovery of anyone who is ill.”
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Travel: Indonesia
The Jew of
TONDANO The shul building (top) and the 62-foot-tall menorah in a public park nearby
A Leader in the World’s Largest Muslim-Majority Country By Paul Marshall
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e sat by the side of the road in the hills near Tondano, the heat and humidity offset by wonderful mangoes from the local roadside fruit stand, whose owners simply plucked them and sold them from their trees 30 feet away. We were waiting for Toar Palilingan, the leader of the only functioning synagogue in Indonesia. Since his family is made up mostly of local Minahasa people, we hoped we would recognize him when he arrived. But recognition was no problem. He was hard to miss in his black suit (despite the tropical heat), white shirt, black shoes, tzitzit, and sharp black fedora. My first thought was “We’re in Brooklyn,” but no—we were in the remote tropical highlands of the far northeast corner of the island of Sulawesi, Indonesia. This area is bordered by turquoise seas drawing scuba divers (including, I confess, me) and snorkelers from around the world, and it is adjacent to national parks teeming with exotic wildlife. It is also one of the most Christian regions of Indonesia, the world’s largest Muslimmajority country. In the local upland towns there are huge churches on almost every block. Toar, whose name is now Yaakov Baruch, greeted us warmly and showed us into the small red house that, with the help of local officials and Dutch Christian
Rabbi Yaakov Baruch discussing the shul with non-Jewish visitors
donors, he has transformed into a synagogue. On reclaiming his Jewish faith and inheritance, he did not go for half measures. In the lobby, much to his joy, I recognized a photograph of the Lubavitcher Rebbe. I am an American professor who is Christian, but the rest of our group was Muslim, including an informal leader of the local Shia community, who also suffer from prejudice in this largely Sunni land. The group also included the well-informed Dicky Sofjan, a world-class religious scholar from the Indonesian Consortium for Religious Studies. But for most of the Indonesian Muslims, it was an astounding experience to meet a living Jew rather than some media stereotype and to enter a real synagogue. It was like meeting a man from Mars, and they had no protocol for this adventure. Here the gap was so great that there was para-
doxically little room for prejudice or stereotyping. They asked whether they should wear the offered kippah and what it signified. I said that it was a mark of respect, like a hijab, and since we had been working together for several days in interreligious gatherings, they accepted this. In response to their inquiries, Rabbi Yaakov enthusiastically explained what the bimah was and proudly described the tallit, mezuzah, shofar, siddur, and Torah scrolls. This moved us all, but especially the Muslims. They besieged him with questions, exploring possible parallels with their own faith. Why, in this remote corner of the world’s largest Muslim country, was there a rabbi and a synagogue? Even in this amazing setting, Rabbi Yaakov’s story is extraordinary. At Indonesian independence, his largely secular
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Jewish family feared how they might fare in this newly established Muslim country, especially since, like most Indonesians of Jewish heritage, they had partial roots in Dutch colonial history. Also, Judaism was not one of the officially recognized religions in the newly independent country, so many converted, or at least kept their original religion secret, even from their children. His grandmother declared herself a Catholic, though she never practiced, and she married a Muslim. His mother was nominally a Muslim, but his father was a Protestant. Yaakov was raised as a Christian; his ID card lists him as a Christian, but his marriage certificate lists him as Muslim. Yaakov’s transformation began one day in his teens when his grandmother took him aside and told him that he was Jewish. His great-uncle then showed him a tallit, a kippah, and Hebrew documents. At first shocked and bewildered, Yaakov decided to embrace his Jewish heritage and
began searching for information on the internet in the local café. He connected with other Jews, especially with Chabad in Singapore, and he eventually became Chabad. This small community has perhaps five congregants for Shabbat; a minyan is possible only if there are visitors, often from overseas. But it fares well locally. The region is mainly Christian, perhaps demographically the most Christian area of Indonesia. The numerous churches are often Zionist, and local taxis are frequently emblazoned with Stars of David. On a hillside an hour away stands what is reputedly the world’s largest menorah,
reaching 62 feet into the sky. I asked Rabbi Yaakov if this had any connection to the synagogue, and he said it didn’t; there was no obvious connection between the two except that there were many local Christian admirers of Jews. The menorah, along with picnic tables and food stands, had been erected by the local government as a tourist attraction. And it did attract tourists, especially since it stood in the high, cool air at the center of the peninsula, with wondrous views of two oceans and mammoth volcanoes that form the core of Indonesia. It was a beautiful place to see.
Local taxis are frequently emblazoned with stars of David.
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Rabbi Yaakov Baruch and the shul in Tondano, Indonesia
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But still, the serendipitous juxtaposition of the country’s only functioning synagogue with the world’s largest menorah seems to hint at a deeper connection. In the neighborhood, Rabbi Yaakov’s Judaism is known and usually accepted, not only among Christians but among Muslims. He invited locals for a meal at the end of Ramadan, and 40 came, both Christian and Muslim. He has also been invited to speak at an Islamic school in Java. Rabbi Yaakov is a professor of law at the local state university, which makes him officially an Indonesian civil servant, and this seems to present no problems. None of the people with whom I spoke in the largest nearby city, Manado, an hour and a half away, even knew of the synagogue’s existence. Even our learned scholar from the Indonesian Consortium of Religious Studies had not known of it. But the local officials of the Indonesian Ministry of Religious Affairs did know; they had met with
him and were able to help arrange an appointment for me and to send me directions. The only time Rabbi Yaakov faced any threat occurred in a vast modern shopping mall in Jakarta, the distant capital. A group of five young Indonesians in Arab dress saw his kippah and viciously attacked him, telling him to go back to Israel. But that was atypical, a feature of modern radicalism, which is often Saudi-inspired, rather than a cultural pattern or a reflection of local relations. Notwithstanding this local acceptance, Rabbi Yaakov has a deep desire to move to Israel. If he does so, we hope and pray that this small community will find the resources to continue. ● Paul Marshall is Wilson Professor of Religious Freedom at Baylor University and a Senior Fellow at the Hudson Institute’s Center for Religious Freedom.
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MEMORIES
OF GRANDFATHERS & GRANDSONS BY NESANEL GANTZ
The kever of Reb Mordechai Weinberger, in Staten Island
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grandfather. He was a hidden tremendous talmid chacham and extremely humble, It was a scorching hot day five years ago when I found myself walkand he would never refer to himself as ing frantically through Baron Hirsch Cemetery in Staten Island an hour anything other than a “simple balebos.” before Shabbos. I was looking for the kever of a great-grandfather I had An affable and friendly person, whenever found out only the day before was buried there. Finally, after almost he saw young people learning he would two hours of searching, I finally found it. ask them in the friendliest tone, “Vus lernThen everything came crashing down. sti”? He had a natural curiosity about life, and boy was I embarrassed as a youngster whenever he asked this question to ranstill remember the call. ther thousands of times, which is not to dom kids. But no matter which masechta My maternal grand- say that I was always complior sugya they mentioned, he was father was in the hos- ant. There were times when I familiar with it. pital after falling ill. I wouldn’t come down from my Baruch Hashem, I was fortunate went to visit him and room to learn with him until to learn a lot with him. Truly a held his hand. The there were only a few minutes lot—but not enough. And alvery next day my father called me and left. My special grandfather though my mother will be upset said in a choked-up voice, “Baruch Dayan never made me feel bad nor at me for writing these words, I ha’emes.” My beloved zeidy, mentor and did he ever say anything critistill feel bad about the times that rebbe, Reb Yisrael Yitzchak Weinberger, cal. He was a temperate person I didn’t take advantage of the z”l, was gone. golden opportunity. I squandered who was a gaon in the middah I had an unusually close relationship of patience. My mother, tbl”c, away the finest gold for dross. with my grandfather because he was an says she doesn’t remember her After returning from Eretz Yisraunusual person. The truth is that writing father getting angry at all durel, we would get together to learn about how special he was is difficult even ing her childhood. (My mother every now and then, and after I five years later, as it only strengthens my is the same way. She never was married I learned b’chavrusa Reb Mordechai pangs of guilt and regret about how I oc- yelled at me, and it wasn’t be- Weinberger with him several times a week in casionally treated him, or more accurately, cause I didn’t deserve it.) a shul near his house. It lasted for what I missed out on. My grandfather was originally from a few months until it petered out, probably Let me explain. Czechoslovakia and was one of the first because of the traveling involved. I would Up until the time I went to learn in talmidim in Torah Vodaas to learn by Rav often tell my wife that I wanted to have a Eretz Yisrael after high school, my zeidy Yaakov Kamenetsky, zt”l, in America. closer relationship with him, but the disused to come and learn with me several He was known for his “seichel hayashar” tractions of daily life provided an excuse times a week. I grew up in the Kensington (straightforward way of thinking) and that I was “too busy.” We learned together section of Brooklyn, and my grandfather brutal honesty, and the way he learned To- occasionally, but not steadily. But every lived in the heart of Boro Park, near Fort rah reflected his personality. When learn- time I visited, he would excitedly tell me Hamilton Parkway. Almost every day, after ing Gemara, there was no such thing as a vort on the parshah or ask me to tell him a hard day’s work in the Diamond District moving past a line if it wasn’t crystal clear one. in Manhattan, he would go home for a lit- to him. His analytical skills were so sharp Aside from the content of my grandfatle rest and then continue on to our house that when he pondered a sugya out loud, ther’s lessons, he also taught me the meaning to learn with his einikel, me. When he got his own questions and answers would of dedication to Torah. Which grandfather older and stopped driving he would take contain the pshat of many mefarshim. travels almost daily to learn with his granda bus, and my father, who would arrive Although I went to yeshivah and paid at- son? Who does that today? Who did it then? home from work after we started learning, tention most of the time, the truth is that I was so lucky to have him as my zeidy. would drive him home after we concluded it was my grandfather who taught me how After he passed away I was overcome our learning session. My father and my to learn and make sure that I understood with longing for the past. But it was too zeidy, his father-in-law, were real friends. what I was learning. He also taught me late. There could be no more learning with They worked together for many years and how to “tatel,” put my finger on the right my beloved zeidy, my rebbe. I spoke at his never had even the slightest of arguments. place. He said that the Satmar Rebbe used levayah and talked about the more than a They were very close. to simultaneously hold one finger on the decade that we’d learned together, and how Today, as a father, I can honestly say that I Gemara and another finger on Rashi while I yearned for the chance to learn with him am not a fraction as devoted to learning with learning. As a kid, I hated putting my fin- again. I was very saddened by his passing, my sons as my grandfather was with me. I ger on the place, but it is now so ingrained probably more than the average grandson wish I were. Maybe one day I will merit to in me that it bothers me when my son mourns a grandparent. Throughout the achieve a similar degree of devotion. shivah I mingled among the mourners, doesn’t do it (he’s working on it). I must have learned with my grandfaI learned many life lessons from my listening to stories about him.
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I found it reassuring to hear those mem- Staten Island. His wife Rivka was buried ories, consoled by the fact that a person’s next to him, along with a son, Yechezkel life lessons don’t disappear with his pass- Shraga Weinberger. I later learned that ing. They remain as a living legacy for “Uncle Chatzkel,” who had never married, future generations. The knowledge that was single-handedly responsible for helpyou can transmit the beliefs and ideals of ing to rescue many members of our family and bring them to America. a loved one provide a measure I was saying a few kapitlach of comfort. However, that is of Tehillim when a terrifying easier said than done. thought entered my mind. It During shivah, one of my came as a bolt of lightning, and uncles mentioned that an I burst into tears immediately. ancestor of my grandfather I tried to compose myself, as I was buried in Staten Island. knew that I had to make it to He thought it was probably my in-laws for Shabbos, and I a grandfather, but he wasn’t semi-ran out of the beis hachaim. sure. He had recently been When I got there I went there and said that he could tell me how to find the kever. Reb Yisrael Weinberger straight into the guestroom and started crying uncontrolThe shivah ended on a Wednesday morning, and my family was lably. My wife walked in and asked me going to be spending Shabbos with my in- what was wrong. After all, the shivah had laws in Staten Island. Yearning for a connec- ended on Wednesday, two days earlier. tion to my zeidy, I decided—with my wife’s How could she have known that I wasn’t permission, of course—that we would leave crying about my grandfather’s passing, I the house a few hours early so I could try to was crying that my ancestor had been forfind my great- (I was unsure of how many gotten. Here was my scary realization: greats) grandfather’s resting place. As I said, one of the strongest comforts Finding the kever turned out not to be as simple as my uncle seemed to think, after a loved one passes is that his membecause his memory wasn’t as good as ory will live on. In my grandfather’s case, he’d prided himself. But after two hours people talked about how they would tell of wandering around I actually found it, the next generation what kind of person my grandfather was. My children, the oldright when I was about to give up. Standing in front of the kever belong- est of whom was six at the time, won’t reing to Mordechai ben Tzvi Weinberger, member meeting him, so it was up to us to I immediately got the chills. I have a son perpetuate his memory. We would tell our named Mordechai and another son named children how Zeidy went to shul even durTzvi (both their second names), and I obvi- ing snowstorms when walking was hard ously had no idea about this ancestor when for him. I would tell them how he always I named them. Wanting to know exactly came to learn Torah with me. We would how we were related, after a few phone repeat these stories, and they would know calls I learned that I was standing in front him through these memories. Standing in front of the grandfather I of my grandfather’s grandfather’s kever. My grandfather’s father was named Moshe Yo- never knew, it hit me: This man, Mordechai sef Weinberger. A noted askan who helped Weinberger, was my grandfather’s grandfarescue sifrei Torah from Stropkov during the ther! He had the exact same relationship war, he also helped establish the Tzelem to my zeidy as my zeidy had to me—and matzah bakery. It was his father, Mordechai I’d never heard about him! I didn’t know ben Tzvi Weinberger, who was buried in he existed, let alone anything about him.
Would my grandfather suffer the same fate? Would my grandchildren chance upon their great-great-grandfather’s kever one day as I did? It was a sobering and frightening thought that they might not. I realized the gravity of the task at hand. Keeping my zeidy’s memory alive wasn’t going to be accomplished with lip service. It had to be a serious and conscious decision, one that required real action. I don’t blame anyone for dropping the ball. I found out that Mordechai Weinberger passed away shortly after he arrived in America, and that my zeidy was only a teenager when his grandfather had passed away. I came to realize that life goes on, and the zeal to carry on the memory of a parent, grandparent or even great-grandparent dissipates with time. People can truly pass away. I spoke about this at the shloshim and at my grandfather’s yahrtzeit, and at basically every opportunity I could. Several relatives have told me that they now make a conscious effort to tell stories about Zeidy, either on Shabbos or Motzaei Shabbos. Of course, there is no better time to talk to your children about their forebears than the Yom Tov of Pesach, when we are commanded “v’higadta l’vincha.” We are commanded to speak about the miracles that happened to our ancestors so that our children will become infused with their light. May I humbly suggest that you take a few minutes and write down memories about your parents, grandparents, greatgrandparents and loved ones who have passed on. Tell their stories to your children on Pesach. Keep their memories alive. It will be a huge zechus to the niftar, and a measure of comfort to you as well. I never thought this lesson would hit so close to home so soon, but it did when my dear father, R’ Chaim Meir Gantz, passed away Rosh Chodesh Elul of last year; he was way too young. And although the pain is still raw and fresh, I realize that my task of carrying on the memory of my loved ones only truly begins now. l
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HE GOT THE LAST LAUGH
Her grandfather had never been one to look for kavod... AS TOLD TO CHAYA SILBER BY REB MOSHE GRUNWALD’S DAUGHTER, CHANIE HANDLER, AND HIS GRANDDAUGHTER, CHAYA MAIMON
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e stood together near the aron of our saintly father, Reb Moshe ben Amram Grunwald, three sisters crying along with our mother, his partner in life. It was ironic; the man we lovingly called Dedi (our Hungarian pronunciation of “Daddy”) had survived the horrors of Auschwitz and a forced death march, yet he lost his final battle with an invisible enemy, the coronavirus. Dedi, the beloved patriarch of our family, who lived in Flatbush with our beloved mother, yb”l, Claire (they were the owners of Claire Accuhair, the renowned custom wig company), had been healthy and vigorous despite his age—he turned 93 in September. He was attending minyan regularly, taking part in family simchahs, and enjoying his grandchildren and greatgrandchildren, which filled him with the greatest nachas. He had such hadras panim, a shining face, eyes sparkling with life and love and laughter.
Dedi was davening at home last Thursday, Rosh Chodesh Nisan, when he suddenly felt very weak, unable to hold his tallis, and called Mommy for help. His granddaughter Chanie, who works as a medical assistant, went to check up on him and immediately called Hatzolah. Dedi was admitted to the hospital, where he began struggling for breath, and he was placed on a ventilator. Tragically, as is the fate of most COVID-19 patients’ relatives, we were not allowed to be with him in his final days. Dedi was niftar with no loved one beside him, all alone on Monday morning, the fifth of Nisan. The levayah took place the following day, on Tuesday morning, one of many that day at a Williamsburg chapel. As more and more people who have died of the coronavirus are brought to the chapel, it is buckling under the load of funeral after funeral. We were told to be there promptly at 10 a.m. because there would be a limited amount of time for the levayah—a chapter or two of Tehillim, a hurried Keil
Malei Rachamim, tearing kriyah, and then on to the next funeral. When Dedi’s aron, covered with a velvet mantel, was wheeled into the room, we burst into sobs. Dedi had lived a long and good life, a full life, but we were still brokenhearted. To lose a father at any age is terrible, and to say a final goodbye is so difficult. We women said our Tehillim in unison. We took the opportunity to express our final words to our dear father, the light of our life, the man we loved so fiercely. We admired him for his simchas hachaim, for his goodness and sweetness, and for the G-dliness that radiated from within him. Our mother said her tearful goodbyes to her husband of nearly 70 years, during which they had been inseparable. When it was my turn, I could barely speak between sobs. I begged Dedi for mechilah if I had ever hurt him in any way and asked him to daven for Mommy and for all of us from his lofty place in Gan Eden. I told him how much I would miss
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him and said I had hoped he would lead us in welcoming the geulah sheleimah. We tore kriyah and said the brachah Baruch Dayan Ha’emes. We were rushed out; it was time for the next levayah. Dedi was now in the Olam Ha’emes, where he would reap the s’char of a life filled with chesed. We were ready to leave when suddenly one of the employees ran into the room and peeked into the aron. He looked like he was trying to confirm something. He then turned to us and asked, “You’re the family of Moshe Grunwald? I’m so sorry. We sent the wrong body upstairs. Your father is still in the taharah room.” “What do you mean?” We were stunned, in disbelief. “We’re so sorry, but there was a mix-up. The man in this aron is not your father,” he said, apologizing once more. As it turned out, we hadn’t said our final goodbyes to our beloved father after all. It took an excruciating 20 minutes until our father’s aron was brought upstairs, and we again cried and begged for mechilah and asked our father to daven for our mother, repeating the whole process. It is impossible to describe our emotions, the emotions of grieving children who not only did not have the opportunity to be with our father in his final hours but who poured out all our emotion and grief—to the wrong niftar. We couldn’t really blame the funeral home; they were overwhelmed with the sheer load of niftarim, and thankfully, they had discovered the mistake in time. Yet we felt violated and spent. Once again, the men said Kaddish and Keil Malei, and we tore kriyah and asked mechilah. But it wasn’t the same. One of our children wrote, “I have to admit I was so upset that this had happened to my zeidy—the man who was
loved by all, who deserved so much kavod, who had to die alone due to a pandemic, who had to have this embarrassment of a funeral, who couldn’t have a befitting burial or shivah. This was the final insult. I was so upset, I started to laugh and cry simultaneously. I couldn’t believe I was living in a time when there are so many bodies that they mixed them up.” It was only once the levayah was over that we realized what had really happened and sensed the Yad Hashem in the mix-up. For we soon discovered that the man we had cried over and for whom we had said Tehillim and Keil Malei Rachamim was a classic meis mitzvah, a person who is found deceased and who has no family, which means it is the community’s obligation to bury him. He was a Yid who lived alone in Wil-
never needed anything for himself—had given this final kavod to a meis mitzvah. My father was born in Taitch, Czechoslovakia, to Amram and Chaya Grunwald. They were scions of a glorious rabbinic family, descendants of the Arugas Habosem. In fact, the Tzelemer Rav and the Pupa Rav are our close relatives. When war broke out, his father was in America, trying to earn a living and support his family back home. After hearing the horrific reports from Europe, Amram sent his wife and five children coveted visas, enabling them to board a ship and sail to America. When the visas arrived, it was just before Pesach, and the boat was leaving the following week. Our father, who was an 18-year-old bachur, recalled the agonizing choice his mother had to make—whether to board the ship with her children and try to make Pesach on the boa,t or wait until after Yom Tov. Ultimately, not realizing the danger they were in and unaware that the Nazis were marching into their country, she chose to postpone the trip for two weeks. It was that delay that sealed their fate. By the time Pesach was over, Taitch had been overrun by the Nazis and the Jews deported to ghettos and crammed into freight trains for their final journey to Auschwitz. Tragically, Chaya Grunwald and three of her children were murdered shortly upon arrival. Some say that our father witnessed his mother being killed before his eyes. Only our father and his sister Zissy survived, though neither knew that the other one was alive until after the liberation. Shortly before the war’s end, he was sent with fellow inmates to clear the ruins of the Warsaw ghetto, along with the saintly Klausenberger Rebbe, Rav Yekusiel Yehuda Halberstam. Our father rarely spoke about his expe-
He was a Yid who lived alone in Williamsburg. He had passed away four days before he was discovered by concerned neighbors. liamsburg. He had passed away four days before he was discovered by concerned neighbors. In all likelihood, due to the pandemic, he would have been buried alone, perhaps without a minyan. What were the odds that this meis mitzvah would have a respectable levayah with a distraught family crying over him, saying Tehillim and Kaddish, giving him a distinguished farewell meant for their beloved patriarch? Under normal circumstances, the two niftarim wouldn’t have been confused with one another. But these weren’t normal circumstances. And indeed, it was most fitting that our father—who had been exceedingly humble, like his namesake, Moshe ben Amram, who had spent his life running away from kavod and who had
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riences; we heard the story from someone who had been there with him and who davened in his shul. Later, my nephew Yossel asked his zeidy and confirmed the story. As the Russians drew closer to Poland, the survivors were sent on a death march to Dachau, where the Nazis hoped to finish them off. They marched for a full week, emaciated skeletons forced to walk 21 miles a day without stopping to rest. It was July, and the sun blazed down on them, but they were not given a bit of food or a drop of water. Anyone who stopped marching even for a moment was shot and left to die at the side of the road. On the night after the third day of marching, when the Nazis ordered them to stop in a field and stood guard around them with machine guns, the Rebbe passed the word around that everyone should dig beneath the place where he sat. The inmates, half-crazed with thirst, began to dig with their bare hands or with pieces of wood. Dedi later recalled, “I had no idea who the Rebbe was as he had concealed his identity. I thought, ‘Either he is a tzaddik, or he isn’t fully there.’ But I figured, what did I have to lose? We started digging, and soon we all found small streams concealed under the mud. We drank and drank, and got a new lease on life.” The Rebbe himself did not drink a drop since it was Tishah B’Av. They were liberated a few weeks later. Afterward, Dedi and his sister Zissy were reunited with their father in America. A few years later he married our dear mother, Claire, neé Berkowitz, also a survivor. Zissy married Moshe Braun. Our parents had a beautiful marriage and raised three daughters—Chaya, Silky, and me (Chanie), and they built Claire Accuhair, a world-renowned sheitel company. Our mother had learned how to make wigs by hand from a German wigmaker in a DP camp near Nuremberg. Dedi helped my mother run the business, and he was beloved to the customers for his kindness and ever-present smile. We grew up in a home that didn’t just
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preach about chesed; our parents lived for chesed. Every Shabbos we had over a dozen guests at the table, and this open house continues today. Sometimes there were up to 50 people for Yom Tov or for a special Shabbos! These weren’t your ordinary guests. Our parents generally hosted people who had nowhere else to go, who had no families and didn’t fit into mainstream society. They treated their guests like royalty, serving them with great respect and always, always with a smile. My father avoided the limelight and was content to remain in the shadows, giving the credit to others. He was a genuinely giving person who derived the greatest pleasure from making others happy and bringing a smile to a brokenhearted Yid. He loved his children and his many grandchildren and great-grandchildren, and nothing brought him more joy than spending time with them. All the grandchildren grew up together and are exceptionally close, more so than most cousins. As our children said, “Zeidy was always honored, but he ran and hid from it. He never wanted the spotlight. We would send people to follow him in to a chuppah to make sure that if they gave him a brachah, he’d be there. He always thought there was someone greater who deserved the honor more than he did. “Well, Zeidy, as usual, got the last laugh. We couldn’t chase him to the front of the funeral home. Even in death, he gave his kavod to someone else. This is the most Zeidy-like thing ever to happen. A meis mitzvah got a funeral. I can just imagine the laugh in Zeidy’s eyes as he watched this. I know in my heart that my Zeidy did in death what he always did in life. Zeidy’s neshamah continues to give, even from Gan Eden.” ● To submit your story for this column or to have your story featured here, please send an email to editorial@amimagazine.org or call 718-534-8800, ext. 202. Your story and/or submission will be kept confidential.
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For more teachings from Rabbi Taub, visit SoulWords.org. Subscribe to the WhatsApp broadcast at 516-495-3021. For speaking engagements, contact info@soulwords.org.
My teenaged son has been asking me why he can’t watch clean movies that many in his class have already watched. I’ve tried discussing it with him, but we always end up arguing about it. I’ve tried “discovering” what’s really behind the question with active listening, but all he says is, “I just want to watch it.” With all sports being canceled due to the coronavirus it seems that he’s looking for something else to fill his time. Now why would a regular black-hatted yeshivah bachur in the tri-state area be following sports? Good question! My husband introduced and allows our children to watch sports on his phone, despite my feelings otherwise. My husband grew up watching sports, and he says that it offers a healthy balance by giving the kids some exposure that they will otherwise seek out on their own if denied. To complicate the matter a bit more, my husband makes comments in front of the kids such as, “When Mommy and I will be away, we’ll let you watch at Zaidy’s house,” which sends an even more mixed message about this issue. We don’t have a rav to consult with, so I decided to write to you. I know that you will be addressing the shalom bayis aspect of my question, but I’d like an answer on how to speak to my son as well. Frustrated Mom
Can I Lower My Standards During This Crisis?
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ear Frustrated Mom: Thank you for your letter, which I believe many people can relate to, especially at this unusual time in the history of klal Yisrael when, for the time being, all of our children are home with us literally all day, every day. The demands of actual full-time parenting are great, but we must rise to the occasion, because Hashem demands of each of us only according to our individual capacities. Therefore, I hope you won’t mind if I begin by addressing the aspect of your question that is applicable to so many of us right now, even though that may not be your main question. Every community, and really every family, has their own ideas about what kind of entertainment, media, reading material, etc. they allow in their homes. Here is not the place to attempt to address how one should determine what their standards are. What I will say, however, is this: A standard is a standard; it doesn’t change just because we are in a difficult situation. To clarify, I’m not saying that you were suggesting that, although you do mention the coronavirus outbreak as something that has made this situation even more difficult for you.
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My point is that true standards cannot be reactive, and they cannot be based on the situation around us. If our standards change just because our children are home all day, or for any other external reason, then they were not really standards to begin with. I understand that this is a challenging time, but that means we will have to work harder on engaging our children in positive ways, not taking the “easy” way out, which we will surely come to regret later and thereby realize that it wasn’t really so easy. Thank you for allowing me to address this issue, which I realize was not central to your question. Now, regarding your specific situation, I have pointed out before in this column how people almost always provide their own answers to their questions. Your case is a clear example. After describing your situation you say: “I know that you will be addressing the shalom bayis aspect of my question.” You are correct. Indeed, an answer to your question about your son is not very helpful without first addressing the need to find some common ground with your husband. This is because the unified voice of father and mother is fundamental to all chinuch. It has been noted regarding the ben soreir umoreh—the stubborn and rebellious son—that the Torah says he “does not hearken to the voice of his father and to the voice of his mother.” (Devarim 21:18) Why is “b’kol, to the voice” repeated? It could have simply said, “He does not hearken to the voice of his father and mother.” The word for hearken to or obey—
shomei’a, also means to hear. The Torah is saying that the child does not hear a unified parental voice at home; rather, he is hearing two voices—a “voice of his father” and a “voice of his mother.” A few pesukim later, when the parents bring their son to the elders, they say, “This son of ours is wayward and rebellious ‘einenu shomei’a b’koleinu,’ ‘he does not obey our voice.’ (ibid. 20)” The truth is, however—as the Torah established a few pesukim earlier—there is no “koleinu” in the home; rather, there is a kol aviv and a kol imo, which is the root of the problem. In other words, they have a stubborn and rebellious son because of the mixed messages they send him at home. What lesson can we learn from this? This may sound like a radical statement, but it would be better to lower one’s standards and have both parents back it up together than to have higher standards without agreement between them. Needless to say, this should be done with the guidance of a rav to ensure that the lower standards are permissible. (Furthermore, a good practice that is done repeatedly may be binding like a neder, which means that a rav would have to be consulted in that regard as well.) I realize you say that you do not have a rav. Aside from the fact that every Jew must have a rav in order to address issues that inevitably arise in life, in your situation the need is acutely obvious. Perhaps your husband can suggest a few possibilities. The main thing is to make a decision and act on it, and the sooner the better. Furthermore, I would venture to say that the very process of selecting a rav together will do much to help bring
the two of you together in terms of your shared values. Of course, the ideal is to find common ground and mutual understanding without lowering standards. However, the priority must be placed on a unified voice in the home. That must happen first before chinuch can be successful. In other words, husband and wife agreeing on the chinuch standards of their children is not just a shalom bayis issue. It is actually a chinuch issue, because the chinuch of the child depends upon the parents presenting a unified front. It is my hope that if you will have an open and honest conversation with your husband in a manner in which it is clear to him that you are ready to put your unified voice first, you will be able to reach an understanding that does not require lowering your standards very much at all. At this time when we are all at home together, may we experience a renewal of the bonds within the home. I wish you and your family good health and peace of mind as well as a kosher and happy Pesach. With Blessing, RST
● GOOD NEWS! You can now order “The Ami Letters,” a carefully curated collection of letters, at www.TheAmiLetters.com
7 NISAN 5780 // APRIL 1, 2020 // AMI MAGAZINE
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Strange and Change
A MESSAGE FROM ELIYAHU HANAVI FOR A PECULIAR PESACH
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ear Kehillah, Last Thursday night I had a cough. The next day, Friday, I felt a fever creeping in as I was teaching. It was a taxing, unprecedented few days and I was sure it was just stress. With five kids at home, catching something that lasts a day or so is par for the course. But this did not go away. Motzaei Shabbos brought an even higher fever and my body was aching all over. My sense of taste was gone, and my neck and back were on fire. So, last Sunday my wife Nechama drove me to get tested. The pain and fever persisted all through the week. It seemed that each new symptom I was developing only confirmed what this was. Yet I needed to wait for the test to be positive to be sure. This morning I finally got the results. I am positive for COVID-19. Baruch Hashem, I am well taken care of. Most critically, I want everyone to know that even if you are young and healthy, this virus is unique. While everyone seems to react to it differently, the chance of it knocking one out for weeks is high. Yiddishkeit celebrates and protects life. We forbid the prayer for miracles, and the words of doctors have true halachic purchase. Everyone must follow the guidelines set by the CDC, the shul, and the community. If there is one thing that this pandemic reminded us, it is that “Ein Od Milvado”— there is nothing but Him. In the blink of an eye, He demonstrated how He is in control and how vulnerable we all truly are without Him. No strong markets nor great human army can ever again cause us to forget that we are in galus, and that our future is up to the whim of Hashem only. In the blink of an
eye He turned the world upside down; we hope that in the blink of an eye He shall repair it! Let me conclude by wishing everyone a wonderful Shabbos. I beseech everyone to not fight, lose one’s temper or say hurtful words this Shabbos. This Shabbos, the malachim will escort us not from Shul to our homes, but from our place of prayer in our homes to another room in our homes. Let us make these angels proud at what they see and what they hear. “I wish everyone safety, health and to utilize this time to rekindle our love for our family and our relationship with Hashem. Good Shabbos. Moshe Taub The careful reader likely noticed that I have been absent for a couple of issues. The letter above was sent to my shul during this time. We have heard, read and consumed so much relating to this virus. I know readers need a break. Alas, I can’t be the vehicle to provide that just yet. At a time I was needed most in my kehillah, I was absent. B’chasdei Hashem I was lucky. Although hit hard—and for a long time—I did not need to spend time in a hospital. As of this writing, I am about 80 percent back to health, bli ayin hara. The custodian of our shul was not so lucky. He passed away after ten days with the virus. On the morning of this writing, I was finally able to let the shul know that I was able to receive questions. Oy, the sh’eilos! The questions I have been receiving are like nothing I dealt with before. (See my past
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BY RABBI MOSHE TAUB
two columns where we went through mageifos and their questions throughout history.) “May we keep Skype on over Yom Tov to watch our elderly parents?” “Does one bentch gomel when recovering from this virus if he was not even (seemingly) dangerously ill?” “May one take part in a siyum for taanis bechoros over the phone?” “My aunt died and there will not be a minyan at the kevurah. My father asked that I not go, in order to protect the rest of the family’s health. But I spoke to a doctor who said it’s fine. What should I do?” “May I drink the arba kosos with wine? My immune system is not the best, and I fear that wine will make me more susceptible to the virus.” I—and other rabbanim—can go on and on and on. Right before yeshivos and shuls began closing, I was speaking with Rav Avraham Ausband, rosh yeshivah of Telshe, Riverdale (where I am the afternoon high school menahel) to let him know that I was sick with the virus. In frustration, I concluded the phone call by saying, “In the blink of an eye, Hashem flipped the world on its head! What is His message?!” He responded, “That is the message! He is in charge. End. Of. Story!” Many reading this may be alone for Yom Tov, the thoughts of their children and grandchildren at once too painful to think about and all-consuming. Others may have suffered financially due to the virus. Some are facing shalom bayis issues too long ignored and now impossible to run from. From these, I have seen growth and potential.
But, what happens the day after? Allow me to share one thought and explain. There are four times that Eliyahu Hanavi enters our lives. The first three are: a bris milah (Shulchan Aruch Yoreh Dei’ah 265:11), Motzaei Shabbos (Shulchan Aruch Orach Chayim 295:1), and the Pesach Seder (alluded to in 480:1, inter alia). In fact, my father shared with me that, according to some, Eliyahu is the author of the Haggadah! What do these three things have in common, whether we invite Eliyahu or he comes on his own, expressly for these occasions? Metamorphosis, change, and transformation. A bris takes a child—an arel—and brings him under the kanfei haShechinah, from chol to kodesh. Motzaei Shabbos marks the opposite: from kodesh to chol. Pesach recalls our alteration from avdus to cheirus: from slavery to true freedom. This is no simple connection. In fact, it explains the fourth time Eliyahu is to come into our lives. Chazal teach (Eiruvin 43b) that before Moshiach’s arrival, Eliyahu will arrive first. So, each time we mention Eliyahu by these other transitional events, it is to recall our hope for the ultimate transformation that will be heralded through him. What does this have to do with this year’s painful and odd Pesach in particular? The Seder is not just about change in the story, but even how we tell it. We are obligated to open bi’gnus, with the negative elements of the story (we served idols, etc.) but end b’shevach (with praise). The Seder itself is a transformation, a metamorphosis!
This is what brings us back to this current mageifah. We have to promise ourselves and Hashem that this will change us! Life cannot go back to the way it was. Shul must never be the same. Sitting with a chavrusa in a full beis midrash mustn’t ever be the same. The ability to do in-person chesed should never be the same. Spending time with family will never be the same. Our shemiras halashon, siddur hazman, true and meaningful ahavas Yisrael and ahavas mishpechoseinu should be transformed long-term. We need to be altered by these past months. Yes, it opened bi’gnus, horrible and painful, and sometimes unspeakable loss. But it is up to us to be mesayeim b’shevach. We will get to write this story’s ending. If we can do this, then we can be zocheh to the last pasuk in sifrei neviim, the verse that promises the ultimate transformation: “I will send you Eliyahu Hanavi before the great and awesome day of Hashem, that he may turn the hearts of the fathers back through the children, and the hearts of the children back through the fathers—lest I come to smite the earth with destruction” (Malachi 3:23-24). This year, when we open the door for “Sh’foch Chamascha,” let us find Eliyahu greeting us and guiding to Eretz Yisrael on kanfei nesharim. l Rabbi Moshe Taub served as the rav of the Young Israel of Greater Buffalo and the rav hamachshir of Boutique Kosher Certifiers from 2003 to 2015. He is now rav of the Young Israel of Holliswood, Queens, and teaches in a number of schools and organizations around New York.
14 NISAN 5780 // APRIL 8, 2020 // AMI MAGAZINE
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The First...and Final Redemption A MESSAGE FOR ETERNITY
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t clearly would be sacrilegious for me to ask you to open up Ami Magazine and read my column as a prelude to your Seder. It is supposed be read, at best, after a Shabbos or Yom Tov meal, perhaps as an afterthought to a hefty portion of cholent. But in the waning days before the Yom Tov, I realized that whatever I will write during this period will be part of a historic period in klal Yisrael’s existence. I certainly am not worthy of writing for posterity, but I must attempt to try. If you won’t read the column at the Seder, maybe you can read it before the Seder. From what I understand, many Sedarim, including our own, will be bareboned. As per the austere directives of the medical establishment, bolstered by the edicts of rabbanim, many of us will not have scores of grandchildren, each trying to recite the Mah Nishtanah. Who knows, maybe my afikoman will remain by my side the entire night, with me yearning for a young thief to pop in unexpectedly from out of town and steal it away. I will miss the seven or eight peshatim as to why Rabbi Elazar ben Azaryah felt like he was 70 years old, each vetted by another grandchild who thinks that his answer is the only one. More so, some of us with younger children will actually have to teach our kin the story of yetzias Mitzrayim. I doubt that the teleconferencing, even the video setups, will have been able to relate the story of yetzias Mitzrayim with the excited animation normally reserved for our classroom rebbeim. Now it is your turn. We have been exerting ourselves as parents, teachers, homemakers, caregiv-
ers, comforters, psychologists, and then some, for these past four weeks. Now we will be going back to our original role as the keepers and transmitters of the faith. It will be our job to prepare sippur yetzias Mitzrayim in ways we may never have attempted. Certainly, for the primarygrade children. For most of us, we have been living with the children, quarantined together in the home in which we shall make the Sedarim. I can’t presume it to be perfectly analogous, but the first Seder was also spent together in the home in which the entire family—including the multiplebirthed sets of sextuplets—lived. I wonder what my pre-Exodus shmuz would have been to the children that night? What would I have said if I was to lead that very first Seder, after what was considered the longest galus in Jewish history. Would it be a message for eternity? I wish it were. I stand there, the Korban Pesach roasting on a spit, in the hours before dawn
cracks, and the ultimate redemption begins. We are huddled indoors. The blood of the Korban Pesach, mingled with the most recent blood of the bris milahs that we performed, is on our lintel, protecting us from the horrific plague that the Egyptians are about to face. The children are nervous. This is the first time that the Jews were warned that if they were not careful, the attack on the Egyptian nation could strike them as well. The children have heard rumors about friends and neighbors who suddenly passed away within a few days after the beginning of the last plague of Darkness. Are they immune? Will that death and destruction cease? Are we next? The Egyptians are already blaming the Jews for their downfall, yet we just asked them for money to help us through this period. Anti-Judaism is rampant, and yet we are supposed to give our children an assurance of steady faith in Moshe and the ultimate redemption that will surely come this evening. “Imagine, my children,” I begin. “This will be our last few hours in Egypt. Throughout the years, you have always wondered why. “Why is it that, despite the fact that our Uncle Yosef and all of our great-uncles were so good to the Egyptians, did they turn their backs on his kindness? Why would they have vilified us in a manner that left an enduring feeling of hatred in the entire country toward us? “You often asked, ‘What did the little children do wrong, that they were mercilessly taken from their parents and thrown into the Nile? What would Hashem allow for babies to be built into buildings—
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used instead for our unfulfilled quota of bricks? “Truth be told, ever since this exile turned from just a temporary sojourn, originally meant to escape a famine and reunite with out great Uncle Yosef, more than 200 years ago, the questions have lingered. “Moshe often tried to quell our fears, promising us redemption in the name of Hakadosh Baruch Hu, but we were quite skeptical. For years before that, his brother Aharon tried to appease us and instill faith into our souls. Some of us held on—others didn’t. “Many of us quarreled with each other; and when we were told that those very arguments were the reasons for the elongated and tortuous exile, we scoffed: ‘Another rav telling us off.’ And then things took a turn. “Moshe’s promise began to take shape. We watched as the Egyptians began to get pummeled. Throughout the course of this last year, we watched them suffer through plague after plague while we were virtually unscathed. There was blood, and their were frogs, lice and wild beasts. Each time these plagues came, we thought that our enemies would buckle, and they would let us go. Unfortunately, it was not to be. Even when Pharaoh officially gave in, he attached so many conditions that made it untenable for Moshe to accept his feigned magnanimity. “I felt bad, almost assuring you, my children, that this is going to be the one! Each time I truly could not imagine, how after such a plague, the secularists in Egypt would not turn to Hashem and Moshe and realize the evil of their ways. I almost guaranteed you, while they were happening, that redemption was imminent. Indeed, after each plague, I was proven wrong. The stubbornness of Pharaoh was indeed incomprehensible. So
“This is it. There is going to be just one more plague, and then, I guarantee, that Pharaoh will drive you out of Egypt.”
much strife, so much pain, yet he and all his cohorts were blinded by their power and their assumed self-worth. It would take the most personal, humbling experience to bring them to their knees. “Tonight, however is different. Moshe told us with clarity: ‘This is it. There is going to be just one more plague, and then, I guarantee, that Pharaoh will drive you out of Egypt.’ “During many of the plagues, I heard naysayers mumble their skepticism. It was disheartening to hear rumblings of disbelief or apathy, when such great miracles were taking place. Actually, many of those skeptics had almost given up on the idea of leaving Egypt. However, recently, I did not hear them complain. In fact, I have not seen them around since the plague of Darkness. “Hashem gave us a few mitzvos to do. I agree, some are not easy. It surely was uncomfortable to take the Egyptian god and tie it up under the noses of our Egyptian masters, and then tell them we are going to slaughter it. I think the term they used in the newspapers is ‘politically incorrect.’ It was also uncomfortable to go to the people who acted as your most vile masters from more than two centuries and ask them for their gold and silver. Whether
we were just ‘borrowing’ or taking it, it was pretty awkward. I think the term they’ll use some few thousand years from now is ‘socially off.’ “But redemption does not come easy. A bris milah on the run is not easy, as well, and yes, I know that they will be given without great fanfare. No parties, no balloons and no large spreads. Father, mother, baby, mohel. I heard somewhere that it may be like that some thousands of years from now before another redemption—the final one. Who knows? “My children, we are about to embark on a great journey. It will be fraught with other difficulties. Until we reach the land that Moshe promised us from Hashem, there will be many tests. Some we will pass, others we may fail. “Just remember that it was our experience here in Egypt that will pave the path of faith to every subsequent redemption. Some, perhaps thousands of years in the future, may be analogous to this very Exodus. If you review it, if you etch this story from its beginning to its very end in your minds, in your hearts and in your mouths, I guarantee you that it will serve as a beacon of faith for any test that you will endure. I hear the wails and shrieks outside. I shudder and conclude my words. “My children, if this is not the final redemption, I promise that the final redemption will come in ways that are even greater and more miraculous than this one. Share this message with your children and your grandchildren, generation after generation. One day, one of you will be the final transmitters before the ultimate redemption. Amen. ●
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