Edited by: Rabbi Aaron I. Reichel, Esq.
Reviewed by: Rabbi Reuven Chaim Klein

Many of Jerusalem’s hallowed streets bear the names of 20th century Jewry’s most remarkable figures: Rechov Chafetz Chaim, Rechov HaRav Kook, Rechov Chaim Ozer, Rechov Polanski, Rechov Brandeis, Rechov Straus, and Rechov Magnes. One man’s biography involves all of these esteemed personalities. It recalls the life and times of an individual — Harry Fischel (1865–1948) — who laid the foundations for Orthodox Judaism in America and in Israel. It is no wonder that Mr. Fischel too was honored with a street bearing his name in the City of Gold.

I first came across the name Harry Fischel when studying the work Tosafos HaShaleim, which was published by Machon Harry Fischel. Little did I realize that Harry Fischel is not just the name of a publisher, but the name of a visionary who accomplished so much for the Jewish people.

Mr. Fischel came to America as a penniless immigrant from Eastern Europe. He overcame many trials and tribulations which sought to shake his devotion to Orthodox Judaism, yet he always remained steadfast. This was quite a rarity in his time and place. He used his skills as an engineer and builder to grow into one of the most influential American Jews in his time, but his legacy goes well beyond that. The goal that he set as a young man, together with his wife, was that as soon as he “made it” financially he would dedicate a substantial percentage of his income to philanthropy. Not only did he adhere to this youthful vow, but he actually prioritized his philanthropy over his business interests, turning his attention to business only in order to generate more income for his philanthropic endeavors! At some points he left his business almost entirely in the hands of capable managers, while he devoted himself full-time to volunteer work such as managing schools.

Whenever he felt that a situation needed rectification, Mr. Fischel took the initiative and offered his services. He was an active board member of more institutions than one might think humanly possible; and was honored with speaking at more engagements than most people attend in their lifetime. He was a shrewd businessman who turned his calculating mind to identifying Jewry’s most pressing needs and raising the funds to address them. Those who in any way benefit from Jewish non-profit organizations are indebted to Mr. Fischel for having introduced new fundraising techniques to encourage others to give—alongside his own generous gifts. For example, he was probably the first to introduce matching campaigns. He, of course, was the one doing the matching.

Harry Fischel helped establish and maintain multiple schools, hospitals, interest-free loan societies, relief societies for immigrants and refugees, orphanages, and much more across three continents. In his many philanthropic endeavors, Mr. Fischel laid much of the groundwork and infrastructure for what would later become the post-Holocaust bastions of Jewry in America and Israel. Additionally, in his key role in the Joint, he was instrumental in procuring and distributing funds to aid the Jewish communities in Europe which had been devastated by the First World War.

His efforts focused not only on saving bodies, but on saving souls. He impressed the necessity to care for the needs of religious Jews in every organization with which he was involved, even peripherally. He convinced one “interdenominational” Jewish organization to make its annual luncheon kosher. How did he do it? Some guilt (along the lines of “you call yourself Jewish, and you’re serving such treif food?!”), plus an appeal for inclusiveness (in the spirit of: “let’s have a luncheon which does not exclude the Orthodox”). This granted him permission to oversee the next year’s luncheon. Mr. Fischel ensured that it was a strictly kosher and highly gourmet experience. That won them over. If kosher food could be so good — why not?

Unlike some others, Mr. Fischel recognized the crucial role Jewish education plays in the destiny of the Jewish People. As a result, he was intimately involved in many educational institutions, procuring property for them, raising money for them, and sometimes even helping set policies. To that effect, Mr. Fischel was instrumental in facilitating the merger between Talmud Torah Etz Chaim and Yeshivat Rabbeinu Yitzchak Elchanan (RIETS), which eventually became Yeshiva College and then grew into Yeshiva University. Most famously, Mr. Fischel undertook a daring campaign to raise five million dollars to build Yeshiva College’s Amsterdam Avenue campus.

Harry Fischel was a man of the means and connections to make big changes from the top. But in all of his larger-than-life efforts to save the Jewish world, he didn’t forget the little guys and their needs. In fact, he maintained office hours for the express purpose of making himself accessible to his downtrodden brethren. Anybody down-and-out, or in need of some money to tide him through Passover, could simply walk in and ask for help. Furthermore, when Mr. Fischel moved into an upper-class neighborhood and realized that his regular working-class petitioners could not conveniently come to him, he came to them and set up an office in their locale!

Another item on the long list of Mr. Fischel’s accomplishments was ensuring that there was kosher food available at Ellis Island. At first blush this seems nice but not crucial, until it is understood that Jewish immigrants arrived after a long and grueling journey by boat in very poor conditions. Those who adhered to the rules of kosher made due with highly inadequate fare over the course of this journey. The United States only admitted the healthy and able-bodied. Is it any wonder that many a religious Jew, who washed up on America’s shores seasick and malnourished, were refused entry and sent right back from whence they came? Mr. Fischel gained permission from no less than the President himself to set up a kosher kitchen and allow the hapless refugees a recovery period with wholesome kosher food before being evaluated for admittance.

The Land of Israel held a special place in Mr. Fischel’s heart, and he exerted much effort to visit that enchanted place multiple times throughout his life. This was at a time when airplanes were for the military, and kosher cruises were but a pipedream. He wanted to see the local conditions with his own eyes, so as to best judge how to help its people. And indeed, Mr. Fischel did much to advance the Jewish settlement of the Holy Land both physically and spiritually.

The early Jewish colonists in what was then Palestine grappled with many of the same issues that contemporary Israelis do when dealing with Arabs. Instead of simply ignoring the Arabs and allow their festering anger to bubble up at a later time, Mr. Fischel’s efforts in the Holy Land included them. When Mr. Fischel arranged for Jewish colonists to receive free loans to help them finance buying their homes, this offer was extended to the Holy Land’s Arab residents as well. This showed both pragmatism and sensitivity to others that has few counterparts.

Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson’s wisdom and sound counsel were sought by ordinary citizens and world leaders alike

By: Deborah Fineblum

When Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson—known universally as “the Rebbe”—passed away 25 years ago, skeptics predicted the end of the forward growth and momentum of the Chabad-Lubavitch movement he had led for four decades.

It seems that the Chabad movement knew of what it spoke when asserting then that the Rebbe’s innovative and inspiring teachings would prove lasting to a world that craves inspiration.

As his 25th yahrtzeit was marked internationally last month, a number of new books emerged in various languages from a variety of publishers and different vantage points.

The following three capture different glimpses of the Rebbe’s teachings and wisdom, adding new pieces of the puzzle that is his enduring influence, both for the Jewish people and beyond.

‘One by One: Stories of the Lubavitcher Rebbe’

One by One: Stories of the Lubavitcher Rebbe (Jewish Educational Media, $19.95), describes 66 first-person oral recollections of late-night private audiences with the Rebbe (yechidus) culled from hundreds published over the years in Chabad’s weekly “Here’s My Story” newsletters. Through these anecdotes, the leader who rarely left Lubavitch headquarters at 770 Eastern Parkway in the Crown Heights neighborhood of Brooklyn, N.Y., emerges as a personal counselor in touch with the modern world, yet one who also conveys age-old wisdom, revealing the potential in all who came to seek his advice.

“I looked at the Rebbe, and his eyes were filled with such kindness that I opened up and started talking to him as if he were my father,” relates Rose Schrage of Brooklyn. “The Rebbe kept me there for a long time, listening to me and offering advice. I went into his office in a terrible state, but I went out a totally different, much calmer person.”

Schrage was far from the only one. From an angry witness of the Holocaust’s devastation to a Broadway actor, many of this book’s subjects speak of the power of the Rebbe’s gaze, the uncanny knack he had of illuminating each life and the sense he gave visitors of being deeply cared for. “I felt as though I had been in a dark room, and the Rebbe had turned on the light,” says David Stauber of Los Angeles.

His love of all Jews, irrespective of their level of observance, was experienced firsthand by the newly graduated Rabbi Marvin Tokayer when the Rebbe sent him to strengthen Judaism in the Far East. “You must be open to everyone, and everyone should know that you are their friend,” he told Tokayer. “They need to know that they can come to you, and that you’ll go to them if they need you. Whether they attend shul or not, you should be interested in them and concerned about them.”

In addition to a depth of knowledge in fields from science and technology to military strategy, psychology and medicine, the Rebbe apparently possessed an uncanny memory, with many marveling at his remembering their names, their families and even their personal requests or situations decades later.

At the same time, the Rebbe also appears to lack the ego so common is a world leader. When he told the late Ariel Sharon that Jewish identity must be coupled with Torah observance, he added, “I, too, am not complete in the mitzvot. The fact that I do not live in the Land of Israel makes me incomplete.”

Sharon says, “I saw greatness in hearing such words from him.”

While this book is not an official compendium of his wisdom, like its primary subject, it contains entire lifetimes of applicable guidance and wisdom for readers of all ages and backgrounds.

‘Positivity Bias: Practical Wisdom for Positive Living Inspired by the Life and Teachings of the Lubavitcher Rebbe’

Rabbi Mendel Kalmenson takes another approach in Positivity Bias: Practical Wisdom for Positive Living Inspired by the Life and Teachings of the Lubavitcher Rebbe (Chabad.org/Ezra Press $19.95). In these pages (the book is now already in its third printing), the author of the classic guidebook for mourners, A Time to Heal: The Rebbe’s Response to Loss and Tragedy, reveals how the wisdom of the Rebbe continues to uplift and transform lives.

Kalmenson appears at first to narrow his focus to one particular teaching of the Rebbe, into which he delves ever more deeply. But in so doing, he actually expands the reader’s horizons to recognize the seemingly limitless application of a deceptively simple premise: “Living a life of positivity is a matter of choice, not circumstance, and derives from perspective, not personality.”

Stitching together little-known stories illustrating the Rebbe’s “positivity bias,” the author offers a primer destined to inspire readers, whether or not they are familiar with the Rebbe’s wisdom.

One woman wrote that in the week of preparations for her daughter’s wedding, her own mother passed away. In her grief and confusion—and feeling as if her daughter’s wedding was ruined—she reached out to the Rebbe.

He counseled her to view the situation differently: “ … One could say that G-d orchestrated your daughter’s wedding to be in proximity to your mother’s passing to make it easier for you to cope with the loss, seeing the growth of your family and the perpetuation of your mother’s legacy.”

In another section, the Rebbe takes exception with someone describing his “lost Judaism.”

“ … No person can lose something that is his or her true essence and inner nature. What is possible is that this true essence is sometimes in a state of ‘suspended animation,’ or covered over with various layers of foreign substances, even [such] that are at variance with this essence. But this essence can never be ‘lost’; it can only be dormant, as it were, instead of being active and expressed on the surface as it should be.”

In the case of a little boy who stubbornly refuses the Rebbe’s gift, the Rebbe remarks kindly, “This is a good sign! He is not someone who craves money.”

Kalmenson also includes a poignant meeting with Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel that left an indelible impression on the eventual Nobel Prize laureate and guided him in forging forward with life, despite the enormous pain and suffering he had witnessed and endured.

Optimism, however, doesn’t exist in a vacuum; it cannot self-generate. As such, Kalmenson writes that the Rebbe firmly believed that positivity is “indissolubly bound up with one’s faith in G-d’s ability to manifest a positive outcome.”

‘Social Vision: The Lubavitcher Rebbe’s Transformative Paradigm for the World’

If the above works describe the Rebbe as empowering personal counselor, Philip Wexler’s Social Vision: The Lubavitcher Rebbe’s Transformative Paradigm for the World (with co-contributors Eli Rubin and Michael Wexler; Herder & Herder, $34.95) makes a much bolder argument about the impact and vitality of the Rebbe’s teachings, not only on individuals and for Jews, but as an advanced system to achieve societal repair.

Not intended as a leisurely endeavor, readers need to pay attention to grasp the full arc of its arguments. (And unlike the other two books, in this one he is referred to as “Schneerson.”)

Wexler, an acclaimed expert on social theory, education and religion, whose 18 books emerge from a nearly five-decade academic career as dean, chairman and founder of university departments, details the Rebbe as global social innovator.

Describing him early on as “not only a charismatic religious leader, but also a scholar, mystic and philosopher,” Wexler adds that the Rebbe also made his mark on this world as “an engineer of social change, engagement and participation,” who “provided a complete blueprint for a new mode of being in the world.”

With no small measure of ambition, Wexler sets out to “get ‘under the hood’ and understand not only the theoretical and practical axioms of [the Rebbe’s] tactical agenda, but [nothing less than] the full extent of his vision for society.”

Wexler juxtaposes the Rebbe’s socio-mystical ethos against the Protestant ethos diagnosed by sociologist Max Weber, positing that the Rebbe’s worldview can become “the new foundation for a sacralized global society.”

The author further explores the Rebbe’s ideal of “reciprocity,” in which every one of the world’s citizens is both a giver and receiver in a myriad of ways. He writes that the Rebbe’s regular distribution of dollars, beginning in 1986, was designed for passing on that gift to someone in need: “The recipient was transformed into a giver.”

Along the way, Wexler traces the Rebbe’s thinking about some of the major questions of the day, such as what role should religion have in civil society? How should the United States see its role in the world at large? How involved should government be in public education? What is the purpose of education? He also visits the Rebbe’s uniquely positive (for an Orthodox rabbi) view of the women’s movement and the youth rebellions of the 1960s and ’70s, as well as his (often surprising) positions on such contemporary issues as gun control, criminal justice and the environment.

The author argues that the Rebbe “deserves to be seen not as a starry-eyed messianic herald, but as a clear-eyed engineer of social revitalization and repair.”

Once immersed in Wexler’s tour de force, the reader, too, emerges with a new understanding of society’s great potential, along with the Rebbe’s action plan of how to get there.

The literary takeaway

The reader is left with the impression that none of these books could have been penned in 1994 or even 2000. It would have been too early. Time was necessary to gain a certain perspective, in order for the Rebbe’s legacy to mature and much of his vision come to fruition.

And, as different as the three volumes are, one message unites them: the Rebbe’s love for every Jew and for every person—for his great belief that human beings can always do good, perform better and work to bring more light to overcome the darkness in the world.

Wexler quotes from the Rebbe’s acceptance of the mantel of Chabad leadership in January 1951: “There is love of God and there is love of Torah and there is love of the Jewish people, and these three things are all one,” making it clear that “love of God alone, without any anchor in the physical world” is “empty of substance.”

Calling Ahavat Yisrael, the unconditional love and acceptance of one’s fellow, “the cornerstone of (the Rebbe’s) unceasing effort to heal and revitalize the Jewish people in the aftermath of the horrors of the Holocaust,” Kalmenson relates the story of an elderly woman waiting for a blessing and a dollar. “When her turn finally arrived, she could not contain herself and blurted out, “Rebbe! I’ve been standing here for only an hour and I’m already exhausted. You have been standing here for hours and hours, how do you not get tired?” The Rebbe smiled gently and said, “When you are counting diamonds, you don’t get tired.”

(JNS.org)

Review of Martha Shelley’s ‘A Meteor Shower’

By: Sylvia Allen

What did they do, the women of ancient Israel and its neighbors? Fewer than 8% of the named individuals in the Tanakh are women. Named or unnamed, most are presented as wives, daughters, sisters, concubines, or harlots—that is, defined by their relationships to men. Here, in a remarkable trilogy of historical novels, Martha Shelley retells the Elijah story, focusing on the lives and labors of women. These books follow Kings II but with a different take. They are unique in the world of Biblical fiction.

The overwhelming majority of people in the pre-industrial world simply tended their farms and flocks. That being said, in a stratified society such as the Iron Age monarchy, women would also have toiled at a variety of specialized occupations. Shelley’s heroines are among those.

A quick synopsis of the trilogy:

The first book, The Throne in the Heart of the Sea, takes us from the characters’ childhoods to Jezebel’s marriage to King Ahab. Tamar, the daughter of an Israelite fisherman, learns herbal medicine from her grandmother and writing from a refugee of the Assyrian wars. She is chosen as Jezebel’s personal scribe during the rise of the Tyrian empire, when such upward mobility was possible. Accompanied by Bez, a harem guard, she travels to Assyria and then to Egypt to study medicine. In the Tanakh we meet Elijah fully grown. Here he is a violently angry adolescent whose father was killed in the civil war, and whose inheritance was stolen.

The Stars in Their Courses opens in Egypt. While Tamar attends medical school, Bez discovers her own artistic talent and learns to paint murals. They return to Israel, where Tamar becomes a royal physician and Bez obtains commissions from wealthy patrons. Jezebel struggles to conceive and to retain her sense of herself in a life dominated by Ahab. Elijah has matured into his prophetic calling. After an Aramaean invasion, he organizes his disciples to rebuild ruined towns. This second novel culminates in 853 BCE, when a coalition of small kingdoms repels the mighty Assyrian empire. All our major characters go to war or, in Jezebel’s case, rule the kingdom while Ahab leads the troops.

A Meteor Shower, the final volume, takes us through the deaths of Ahab and Elijah, and Jehu’s massacre of the entire House of Omri. It also adds two significant female characters: Munapirtu, a pastry chef, who makes a living selling her wares in the public market, and Arneb, Tamar’s adopted daughter, who marries the boy next door and chooses the farming life. I won’t reveal the climactic ending, only to say that I stayed up until early morning to finish this book.

Underlying the drama is an extraordinary amount of research. Shelley introduces us to an array of cultures: agricultural Israelites and Aramaeans, sea-going Tyrians, Egyptians of various classes, nomadic desert people, and warlike Assyrians. We taste their foods, and smell the figs, the sheep dung, and the ripening wheat. We look over Tamar’s shoulder as she performs surgeries; we ride chariots to war. Here’s a passage from Ahab’s last battle, as seen by Caleb, his driver:

Caleb turned the vehicle around, no easy task in the thick of battle, and headed for the encampment where the medical team waited… “Lie down!” the driver bawled, almost in agony himself. “For the love of Yahweh, lie down!”

“No.” Ahab coughed. “That way.” He pointed toward the rise.

“But the doctor is—”

“No! They have to…see me …”

Caleb understood, and it hit him like a blow to the midsection. He almost stopped breathing.

…

When they reached the top of the rise, Caleb and the officers propped Ahab up, looping a rope several times around his chest and tying him to the rim of the chariot. They broke a spear in half, put it down the back of his shirt, and lashed it to his helmet, to keep his head erect. “Thank you,” Ahab whispered.

Caleb’s eyes blurred. My master. You’re going to sacrifice yourself to protect the rest of us. He thumped an officer’s arm. “Get a medic!”

It seemed like forever but was probably only a few moments before the officer returned with a medic riding double behind him.

“How do you expect me to work on him like that?” the doctor snapped. “Untie him. He’s got to lie flat.”

Ahab shook his head. His lips formed the word no, soundlessly. The doctor climbed into the chariot and ordered the others to hold Ahab’s arms and legs still while he tried to remove the arrow. The rivulet of blood became a steady stream. “Nothing I can do,” he said. “It’s in the liver.”

The battle raged on. Caleb tried to stanch the king’s wound. Refused to admit it was useless. Swallowed phlegm and tears. Now and then he looked up but couldn’t tell which side had the ascendant. Eventually the sun slid down and both armies drew back to their respective camps. And Ahab died.

The three books contain maps, a calendar, a glossary, and brief end notes on the author’s research. The last volume also has a family tree. I would have added a table of contents, which would have avoided my puzzling over the occasional foreign word before discovering the glossary in the back.

Shelley’s characters, even the minor ones, are well developed—no cardboard heroines or villains. I feared for Bez’s safety when she was taken captive, and wept at the death of Elijah. All of them are still with me even after turning the last page.

The books are available at www.ebisupublications.com. They are $15 each, with a $5 discount if you purchase the set.