Jewish Post, Indianapolis, Marion County, 2 August 1974 — Page 9

Will Anyone Help Rabbi Levin s Family?

By M.Z. FRANK It is obviously more comforting to be a Chief Rabbi in Israel, or even a prominent rabbi in Boston or in Brooklyn and be able to influence the composition of the Cabinet in Israel than it is — or was — to be the only Chief Rabbi of Moscow. Who of the readers remembers the late Rabbi of Moscow, Judah Leib Levin? Several years ago, shortly before his death, Rabbi Levin came to the United States as Frank the guest of the — of all things! — the American Council for Judaism. This made him a double prisoner: of the Soviet authorities and of the plutocrats of the Council working in cahoots with the so-called proletarian rulers of the Kremlin. But once in America, Rabbi Levin managed to break away from his captors and steal a visit to a Hebrew school. Remember? RABBI LEVIN was criticized for lack of courage by some of us and consoled with for his unfortunate position by others. Word was passed at the time that Rabbi Levin in his young days had been an active Zionist. He was. Before he died, he appealed to his children to "go back home” before the family ceased to be Jewish. One daughter with her three children is here in Israel — she heeded her father’s appeal. She is having a pretty hard time, from what I learn. I happen to know a former classmate and friend of Rabbi Levin: he is Mordecai Guber, whose wife Rivkah Guber is known as the author of several books. The Gubers lost two sons in the War of Liberation of 1948, devoted their lives to the newcomers in the Lachish Region, taught them how to be good farmers and good citizens, how to run their local affairs etc. and then retired to a village called ‘‘Kfar Ahim” — the Brothers’ Village — named after the two Guber brothers, and inhabited by Jews who have been saved from the European Inferno. Rivkah collected the stories of the families in Kfar Ahim and published the account in book form with a long introduction by Elie

Wiesel. The book was published after the Gubers had already left Kfar Ahim to spend the rest of their lives in a large home in Ramat Aviv for senior members of the Histadrut. That is where I learned some details about the late Rabbi Levin. MORDECAI GUBER and Judah Leib Levin studied together at the famous yeshiva of Slobodka (near Kovno), and later, when they went modern, at a Hebrew Teachers’ seminary. Their ways parted. Mordecai became a teacher in a school in one of the agricultural colonies in the south of Russia (there was a number of such Jewish agricultural settlements in that region). There he met Rivkah, another teacher, and together they left for Palestine to become farmers. They did pretty well. Through the years Mordecai Guber and Judah Leib Levin maintained contact by mail — occasionally. I have before me a few short typewritten greetings by Rabbi Levin to his friend Mordecai Guber. They are couched in florid Hebrew such as was employed by enlightened scholars of the old generation. Behind the stereotype Hebrew, there seems to lurk a genuine feeling not only of affection but also of admiration by a man who did not dare for a man who dared. One almost feels that the man who has all his children and grandchildren about him envies the man who lost his two gifted sons in the war for Israel. IN ONE OR TWO of the communications there is a slight hint about the difficulties of maintaining Jewish religion and Jewish nationality — it does not say particularly in what country. The letters are addressed to "Mordecai Guber, Chairman of the Regional Council in Lachish.” So much for Rabbi Levin, of blessed memory. Now about his daughter. Let me quote from an account by Rivkah Guber: ‘‘A year ago we read in the press that Rabbi Levin’s daughter arrived in Israel with two daughters and one son and that they are in an absorption center in Ashkelon. She told the newspaperman who interviewed her that by immigrating to Israel she was carrying out her father’s testament who admonished her to go home and save the children. She

left her husband who refused to leave for Israel and even published a scurrilous attack on her and on Israel in a Russian paper we have. We went, Mordecai and I, and found Riva Rosenstein, who looks amazingly like her late father. She and her children have typical Jewish faces, despite the years they spent as a lone Jewish family among non-Jews in Kransoyarsk far away from Moscow (it is not much of an honor in the USSR to be the daughter and the grandchildren of a wellknown rabbi and they did not advertise the fact). “The elder daughter of Riva Rosenstein is married and has a child. Her husband, too, refused to migrate to Israel. The rabbi’s daughter, then, herself a grandmother, took her two daughters and her son and came to Israel. “WE WERE SHOCKED to see a poor ruined family which put its trust in the Jewish people. . . “She is an unlicensed dentist. She now entered a school for dentistry, expecting at the end of a year to get a license. The two daughters are studying meantime — one in Natanya at a school for cosmetics, the other in Jaffa at a school for dental technicians. The boy is attending — against his will — a religious school and is making trouble.” Etc. etc. The upshot of it is that the daughter of the Moscow Rabbi is forced to sell her possessions she brought with her from Russia to be able to meet the meager expenses to enable the family to live in austerity and to be able to meet at least once a week, since they are scattered in three different places. Is there perhaps a classmate of Rabbi Levin somewhere in the United States or Canada who can afford to help the rabbi’s daughter in Israel until she and her children can take care of themselves? RIVKAH WRITES that she would gladly adopt one of them, but she cannot now when they live in an old folks’ home. Rivkah Guber’s report is dated February 14, 1974. Her address is Beit Avot, Ramat Aviv, Israel.

Importance Of Grades Vs. Personal Traits

By TRUDE WEISS-ROSMARIN I see where several writers of letters to the editor of The POST and OPINION took exception to my statement that there are other criteria of evaluating

besides students "grades.” One writer wonders "what his (deFunis) personality traits have to do with the issue is beyond me,” and then proceeds to excoriate me for lack of

"sensitivity, compassion,” while accusing me of engaging in lashon ha-ra (defamation). I shall not attempt a refutation of these charges, but I think it is in place to elaborate a bit on "merit.”

... > ■ _• m _ / , L*1 i 1 HAVE infinite regard for We Are FltjhtlUCJ For Our Children/ scholarship and learning and I (Continued from Preceding Pg.) of greatness and a dialogue of ^ g rea ^ s t ore by their achievethat he would let his children love, begin agamohsten ^ on a]| ^ , do nol go to Tarrytown, and be confi- with our ears and witn our ... , dent that nothing would happen? hearts. And let us bare our minimize the importance ot What is the need that we souls to our children. That they "grades,” although I am well do not fulfill? Our kids have may know us for our dreams, aware that more often than not all things material — and that Let us share our lives more the "grading” is not infallible simply is not enough. One boy openly without pretense, without because — teachers are human, said to me, "But now at least defense, with a love that must However, in what is called "the I believe in something. My not be denied. market place,” where lawyers, parents believe in nothing.” j can gi ve y 0U a thousand physicians, rabbis and teachers Well, we are those parents, reasons w hy we must do this function, it is - nghtly or you and I. Most of us are fairly and more But who needs a wrongly - personal traits decent people. We work hard, thousand reasons? We are fight- that are at least as im P° rtan f We do the right thing. We have in for our children and their as professional competence and

a set of values, and we try hves, and that — I suggest knowledge, to live by them. What’s miss- is reason enough. (Continued on Next Page)

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