Jew of the Week: Zelda Mishkovsky

Israel’s Hasidic National Poet

Shaina Zelda Schneersohn (1914-1984) was born in what is now Ukraine, then part of the Russian Empire, to a religious family of Chabad Hasidim. She was a first cousin of the Lubavitcher Rebbe. An only child, she made aliyah with her parents when she was 12. The family settled in Jerusalem, where Zelda went on to study at the city’s Bezalel Academy of Arts in the hopes of being a professional painter. She ultimately became a teacher and taught at school in Tel-Aviv, Haifa, and Jerusalem. (One of her students was renowned writer Amos Oz). Meanwhile, she wrote poems and essays for local newspapers, and slowly gained a large following of fans. After marrying Hayim Mishkovsky, Zelda became a full-time writer and poet. She published her first collections of poems in 1967, blending themes from both Israel and Russia, infused with religious symbols and mystical concepts from Kabbalah and Hasidism, often mixing Modern Hebrew with Biblical Hebrew and Yiddish. The poems were hugely popular across Israel’s social, political, and religious spectrum. She went on to publish five more collections of poetry over the next two decades, each reaching bestseller status. She became affectionately known in Israel simply as “Zelda”, going on to win the Brenner Prize in 1971, and the Bialik Prize in 1978. Her poem “Each Person Has a Name” is publicly recited in Israel on Holocaust Remembrance Day (which also happens to be her yahrzeit). Like her cousin the Lubavitcher Rebbe (with whom she kept a regular correspondence), Zelda never had children, but had many devoted students and foster daughters that she took into her home. She is recognized today as one of Israel’s greatest poets.

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Words of the Week

We are immersed in an evolving, ongoing conflict: an Information World War in which state actors, terrorists, and ideological extremists leverage the social infrastructure underpinning everyday life to sow discord and erode shared reality.
– Renée DiResta

Jew of the Week: Adolphe Crémieux

The French Abraham Lincoln

Isaac-Jacob Adolphe Crémieux (1796-1880) was born in Nimes, France to a wealthy Sephardic Jewish family. He became a lawyer and, following the Second French Revolution of 1830, moved to Paris to enter politics. In 1848, he was appointed minister of justice. One of his first acts was to abolish slavery in all French colonies, for which he has been called “the French Abraham Lincoln”. Crémieux was made a life senator in 1875. Meanwhile, he was always a passionate defender and advocate for the rights of Jews. In 1834, Crémieux became vice-president of the Central Consistory of the Jews of France, a role he held for the rest of his life. In 1860 he was co-founder of the Alliance Israelite Universelle, with a mission to protect Jewish rights and Jewish communities around the world, and a special mission to help impoverished Sephardic and Mizrachi Jewish communities across the Ottoman Empire. Crémieux served as president of the Alliance for nearly two decades. The Alliance was most famous for its top-notch schools (meant for Jews but open to all people), the first opening in Morocco in 1862, the second in Baghdad in 1864, and then a school in Jerusalem in 1868. Ironically, Haj Amin Al-Husseini, founder of the Palestinian Arab resistance (and terrorism) movement—a Nazi sympathizer and good friend of Adolf Hitler—studied at the Jerusalem Alliance school in his youth! In 1870, with permission from the Ottoman government, the Alliance started a network of agricultural schools in the Holy Land, going on to play an instrumental role in the Zionist movement and the establishment of the State of Israel. By 1900, the Alliance ran 101 schools with over 26,000 students across the Middle East and North Africa. Crémieux was famous for defending Jews around the world. When the Jews of Saratov, Russia were accused of a blood libel in 1866, he travelled to St. Petersburg to defend them, and won the case. In 1870, his “Crémieux Decree” finally granted citizenship to all Jews in Algeria. Today, there are streets named after him in Paris, Tel-Aviv, Haifa, and Jerusalem.

Haj Amin al-Husseini meets with Adolf Hitler in Germany, 1941.

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Words of the Week

Human life is undoubtedly a supreme value in Judaism, as expressed both in Halacha and the prophetic ethic. This refers not only to Jews, but to all men created in the image of God.
– Rabbi Shlomo Goren

Jew of the Week: Segundo Villaneuva

Prophet of the Andes

Segundo Zerubbabel Tzidkiya Villaneuva (1927-2008) was born in a small village in the Andes Mountains of Peru to a Catholic family. When he was 21, his father was murdered and Villaneuva discovered a Bible while going through his father’s things. He started reading the Bible and going to church regularly. However, as he went deeper into his studies, he found no good answers to his questions. He was puzzled by Christian observance of the Sabbath on Sunday instead of Saturday, as the Torah clearly commands. Villaneuva soon became a Seventh-Day Adventist. But the problems and inconsistencies persisted. He learned Hebrew and began reading Scripture in the original language. He then discovered that Christians had mistranslated the Torah to suit their needs, and twisted what the Tanakh really said about the concept of Mashiach, the messiah. After many years, Villaneuva decided to convert to Judaism. He started his own congregation with a group of like-minded individuals, called Bnei Moshe. The movement grew to some 500 individuals, many of whom also found out that they actually had Jewish ancestors—Sephardic Jews who were forcibly converted to Christianity during the Inquisition (called Anusim or Conversos). It took many years, but in August of 1989 a delegation of Israeli rabbis came to Peru and converted Villaneuva and 160 others. Villanueva took on the Hebrew name “Zerubbabel Tzidkiya”. The following year, he made aliyah with a large group of Bnei Moshe. This motivated two more groups of Peruvians to convert to Judaism and make aliyah, including the Bnei Abraham and the Inca Jews. Villaneuva’s story inspired countless others in Latin America to convert to Judaism or explore their Sephardic Jewish ancestry. It is estimated that there are now some 60 communities in 14 countries across Latin America that have returned to Judaism. Villaneuva passed away in Israel and was buried on the Mount of Olives. He has been called “The Prophet of the Andes”.

Video: A Kabbalistic History of the World

Words of the Week

The Jews are a peculiar people: things permitted to other nations are forbidden to the Jews. Other nations drive out thousands, even millions of people, and… no one says a word about refugees. But in the case of Israel, the displaced Arabs have become eternal refugees… Other nations, when victorious on the battlefield, dictate peace terms. But when Israel is victorious, it must sue for peace.
– Eric Hoffer