2 — THE BULLETIN — Thursday. September 13, 1979
WITH THE DAYS OF AWE - the High Holy Days of Rosh Hashona and Yom Kippur — commencing in just a little over one week's time, here is an unusual story recalling the obligation of every Jew to fulfil the Mitzvah of hospitality ("Hachnosas Orchim"). It also reminds us of our good fortune to be living in a large and thriving Kehillah.
The extraordinary events we relate occurred in Hebron in the year 1923. The details are chronicled in the Hebron community's "pinkus" (record) of that year, a document that is available for any doubting Thomases to verify.
It seems that the Jewish community of Hebron, once the home of great yeshivas and famous spiritual leaders, was then in a state of severe decline. By the year 1923 the number of Jewish families had so dwindled that it wasn't even possible to form a Minyan (public worship requires a minimum of 10 males over the age of 13) without outside help.
Thus for Sabbaths and holidays, the few remaining Jews of Hebron were eager to welcome visitors from Jerusalem or more distant cities. And as word of their warm hospitality toward strangers spread throughout the land, it became less difficult for the Hebron shul to obtain a Minyan.
Except for that one year, Yom Kippur 1923.
IT WAS THE AFTERNOON of the holiest day of the year and the situation looked very bleak. So far, not a single visitor had arrived in the town. As the sun began its descent, the anxiety of each member of the community, now all gathered in the synagogue, rose to the highest level. Everyone could see, to their distress, that they counted only nine men, one short of a Minyan.
They despatched young boys out to the highway and each person prayed in his heart that the youngsters would find, perchance, a traveller, a Jerusalemite who had been delayed and could not find his way.
But when the boys returned empty handed and reported that there were no strangers on the highway, grim disappointment registered on their elders' faces. In a few minutes they would have to begin their prayers and for the first time in memory, they would not be able to chant the Kol Nidre service out loud.
Then it happened. Call it a miracle, an illusion or what you will. But it is all recorded in the official community "pinkus" for everyone to see.
At the very last moment, at zero hour, when the men had already put on their prayer shawls, the synagogue door opened and a stranger entered.
Overjoyed, the congregants stole sideward glances at the visitor while the Cantor raised his voice in the hauntingly beautiful Kol Nidre prayer.
When the evening service concluded, the worshippers dispersed to their homes, fasting and spiritually uplifted by the Yom Kippur prayers;
but each of them more gratified than usual because their own pre-service prayers for a tenth man had been answered.
The community's "pinkus" doesn't tell us where the visitor spent the night; it only reports that he remained in meditation when the others left and when the first congregants entered the synagogue early the next morning, he was already there, standing in exactly the same place as the night before.
THE DAY BEGAN with the usual introductory and Shacharit services followed by the Torah reading and Musaf. But when they reached the afternoon Mincha service, the worshippers realized they had another major problem: each of them wanted the honor of inviting the stranger to come back.to their home to break the fast.
However, prior to the concluding Neilah service, one of the congregants suggested that they could solve the dilemma by breaking the fast with a communal meal right in the synagogue. As soon as the Yom Kippur services were over, everyone would hurry to his home and return as quickly as possible with containers of fgod.
But it was to be that their plans for hospitality were for nought. The "pinkus" relates that as soon as the services ended, "the stranger disappeared, never to be seen again."
Nor had he uttered a word to anyone the entire time he passed with the congregation on Yom Kippur.
When the worshippers rushed back with their food, they searched the area in vain, seeking from neighboring Arabs if they had seen a Jew, a very old man with a long white beard. To their great distress, no one had seen him; no trace of him could be found.
A few days later another visitor arrived. It was the custom of Avraham Abuchatzira, of Jerusalem, one of the great Kabbala mystics in the land, to journey to Hebron each year to celebrate the holiday of Succot.
When he entered the synagogue that year, Abuchatzira asked if he could address the congregation. He explained that at Yom Kippur their community had received the greatest possible honor having been privileged to pray together — with Avraham Avinu.
NOW ABRAHAM is buried in the Machpeila in Hebron; and Jewish tradition considers he is not dead — when you leave the Machpeila you do not wash your hands as you do departing from a cemetery.
Thus it was related in Hebron that the community's great distress at its inability to form a Minyan had been communicated, indeed, and " their anguish understood — without telephone, radio, television or telex.
One reason for the "stranger's sudden appearance and abrupt disappearance," suggested Abuchatzira, may well have been the Hebron (Continued on next column)
NEW YORK - In a Jewish community of but 1,300 souls and where the local Hebrew Day school boasts an enrollment of SO percent of the local Jewish student population, there now takes place an annual event at the close of the school year where children sit at the dais and the parents sit in the audience proudly paying tribute to the children whose love for Judaism and Torah learning goes beyond the call of duty of the normal school day.
Torah Umesorah — National Society for Hebrew Day Schools — established in 1963 the Hebrew Academy of Bangor, Maine, with the help of the local Rabbi, Rabbi Henry Isaacs and the support of the James Striar family of Bangor. To date, the 40 odd students in the Hebrew Day school — which offers a combined program of Hebrew and general studies — constitute about
SO percent of all Jewish children of school age in the community.
Most remarkable is the fact thai 35 out of the 4S Hebrew Day school students in Bangor, spend three hours once-a-week in a voluntary learning session known as a *Mish-mar.' At the end of the school year these students are taken to a local inn where a very festive kosher banquet is served in their honor. At this Torah Testimonial and Awards Dinner it is the students who are the guests of honor and receive the awards and it is the pillars of the community who present the awards and the parents who applaud.
According to Rabbi David Trop-per, assistant principal and director of the Judaic Studies department of the Bangor Hebrew Day school, it is not only the current -students who participate in the special learning program Graduates,
too, now attending a local public high school come back once-a-week and serve as tutors to the younger students as well and attend class especially set up for them. Rabbi Henry Isaacs, the school's principal, is most enthusiastic about the school and the very popular voluntary learning program which is attended by nearly every student except the pre-schooler.
Awards are distributed, according to Rabbis Isaacs and Tropper, for character, morality and charity. The most prestigious and the most coveted award is the S homer Mitzvah award — the only one listed in the program. This award is given to the student who has become a Sabbath observer during the course of the year.
Dress is formal and the banquet is festive.
(The Jewish Press)
r
(Continued from preceding column)
community's fine reputation for hospitality to strangers, a quality that was particularly endearing to the Patriarch.
"As you know," he told the Hebronites "Abraham is the archtype of the Jewish host, who, as we are told (Genesis 18) greeted and cared for three travellers in the desert. (They tiirned out to be angels who told him Sarah would bear him a son in her old age)."
A lesson every Jewish community can learn from the "Hebron experience," he continued, is that few things bind Jewish communities more than the hospitality offered to a traveller or a guest. It is a tradition that has its roots in the desert-sojourning days of our early forefathers — starting with Abraham.
TODAY, in the "progressive" post-Holocaust atomic age of mankind's enlightenment, there are many who have become skeptical about the ultimate survival of our species. Yet to many the fact that the Jewish People have survived the cruel buffeting of so many centuries, and the very fact that Jews today are still practising such ancient traditions (as "Hachnosas Orchim"), is itself evidence that there is hope for the survival of mankind.
WHAT CAN WE DO? Though most of us are not on the level of Abraham, there are, nevertheless, many people who will not be with families of their own oyer the High Holy Days. Here are a few suggestions for locating them:
1. Look for unfamiliar or "lonely" looking faces in synagogue over the festival.
2. Contact Hillel or the Jewish Family Service Agency for the names of students and student travellers who will be away from home over Yom Tov.
3. Think hard about whether you have a friend, neighbor or acquaintance who has no family table to join — elderly people, single-parent families, singles of all ages, students, people living in rented quarters.
4. Finally: one fifteenth-century Jewish writer says that "one should pray that G-d sends you a deserving guest to your table; and if He doesn't, then you must give a special extra gift to charity in place of the hospitality you were not able to extend."
Let all of us put ourselves in the shoes of the stranger; let us remember that it's far nicer spending Rosh Hashona and beginning and ending Yom Kippur with other Jews than remaining alone in an apartment or hotel room.
May all of us be blessed with a year of Mitzyot.
And may the unique story recorded in the "pinkus" of Hebron in 1923 touch our lives in 1979.
ieinember the Social Galenilar
September 14, 7:09 p.m.
Sedra Nitzavim-Vayelech,
Deuteronomy Shabbat ends, Havdallah September 15, 8;09 p.m.
September 21, 6;53 p.m. ' Sedra Rosh Hashona Shabbat ends, Havdallah
September 22, 7:53 p.m.
NCJW Morning Volunteer Workshop Sept. 17
Beth Israel Sisterhood Lunch Sept. 19
CZF Israel Luncheon Club Sept. 25
Lillian Freiman Hadassah YiskorTea Sept. 26
Lubavitch Dinner Sept. 27
THE JEWISH WESTERN BULLETIN
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Thursday, September 13,1979
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