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Spring10B-1.qxd:Layout 1 2/12/10 1:59 PM Page 81 Books Ish Yehudi: The Life and the even if only to obtain what he termed a of lovingkindness practiced in the hos- Legacy of a Torah Great, Rav ticket of admission to European culture pital and asserts that it is their faith Joseph Tzvi Carlebach and even if, as he later claimed, he was that enables Jews to persevere despite By Rabbi Shlomo Carlebach baptized, but did not convert. all of life’s travails. Indeed, “To be a Shearith Joseph Publications Noted for his satiric and ironic por- Jew,” the chief rabbi affirms, “is the ul- New York, 2008 trayal of German politics, Heine was as- timate, the highest bliss–ein Jude sein 316 pages suredly prescient in his forebodings ist letztes höchstes Glück!” 3 about German militarism: Who was the rabbi who proudly Reviewed by Judith Bleich Watch out! . I tell you the bitter penned these words at one of the most truth. A drama will be enacted in chilling and terrifying moments of our Germany compared to which the French people’s existence? The last chief rabbi Revolution will seem like a harmless of Hamburg before the cataclysmic de- idyll . savagery will rise again . struction of the kehillah was Rabbi The German thunder rolls slowly at Joseph Tzvi Carlebach, a towering spir- first but it will come. And when you hear itual leader, orator, writer and educator, it roar, as it has never roared before in chief rabbi first of Altona and later of the history of the world, know that the Hamburg, who refused to abandon his German thunder has reached its target.1 community in its time of need and went Heine’s feelings regarding his own to his death, together with his wife and people reflect the pathos of a genera- three young daughters, al kiddush tion of Jewishly ignorant and alienated Hashem. In Ish Yehudi: The Life and the intellectuals. On the occasion of the en- Legacy of a Torah Great, Rav Joseph dowment of a Jewish hospital by his Tzvi Carlebach, his son, Rabbi Shlomo uncle, he wrote: Carlebach, recounts the life of his ex- A hospital for sick and needy Jews traordinary father. Rabbi Joseph Carlebach: For those poor mortals who are triply Perusal of this volume quickly be- Authenticity and Heroism wretched, comes an intriguing reading experi- in Cataclysmic Times With three great maladies afflicted: ence. The somewhat Germanic With poverty and pain and stolidity of style and lack of idiomatic he legendary three communities Jewishness. flair is balanced by the enormous care TKehillot AHU (Altona, Hamburg The worst of these evils is the last one with which every word is weighed and and Wandsbeck) boasted authors, rab- The thousand-year-old family measured. The result is a narrative bis and scholars of storied fame in the affliction . written by a rabbinic scholar conscious annals of Jewish history. A very differ- Incurable deep-seated hurt! No of the import of verbal nuance who ent aura surrounds the personality of a treatment strives for precision and exactitude. Hamburg writer of Jewish birth, Hein- By vapor bath or douche can help to Yet this is by no means a dry, bloodless rich Heine. Perhaps the greatest Ger- heal it, account. Again and again, there is an man lyric poet, Heine was an individual No surgery, nor all the medications unexpected sudden overflowing of whose tragically flawed understanding This hospital can offer to its patients.2 suppressed emotion and, like rays of and appreciation of Judaism made it It was 1941 on the occasion of the sunshine on a gray day, lyrical passages possible for him to yield to pragmatic centennial celebration of the founding enliven the prose. A rich selection of considerations and become an apostate, of this hospital that the then chief rabbi photographs and extensive facsimiles of Hamburg composed a poem in re- of documents and archival letters en- Dr. Judith Bleich is professor of Judaic stud- sponse to Heine’s woeful ode. Writing hances the text and brings the subject ies at Touro College and has written exten- in the dark days of the Hitler regime, matter to life. The work makes a signif- sively on modern Jewish history. the rabbi extols the one hundred years icant contribution in highlighting and Spring 5770/2010 JEWISH ACTION I 81 Spring10B-1.qxd:Layout 1 2/12/10 1:59 PM Page 82 elucidating a number of topics often years in the rabbinate he founded a Carlebach was extremely impressed glossed over and inadequately ex- yeshivah in Lübeck and for five years with the caliber of Torah study in the plored elsewhere: the ideal of authen- served as director of the Talmud Eastern yeshivot and was inspired to tic Torah im Derech Eretz as Torah Realschule in Hamburg. Finally, strive to transmit that heritage to the implemented by individuals of gen- as chief rabbi of Altona and subse- West. When he returned to Germany uine commitment to Torah who made quently of Hamburg, supervision and in 1919 as rabbi of Lübeck, he brought use of secular accomplishments improvement of the education of chil- back with him a young Talmudic leshem Shamayim (for the sake of dren and adults remained a primary prodigy, an outstanding student of Sla- Heaven); the personalities of pioneers focus of his rabbinate. bodka, Rabbi Shmuel Yosef Rabinow, of German Orthodoxy in the modern Of particular interest is the story of and appointed Rabbi Rabinow head of age such as Chacham Bernays;4 and es- Rabbi Carlebach’s experience as an ed- the fledgling yeshivah he established pecially the relationship between East- ucator in Kovno. Early in the First in Lübeck.10 ern and Western Orthodoxy in the World War, subsequent to defeating The account of Rabbi Carlebach’s wake of the First World War. Czarist forces in the East, the German experiences in his subsequent en- A scion of a venerable rabbinic High Command sought to enlist the counter with the Torah communities of family, 5 Joseph Carlebach was a grad- support of the Jewish population in the East presents a window into Rabbi uate of the Hildesheimer Rabbinical the occupied territories. At that time, Joseph’s own soul and constitutes the Seminary. Although he remained a other than the yeshivot that served high point of the volume. The Keren proud follower of the Torah im Derech only a small, elite segment of the pop- Hatorah initiative of Agudath Israel di- Eretz philosophy of Rabbi Samson ulace, the Jewish communities in rected by Dr. Leo Deutschlander (who Raphael Hirsch and a devoted adher- those areas had only an informal and later was to play a prominent role in ent of its staunch practitioners,6 while disorganized elementary school sys- the growth of the Beth Jacob move- yet a young man of twenty-two his tem and no high schools whatsoever. ment) fostered the growth of Torah personality was indelibly impressed At the recommendation of his brother- centers throughout Europe. In 1931 the by his contact with Rabbi Shmuel in-law, Rabbi Dr. Leopold Rosenak, an board of Keren Hatorah commissioned Salant of Jerusalem7 and later by his army chaplain and advisor on Jewish a study tour to evaluate Keren Hatorah encounters with Torah luminaries in affairs to the German occupation au- activities over the previous decade and Poland and Lithuania. thority in Lithuania, Rabbi Joseph to create an opportunity for dialogue A familiar theme in descriptions of Carlebach,8 who had been conscripted with leading Torah personalities in the early twentieth-century European Or- into the German army and commis- East. As the spokesman at the helm of a thodoxy is the tension that existed sioned as an officer, was appointed ad- group of twenty delegates and the au- within the Jewish community between visor on educational affairs with a thor of the definitive report of their East and West. In sharp contrast, Ish mandate to establish a high school in tour, Rabbi Carlebach details the dele- Yehudi presents a significant account of Kovno, the capital of Lithuania. The gation’s travels to forty destinations in fruitful confluence in the personality gymnasium Rabbi Carlebach founded seventeen cities in Poland, Lithuania, and mission of Rabbi Joseph Car- had separate divisions for boys and Slovakia and Hungary. He describes lebach. The enduring impact on girls and offered a curriculum combin- the joy of being privileged “to redis- Lithuanian and German Orthodoxy of ing limudei kodesh and secular sub- cover the pure and undefiled beauty this remarkable instance of cultural jects. Colloquially referred to as the and unpretentious greatness of Jewish cross-fertilization is ably analyzed in Carlebach Gymnasium, within a brief life” and the feelings of awe and humil- Rabbi Yosef Gavriel Bechhofer’s inci- span of time the school developed into ity evoked in the visitors, but also cele- sive review essay on Ish Yehudi pub- an exemplary institution and served as brates how “those who came to see and lished in The Jewish Observer [vol. XLI, the model for the Lithuanian Yavneh recognize were themselves seen and no. 9, December 2008, 33-37]. There educational system endorsed by Rabbi recognized; who came only to listen were two separate periods in Rabbi Joseph Leib Bloch of Telz.9 While con- were listened to and understood . the Carlebach’s life in which this develop- centrating his energies on the Gymna- discoverers became the discovery” and ment is dramatically portrayed: the sium, Rabbi Carlebach was also a notes that there ensued “an exalted di- first period encompasses the rabbi’s ac- tireless advocate on behalf of the alogue between East and West, sepa- tivities in Lithuania during World War struggling Lithuanian yeshivot in in- rated for a long time, alienated by I and its aftermath; the second is the terceding with the German authorities geography and prejudice.” 11 period in which he served as the leader in order to facilitate transmission of During a Shabbat the group spent of Agudath Israel’s Keren Hatorah funds from Western Europe to the as guests of Rabbi Meir Shapiro at the study tour.