The Birth of a Leader
The very benches in the little synagogue, the very walls suffused with the golden streams of sunlight, the voices of the men grew impassioned and exalted. Now the Shabbos was coming. Now G-d’s presence would no longer be concealed by the folds of the workday week. The men chanted the resonant, evocative words of longing and welcome: “Come, my beloved, to greet the bride, let us greet the Shabbos!”
Among them were many outstanding Torah scholars, for Frankfurt-am-Main was a major center of Torah learning. At his seat by the eastern wall stood Rabbi Avraham Abush, the Chief Rabbi. Not far from him was Rabbi Shmuel Sofer, a well-known Torah scholar and scribe. The singing grew louder but Rabbi Sofer’s mind was divided. Part of him floated with the melody of the haunting tune but another part of him was in anxiety. He wished to hurry home to his wife, to find out what the news was.
For ten years, he and his wife Reizl had been childless. The previous Yom Kippur they had been visited by a holy man named Rabbi Zeligman, a man who sat and learned Torah his entire life, wearing Tefillin (phylacteries) and wrapped in a tallis. Rabbi Zeligman had promised them that they would soon have a child.
Now on the seventh of Tishrei 5523 (1762), Reizl Sofer had been in labor for some time.
“How was it?” Rabbi Shmuel thought anxiously, “What would happen?”
Suddenly, the synagogue door that they were facing was flung open.
“Rabbi! Wait!” a young man cried out breathlessly, his face red and sweating.
The cantor and the congregation were abruptly halted.
“What is wrong?” Rabbi Abush asked.
“I beg your pardon,”
The young man spoke choppily, catching his breath.
“I was sent by Mrs. Raizl Sofer. She is still in labor and she would like the congregation not to take on Shabbos yet. She is afraid that if she gives birth when Frankfurt-am-Main has already taken on the Shabbos, she would be the cause of the breaking of Shabbos.
The Rabbi stood a moment, considering. A spirit seemed to pass over his face. “Very well,” he said authoritatively. “It is right to wait. She will give birth to a boy whose teachings will illuminate the eyes of Torah scholars and whose prayers will save the Jews.” Rabi Abush turned his glance toward Rabbi Sofer.
“He will be called Moshe.”
The sun sank slowly disappearing below the trees and buildings, and drawing with it the entire curtain of the Friday sky into the lap of the cobalt blue horizon of Shabbos.
The child who was born that late afternoon to Rabbi Shmuel and Reizl was Moshe Sofer. He would grow up to be the chief rabbi of Pressburg and one of the greatest Torah figures of his time. In his life, turmoil would roil the Jewish world. The inner life of Rabbi Sofer would be one of Torah and tranquility; but his outer existence would be one of battle with the forces of Reform and assimilation.
The rays of sunlight inched up the walls of the synagogue. Soon Shabbos would, of its own accord, begin. There was a clattering, scuffling sound of shoes running down the cobblestone street. Everyone looked up. Another messenger was here.
“Mazal Tov! It’s a boy!”
Rabbi Sofer’s face broke into a broad smile.
“Mazal Tov! Mazal Tov!” the men about him congratulated him warmly and shook his hand.
Rabbi Abush glanced at the cantor who again began the singing
“Come in peace, crown of your Husband, come in joy and in delight; Among the faithful Jewish people, come bride, Shabbos queen…”
The birth of Moshe which had held up the coming of the Shabbos, now served as the trigger to allow in the peaceful setting of the Shabbos, mixed with the joy of his birth.
In the Path of Torah
When little Moshe was four years old, he was already learning steadily. One day, when Moshe came home, he did not say anything, but his father could tell from his face that he was upset.
“What is wrong, Moshe?” his father asked him.
Moshe looked up to seek the warm eyes that he trusted.
“Tell me,” his father urged him.
Moshe lowered his eyes and spoke in his child’s voice. “We were learning the verse “And he took dust from the ground.’ The rebbi translated the verse as ‘ He took earth from earth.’ I asked him, ‘Obviously, earth comes from earth. So the verse must be coming to teach us something else in addition.’ The rebbi grew very angry at me and he didn’t say anything. I thought I should ask my question again. When I did, he leaned over and slapped me.”
With this memory of his humiliation, Moshe’s eyes filled with tears.
Rabbi Sofer’s face grew angry. Moshe didn’t know what to expect. “You asked well, Moshe,” Rabbi Sofer nodded at him. “Rashi ( a famous commentary) himself was bothered by this question.
Although Rabbi Sofer had not expressed his feelings to young Moshe, this episode upset him deeply. Moshe was a wonder-child, a precious jewel. He must be watched over, nurtured and cared for. He needed teachers who appreciated him and did not stifle him. One clumsy, heavy-handed teacher could take this special gift and smash it forever. Moshe might still grow up to be a pious, learned adult but no one would ever know how much had been destroyed.
Rabbi Sofer took Moshe out of the cheder and, setting aside as many of his own concerns as possible, applied himself to teaching Moshe Torah.
Rabbi Sofer learned with his son in this way for two years. When Moshe learned the laws of blessings, he learned that there was a question of what blessing to make over sugar. Although he loved sweet things, when he became aware that there was a question involved, he decided that for the sake of Torah he must hold himself back. From that point on and for the rest of his life, he never allowed himself sweets.
Moshe learned with his father every day. At night, when Moshe lay down to go to sleep, Rabbi Sofer asked him a question on what they had learned. Before Moshe was allowed to sleep he had to answer his father. If he drifted off, his father would awaken him until he succeeded in answering.
Seeds of Reform
An oil portrait hung upon the wall. Heavy, white curtains were draped about the large, window looking out across the street at a mansion behind a manicured lawn. Next to the thick, quilt-covered bed, a throw rug covered the parquet floor.
Moshe stood up from the high-backed chair at the escritoire, where he had been writing notes notes in the margin of his Gemara. Through the window, he saw a white and scarlet carriage with an escutcheon on its side pull up before the opposite mansion. The gloved and uniformed chauffer leaped down from his perch to open the little door for a regal banker, whom he helped step down.
Moshe turned away from the window. So this was Vienna! He had not dreamed that his journey home from Boskowitz would bring him to the home of a member of the famous Arnstein family.
Nassan Arnstein was a wealthy businessman who dealt with banks and governments. When Rabbi Adler and his young student Moshe Sofer had come to Vienna, Nassan Arnstein had invited them. This was considered a prestigious honor. Moshe passed out of the room, through an elegant corridor studded with lamp-holders, passing the library with its thousands of handsomely-bound volumes. Opening a broad, white double-door, Moshe steped into the parlor.
“A little shorter by my ear, please, Pierre.”
“Madame”
A man holding a pair of scissors raised in his hand was bending over a white-gowned woman who sat on a chair. The chair sat upon a large sheet, on which curled locks of her black hair lay. Moshe tread forward. The barber moved to the side, and Moshe’s eyes met those of Nassan Arnstein’s daughter-in-law.
“How can you have a man cut your hair?” Moshe burst forth.
The woman stood up from the chair, her eyes flashing and her lips trembling with rage. “What are you saying?”
“You are a jewish daughter and a married woman,” Moshe continued. “This is not modest behavior.”
The woman angrily spat at him, “I will not have a yeshiva student come into my house and tell me what to do. Times are changing, young man. You clerics no longer rule over us with your piddling regulations. Go back to your medieval ghetto. As for me, I will be a Jewess and a civilized European as well.”
She sat back down in her chair. “Continue, Pierre.”
His face burning with anger and shame, Moshe hurried out of the room.
As he left the house of the Arnsteins, Moshe reflected on the many signs he had seen in cosmopolitan Vienna of changes in Torah-observant Jews. All these changes seemed to be driven by a desire to break out of exile, to break out of poverty, to break out of the intellectual imprisonment and to enter the exciting world of the gentile European community. This community was now rising up from the tyrannies of a thousand years and speaking fervently of concepts such as freedom, liberty and an end to poverty and religious persecution. It seemed that many Jews who were excited by these ideas felt that to join this exhilarating movement, they must start to set aside their Judaism.
Three years earlier in 1783, a controversial book had burst upon the Jewish scene-Moses Mendelssohn’s translation of the Torah into German, accompanied by a commentary, based on classical sources of the simple meaning of the text.
The book swept across Europe. Some rabbis praised it; others vigorously denounced it. In many communities, the volume was banned, yet yeshiva students surreptitiously read the forbidden literature in frightened and excited secrecy.
What was the power, the attraction and the danger, that people saw in this volume?
One cannot understand or judge this work in itself. Rather one must see it within the context of the times, and in particular of the burgeoning reform movement, of which Moses Mendelssohn was a prime spokesman and mover.
The reform movement was the Jewish reflection of the gentile Enlightenment of the eighteenth century. The supporters of this new movement believed that Torah Judaism had been stifled and crushed by the experience of Jews in the cruel and ruthless exile.
The Great Yeshiva
“Oh-excuse me, I’ll come back later.”
“No, please, come in, come in. Are those letters you have for me?”
“Yes, Rabbi Sofer. But I don’t want to interrupt you in the middle of your teaching.”
“That’s quite all right. Thank you very much.”
Having delivered the letters, the messenger backed out of the room, throwing an apologetic look at Rabbi Sofer and the students who sat about him at the long table.
“Ah! An interesting letter, this one,” Rabbi Sofer said. “I will read it to you. Listen carefully.” Rabbi Sofer read a letter that contained a complex question on Jewish law. The caliber of the question made it clear that the letter’s author as an accomplished Torah scholar.
“Now, my students, does anyone know who wrote this?”
No one responded.
“I will tell you. When I was still a boy living in Frankfurt-am-Main, there was a horse-seller who had a young unmarried man in his early twenties working for him. I’d see this young man every once in a while. He was an ignoramus, a feeble character who was wasting his life away. All he did was ride through the streets on errands.
“One day when I was walking in the street, he galloped by, and his horse threw him. While he was lifting himself up from the ground, I went over to him and rebuked him for living such a meaningless life. A Jew who can think of nothing more than riding back and forth on his horse!
“I told him that he should be learning Torah. I said that if he agreed to learn, I would learn together with him.
“He came with me to the house of study, and learned with me a while. Soon, he changed himself around completely and devoted himself to learning Torah and serving G-d.
“It is that former ignoramus who wrote me this letter that I just read you.”
Rabbi Sofer’s students were the most promising young scholars. Rabbi Sofer often admonished them not to grow haughty, but keep a clear perspective on themselves and their accomplishments.
With such a story did Rabbi Sofer teach his students that all Jews have a portion of the Torah and all Jews have the potential to become learned.
The Ways of Greatness
On a typical day, Rabbi Sofer arose swiftly from bed at four in the morning and never went to sleep earlier than midnight.
He washed his hands, said the morning blessings and then recited the blessing over the Torah. Then, at dawn, he went to an unheated mikvah (ritual bath). He then put on his tallis and tefillin and quickly walked to the house of study.
In the summer, he prayed the morning prayers at six o’clock in the morning and in the winter at dawn.
Rabbi Sofer prayed very slowly and with great intensity, often breaking into tears. Once in his youth, his fellow students had teased him that in the time that it took him to pray, they were able to learn a page of Shulchan aruch (a book on Jewish law)
He replied “The Talmud states that when a person prays at length, he is given long life. If that is so, then I will have a long life and I will have the time to go through many paragraphs of the Shulchan Aruch.”
Fire and Ruin
Fire and ruin
The synagogue was packed. Rabbi Sofer stood before the people and gave his last sermon in Mattersdorf. Next shabbos he would be Rabbi in Neustadt. The people strained to hear his every word. It was the last chance that they would have.
Soon after the talk, there was a smell of something burning. There was a wisp of smoke, a hint of a flame, and a harried woman running down the street holding a bby, crying out, “Fire, fire!” People looked up the road from which the woman had run: smoke was pouring out of the whiskey distillery, thick and gray billows, as huge, orange flames danced up behind the windows like great, glowing sheets.
“The distillery! The infamous distillery!” That was the distillery that was open on Shabbos. People remembered that when Rabbi Yirmiyah had left his position as rabbi of Mattersdorf, he had threatened the Jew who was renting it, “Because you keep this distillery open on Shabbos, it will burn down on Shabbos!” The man had grimaced angrily and turned his face away. Now Rabbi Yirmiyah’s words were proving prophetic.
The flames leaped from the distillery and leaped onto the roof of the adjacent building. The adjoining roof quickly blazed into flame. From roof to roof and house to house, the terrible conflagration spread.
By the time Shabbos was over, most of the Jewish quarter was in charred ruins.
“I am not leaving you now,” said Rabbi Sofer to the delegation of Jews who came to him in mourning. “I will not desert you.”
The next morning, Rabbi Sofer surveyed the terrible destruction that the fire had wrought. Houses had been reduced to charred, smoking ruins. Entire families, small children, invalids and old people had been left homeless, all their possessions burned.
Rabbi Sofer took charge of the efforts to help the people who had suffered in the terrible fire. In response to his requests, donations poured in from many other Jewish communities. Temporary wooden buildings were setup to house those Jews who had been left homeless.
