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IN-DEPTH FEATURES
New Frontiers, Old Challenges
Eight months after the arrival of the Mirrer yeshiva
students from Shanghai in the U.S. after the end of the war,
Rav Kalmanovitz opened a new chapter in his amazing career of
hatzoloh. In the summer of 5707 (1947), he embarked on
a trip that would introduce him to an entirely new field of
endeavor, the ancient Jewish communities of Morocco.
HaRav Refoel Abu zt'l a great talmid chochom
from Tiveria who was then in his thirties, was sent to help
Rav Kalmanovitz in Morocco.
From Casablanca, Rav Abu sent Rav Kalmanovitz a
comprehensive report of his discoveries and achievements in
the course of his visit to Marrakesh and the surrounding
Jewish villages (where he was accompanied by a devoted
assistant, Mr. Yitzhak Almaliach) to set up Otzar Hatorah to
save whatever possible of Moroccan Jewry.
In the last part we discussed the part of Rav Abu's letter
that described his visit to Marrakesh and the surrounding
villages.
Pursuing Every Opening
The last point in Rav Abu's letter concerns one other,
pivotal aspect of Rav Kalmanovitz's Moroccan initiative.
Typical of his breadth, which took in every facet of a
situation, was Rav Kalmanovitz's decision to attempt to get
the Alliance to introduce at least minimal Torah studies into
their schools.
He did not rest in the knowledge that fine Torah schools were
being set up, on a par with what the Alliance was offering.
The fact that large numbers of innocent Yiddishe
kinder would still be spending their formative years in
an educational environment that was utterly divorced from
Torah, made it imperative that something be attempted.
It is hard to judge whether, and if so to what extent, the
Alliance was antagonistic to Jewish religion specifically.
The organization's aim was to bring "enlightened" French (non-
Jewish) culture to what they considered the "backward" Jewish
communities of North Africa. To this end the pupils in its
schools were taught to appear and to speak like cultured
French gentiles. The leaders of the Alliance believed that
this would be in their best interests.
There was probably no deliberate intention to obliterate all
traces of their own ancestral faith, as the early Jewish
Communists in Russia, for example, wanted to do.
The leaders of the Alliance were themselves assimilated Jews
who had next-to-no acquaintance with their own Judaism, while
being blinded by the dazzle of European culture. In contrast,
the early Jewish Communists were rebels who turned in anger
and hostility upon the world that had nurtured them and which
they knew well. (See Rav David Ovadiah's view of the
Alliance's agenda, in the accompanying box.) Though it is not
always easy to distinguish indifference from hostility, there
were certainly grounds for Rav Kalmanovitz's hope that some
Jewish content might at least be introduced into the
curriculum of the Alliance schools.
Rav Abu closed his report to Rav Kalmanovitz with the
following information. "With regard to the Alliance school,
we hope that there will be a change for the better. They are
coming closer to us and at present they have given us two
French teachers. Our hope is that little by little, Torah
will spread through the Alliance, as Tajouri promised, even
though there are no such signs there as of yet . . . "
As a result of Rav Kalmanovitz's pressure, some promise had
evidently been won from one of the Alliance personnel that a
few hours of Torah education would be introduced in their
schools. When they failed to keep to their word, Rav
Kalmanovitz decided to bypass them and to seek an audience
with the King of Morocco in an effort to gain his support for
the measure.
With Rabbi Moshe Lasry acting as his companion and
translator, Rav Kalmanovitz met with the king. It is said
that the king was very taken by his guest's demeanor and
regal bearing, while for his part Rav Kalmanovitz conducted
the meeting in Yiddish, tears and emotion. The king
eventually said to Rav Lasry, "Tell him that he should do as
he wishes -- his brothers are in his hand and he shall
decide."
It proved far harder to implement this triumph than it had
been to win it. For a time, the schools fulfilled their
obligation under the royal order by teaching Ivrit, Zionism
or Hebrew poetry, but even this did not last after Rav
Kalmanovitz's departure.
Encountering the Torah World
Rav Kalmanovitz obtained both Moroccan exit visas and entry
visas to the United States for a group of fifty
bochurim. Entry visas were only issued by the U.S. on
humanitarian grounds, so Rav Kalmanovitz argued that the
United States' acceptance of Moroccan Jewish students would
improve the status of Moroccan Jews in their native
country.
The Moroccan boys were taught in a separate shiur
until they became familiar with the language that was
spoken in the yeshiva. In time, they were very successful in
their learning and they raised fine families, some of them
marrying into the finest American Torah homes. Rav
Kalmanovitz was overjoyed with their progress.
When the Ponevezher Rov zt'l visited America, Rav
Kalmanovitz hurried to ask him to come and test the Moroccan
bochurim. The Rov was highly impressed, not only by
their high standard and by the way they had developed in
Torah and yiras Shomayim but by the very idea of
setting up a framework in the yeshiva for these boys. Then
and there, he decided to open a similar department in
Ponevezh and he invited several bochurim from the
Mirrer group to come to Bnei Brak to assist him in this
endeavor.
Five of the finest talmidim were chosen. They flew out
to Eretz Yisroel together with HaRav Eliyohu Dessler
zt'l, who had spent some time in the Mirrer Yeshiva in
New York and had taught the group for six months.
Another godol beTorah who followed this path was HaRav
Zeidel Semiaticzki zt'l, who paid several visits to
Morocco and took groups of bochurim back with him to
London, to the yeshiva headed by his father-in-law, HaRav
Moshe Schneider zt'l. Many of those talmidim
went on to become prominent Torah disseminators.
One well-known incident in Morocco took place on a Shabbos.
Rav Zeidel sent a car driven by a gentile to collect Yitzhak
Almaliach to take him to get the young Avraham Badouch, who
was with a Zionist Youth Aliya group that was about to leave
for Eretz Yisroel where, in such a framework, the chances of
him even remaining religious were negligible. Shabbos was the
last chance that he could be saved. When Almaliach returned
later in the day accompanied by Avraham Badouch, Reb Zeidel
was sitting with an open Rambam in front of him and he
explained why it was permitted and in fact obligatory to save
the boy in this way on Shabbos!
Following Up
Even after he had returned from his visit to Morocco, Rav
Kalmanovitz remained heavily involved in the affairs of Otsar
Hatorah and in Torah life in Morocco in general. Already at
the beginning of 5708 (1947), shortly after his visit, he
wrote that he had opened fifteen yeshivos ketanos and
gedolos with a total of four hundred talmidim,
as well as talmudei Torah and chadorim whose
combined enrollment was more than ten thousand.
As well as heading Yeshivas Mir in New York, he led numerous
campaigns for both educational and Torah causes in Morocco.
The Kalmanovitz family has hundreds of letters relating to
the management of numerous issues affecting Jewish life in
both Morocco and in Iran, where Rav Kalmanovitz maintained a
regular correspondence with one of the leaders of the Jewish
community.
In addition, throughout the years he became active on behalf
of every case of a Jew or Jews in distress that came his way.
The type of measures he took and the lengths to which he was
willing to go might strike us at first as unusual and
innovative. A little reflection shows that his path was
usually the most direct and effective. What appears as
unconventional was in fact inspired by his great love and
sense of responsibility for each and every Jew. These showed
him possibilities of helping which he always attempted, that
simply went unperceived by most others.
This is demonstrated most effectively by the account of just
one episode, which was related by Rav Tzvi Padida, who heard
it from one of the parties involved. When the situation
required it, Rav Kalmanovitz would even knock on people's
doors late at night.
One night, a respectable New York Jew answered his door
wearing night clothes and holding a newspaper, to find Rav
Kalmanovitz standing there. Before they began discussing the
issue concerning which Rav Kalmanovitz had called, the rov
asked his host, "Nu, what is there in the paper today
about the Jews?"
"There's nothing," replied the man.
"I don't believe that a newspaper lets a day go by without
addressing the topic of the Jews. Take another look!"
The man searched and cried, "Here! I found something!"
It was a small item reporting that a Jew who had been
arrested in Iraq and accused of spying was about to be
executed.
"Is that so?! Rachmono litzlan a Jew is going to be
executed. We have to do something," was Rav Kalmanovitz's
reaction.
His host looked at him in amazement. "What can we do here in
America, when he is in Iraq?"
"No!" cried Rav Kalmanovitz. "A Jew is going to be killed and
you intend to sit by quietly? If it were your own son, would
you stay here, in pajamas, with a coffee? Get up and do
something! Come with me and we'll travel right away to
Washington and go see the President . . . "
The man laughed at this bizarre idea -- but to no avail. Rav
Kalmanovitz had him stand up and he took him out of his house
and they went off together. In Washington, they managed to
find a Jewish senator, who advised them to contact the
Swedish Embassy, through whom they made contact with the
Royal Palace in Sweden. (Rav Kalmanovitz had established a
firm friendship with the King of Sweden during the Second
World War.)
A royal order was soon conveyed to the Swedish ambassador in
Iraq to go and visit the imprisoned Jew and to grant him
diplomatic immunity. Ultimately, the Jew received a Swedish
passport which enabled him to leave Iraq safely and to arrive
in the United States.
He remained grateful to Rav Kalmanovitz and observed Torah
and mitzvos wholeheartedly but of course it goes without
saying that Rav Kalmanovitz knew nothing of this in advance.
All his family are sincere and pious religious Jews.
This alacrity to help and the setting aside of all personal
or other reckoning in order to try to rescue a fellow Jew
from either material or spiritual danger, is the hallmark of
all great heroes of hatzoloh. In Rav Kalmanovitz's
case, it extends, like a golden thread, from his early days
as a young rov, through the maelstrom of both the First and
the Second World Wars, right to the very end of his life.
Ongoing Involvement in Morocco
Despite Otsar Hatorah's lofty aims, the ambitions of its
institutions' heads to see it lead to a broad revitalizing of
Torah life and the feasibility of its having a solid
financial basis, in time it became generally felt that the
organization fell far short of its potential.
In one case, Rav Kalmanovitz vehemently protested changes
that would change the whole character of the schools, which
he had worked to resist. He wrote in great distress to
Morocco, "I was shocked to hear Mr. X. 's announcement . . .
in your name . . . that you agreed to cut down the hours of
limudei kodesh in the Talmud Torah at the request of
the irreligious. Did you not agree with me that it should
also be written in your name that under no circumstances
would we agree to reduce, not even by a moment, four hours of
Torah daily?
"This is unforgivable, for it affects future generations. It
will alter the entire image of the Talmud Torah, making the
mundane the main thing and Torah secondary, chas vesholom
. . . Harming tinokos shel beis rabbon is like
harming the apple of Klal Yisroel's eye and its
eternal continuity . . . Was it for this that I have toiled
and sacrificed myself for several years, placing myself in
real danger in order to print one-hundred-and-sixty-five
thousand Chumoshim, nevi'im and siddurim for
Otsar Hatorah, so that a lawless crowd should come and
profane and destroy everything, chas vesholom?"
When, in 5711 (1951), the hours of general studies were
increased, going beyond that which the Torah authorities had
sanctioned for Otsar Hatorah, Rav Kalmanovitz wrote to Rav
David Ovadiah, rov of Safro, "Please reply, letting me know
about all of Otsar Hatorah's work throughout the country,
[the organization] that I merited to set up with my toil and
with the blood of my heart and soul, for which I sacrificed
myself and which has now become greatly weakened, in our many
sins.
"The reason [for this] is the absence of a man great in Torah
and in fear of Heaven and who understands education to head
the organization and to coordinate its work. Then [were there
such a man heading Otsar Hatorah] the rest of the
organization would be dragged after the head. I am amazed at
his honor's unwillingness to accept the post of Chief
Director. For this position alone it would have been
worthwhile to come into this world. Chazal said, `There are
those who acquire their portion in the world to come in one
moment,' about precisely such a situation."
Despite Rav Ovadiah's refusal to accept the position
(apparently due to his own community's unwillingness to part
with him), Rav Kalmanovitz continued trying to influence him.
He wrote, "They write to me that the spiritual situation gets
worse every day, that the pupils are becoming fewer and that
an irreligious administrator has arrived to teach French and
that he is secular and spoils everything and that nobody
takes any notice. My heart goes out to the remaining
survivors of our precious life that are going lost. In our
many sins, all the lands of Europe have been destroyed:
`Yosef has gone and Shimon has gone and [now] you would take
Binyomin; all the losses are mine,' (Bereishis 42:36) . .
. There is no great man to stand at the movement's head,
to work with integrity and faith, with love of Torah and fear
of Heaven. Therefore, Otsar Hatorah's entire existence in
Morocco is in danger . . . "
One of Rav Kalmanovitz's plans involved Rav Gershon Leibman's
coming to Morocco for a period of time with, "a group of
thirty adult Sephardi talmidim, themselves filled with
Torah and mussar, to open a yeshiva" (Rav Leibman's
words), joining Otsar Hatorah and becoming active locally.
This plan never came to fruition, and neither did another one
under which an odom godol (possibly Rav Zeidel
Semiaticzki zt'l) who lived in London with his family
would have come out to Morocco to supervise. However, Rav
Ovadia was instrumental in having Rav Aharon Monsonego
eventually appointed as head of Otsar Hatorah. Rav Monsonego
serves as Chief Rabbi of Morocco to this day.
A Second Visit To the Mahgreb
Circumstances forced the aging Rav Kalmanovitz to gird
himself and return to Morocco for a second visit in 5713
(1953). At the root of the problems was the fact that the
influence of the general Jewish "street" was allowed to gain
a foothold in the affairs of Otsar Hatorah and once inside,
it was very hard to fight it effectively.
As far as the situation can be judged from our present
distance in time and space, the Alliance's main power over
Otsar Hatorah stemmed from the fact that the latter
organization was not granted its own license to teach general
studies. While the Moroccan government gave such a permit to
the Alliance, Otsar Hatorah had no independence in this
respect and thus all the funding and administration of the
general studies passed through Alliance and was subject to
its control.
The heads of the Alliance used this power to keep down the
standards of the general studies in Otsar Hatorah. Then they
would periodically raise a hue and cry about the poor level
of performance in the Otsar's schools and use the pressure
that this would generate to force the principals to agree to
longer hours for general studies. This much is apparent from
our examination of Otsar Hatorah's archives.
Those who worked for the schools begged Rav Kalmanovitz to
come to Morocco and have a meeting at the royal palace in
order to secure Otsar Hatorah's full independence. (It is
very possible that Rav Kalmanovitz's and Rabbi Moshe Lasry's
audience with the king described in the previous article
actually took place during this second trip.)
That same year, a number of rabbonim arrived in Morocco,
whose presence brought about a change for the better in Otsar
Hatorah's situation: Rabbi Moshe Lasry, Rabbi Moshe Reichmann
and Rabbi Yitzchok Meir Halevi zt'l. Rabbi Reichmann
came at great personal sacrifice, with the encouragement and
as a result of the decision of the Chazon Ish zt'l.
Rav Yitzchok Meir Halevi zt'l was a Polish talmid
chochom who had earlier been despatched by Vaad Hatzoloh
to Iran in order to supply food parcels to Jewish refugees in
Siberia. After the war, Rav Halevi remained in Iran to work
on behalf of Torah education there. For four years, from 5713
to 5717 (1953-7), he headed Otsar Hatorah in Morocco,
following which he returned to his work in Teheran.
He was one of the handful of leaders within whose hearts
there burned a sense of responsibility towards the neglected
Jewish communities. In a letter to Rav Kalmanovitz from
Teheran in the winter of 5708, Rav Halevi described the
abysmal state of Jewish knowledge among Persian Jewry at
large, and then observed:
"How is it their fault? Who is guilty for this if not us, the
rabbonim, who were on the other side and failed to interest
ourselves in the fate of our Jewish brethren in other places,
everyone remaining in his own daled amos instead. Who
knows whether the great churban of the Jewish world
that has befallen us was not for this great sin? May Hashem
have mercy and repair our breaches and build His house.
"Even today, people are only active within their own space.
Where are the nation's leaders, its geonim and sages?
Why aren't they organizing all their resources . . . and
going out from home to home, from city to city and from
country to country, to save whatever can be saved, spreading
Torah, mitzvos and religion among all strata of the holy
nation, who are ready to receive, to listen, to learn, to
teach, to keep and to observe everything that is written in
the holy Torah. For the past two years, I have been crying
out for help and no one has taken notice . . . "
Rav David Ovadiah served as rov of the Moroccan town of
Safro. He was one of Rav Kalmanovitz's staunchest allies in
the battle to save Moroccan Jewry. There was little for Otsar
Hatorah to do in his community. The rov himself supported a
talmud Torah, a yeshiva and a kollel with funds
he received from the Yidden in Eastern Europe to whom
he appealed. For years, Rav Ovadiah worked to contain the
influence of the Alliance and to further Torah education.
In 5720 (1960), the Alliance celebrated its centenary with a
week of festivities held in Paris. Towards the week's end, a
colleague expressed his amazement to Rav Ovadiah over his
decision not to attend, since it would have been an ideal
opportunity for revealing the truth about the effects of the
organization's work.
Rav Ovadiah agreed. Though it was too late to travel, Rav
Ovadiah decided to draft a speech and have it sent to Paris
and read out in his name. He completed the draft at three the
following morning and took it himself to the airport. He got
a member of the crew of a flight leaving that day to Paris,
to agree to transfer the letter immediately upon their
arrival to one of the Moroccan rabbonim who was in Paris.
Here, slightly edited, is the speech (prepared from a Hebrew
translation of the French original), which was read out at
the beginning of the closing session, provoking a stormy
debate:
We have all gathered here to celebrate the hundredth
anniversary of the Kol Yisrael Chaverim (Alliance
Israelite Universelle) organization. We shall not stint on
praises for the great and glorious work that has been carried
out for a hundred years . . . I have come from Morocco, the
country that has received the greatest benefit from the work
of the Alliance and I will not withhold praise.
I have come however, to express a great cry of misfortune
over the future of two hundred thousand of our brethren: I am
worried and anxious, day and night.
How can it be otherwise, when I see how very precarious the
spiritual future of our Moroccan brethren is? A population
that has been released -- by the Alliance -- from the
obscurity of its ignorance, has been abandoned at a
crossroads, without guidance or direction. Yes! The Alliance
freed us, lehavdil, like Moshe in his day but it has
left us in the middle of the desert. Now we await the
revelation of the Shechinah at Har Sinai -- but
there is nothing. [The reference to Moshe Rabbeinu alluded to
a eulogy that had been given for the founder of the Alliance,
in which the speaker compared him to Moshe Rabbeinu, who
redeemed Israel from persecution.]
If that was the Alliance's [only] aim, it has completed its
task and it should now stand aside, feeling all the
satisfaction of a job well done. It has educated the masses,
has liberated them and has trained a certain elite. For
generations, it disseminated French culture . . . However,
if the Alliance limited its aspirations to the mere training
of cultured folk, it would be contradicting its raison
d'etre, because any secular organization could have done
just as good a job . . .
The call of the Alliance's founders, in June 1860, echoes in
my ears: "Jews! Scattered throughout the world and mingled
with the nations, you continue your heart's attachment to the
ancient religion of your forefathers." The signatories of
that declaration acknowledged the link to an ancient
religion. The Alliance was founded in order to liberate the
Jews politically, legislatively and materially but not in
order to lead them to assimilate or, in other words, to
betray their own identities as Jews . . . Their liberation
was indeed a battle against patterns of living and of
thinking that had led to their inferiority. But at the same
time, there was an enormous risk that we would see them
discarding the content and the structure... together with the
internal life, the religion.
[And] isn't this what happened? Not only did the Alliance
fail to maintain the Jews' connection with their ancient
religion, even where they [i.e. the Moroccan Jews] preserved
it with collections of customs that had passed down the
generations, it came and severed the link, without showing
them the true face of their religion. The Alliance's
culpability over Moroccan Jewry is terrifying. It has a large
share in the formation of a vacuum in our brothers' spiritual
lives. Tomorrow, it may bear responsibility for the
assimilation and destruction of the largest Jewish community
in the Islamic lands.
It is with pain and anguish that I say here, that a majority
of the elite trained by the Alliance has moved far away from
the Torah's spirit, from Jewish ideas and from observing the
mitzvot. I know that it was not the Alliance's intention to
distance Jews from their law, but to our chagrin, the facts
are there before our eyes. The process was a simple one: the
holy was profaned and in the guise of fighting mannerisms
alone, the respect which they bore towards religion was also
destroyed.
A few examples will confirm this much better than a long
speech: the Alliance teachers forced their pupils to sit in
class bareheaded. There are also teachers who changed their
pupils' authentic Hebrew names into gentile ones. Are they
ashamed of the names that their ancestors used for
generations? In class, they told the children about Noel
[Xmas] and taught them how to draw fir trees. What's more,
they forgot to tell them about Chanukah: what is this, if not
scorning Jewish values?
Religious study occupied a very small place on the syllabus
and therefore, it was not noted on the report given on
progressing from class to class . . . it is not assigned
any value. It is easy to imagine the impression this leaves
upon a child's soul. On the one hand, the little Judaism that
the child picked up in his parents' home is ruined, while on
the other, he is not compensated with something better . .
.
With the completion of the Alliance's first century, it can
record the success of its project of emancipation. A
magnificent objective awaits it in its second century though:
to return Jews to their ancestral faith . . .
I know that my voice, my shout, is blighting the joyous
chorus of paeans, coming from all sides in praise of the
Alliance; [I know] that "this is not the place" and that "now
is not the time" to hurl harsh truths. But I also know that
the bitterness of the unvarnished truth is ultimately sweeter
than the honey of flattery.
I shall end with wishes for the Alliance's future: [that]
when our descendants gather a century from now to celebrate
the two hundredth anniversary, the organization will be
deserving of Hashem's praise of Avraham Ovinu; Hakodosh
Boruch Hu did not praise his fine character traits, his
hospitality or his sacrifices for others. He said, "For I
know him, because he instructs his children and household
after him, and they guard Hashem's path . . . " (Bereishis
18:19).
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