Tag Archives: War of Independence

Jew of the Week: Mordecai Sheftall

Highest-Ranking Jew in the Continental Army

Mordechai Sheftall (1735-1797) was born in the new colony of Savannah, Georgia to Jewish immigrants from England that had arrived two years earlier aboard a vessel carrying 36 Sephardic and 8 Ashkenazi Jews. The same year he was born, his parents cofounded North America’s third oldest synagogue, Kahal Kadosh Mickve Israel of Savannah (the first is Shearith Israel of New York, and the second the Touro Synagogue of Newport, Rhode Island). Seven years later, Spanish troops invaded Georgia, causing the Sephardic families to flee in fear of the Spanish Inquisition. Only the two Ashkenazi families remained, the Sheftalls being one of them. Mordechai Sheftall received a strong Jewish education from his father, who ordered a set of tefillin and Jewish books for his bar mitzvah from England. He even sent a letter when the precious shipment was delayed—which happens to be the earliest-known historical mention of a bar mitzvah in the Americas! At age 17, Sheftall went into the deerskin business and quickly made a small fortune, soon buying 50 acres of his own in Savannah. By the time he married at age 26, he operated a 2000-acre cattle ranch and a tanning facility. The Mickve Israel congregation ran services from a room in his house. Sheftall was also a philanthropist, and a major contributor to the Union Society and the Bethesda orphanage. In 1765, the British imposed the hugely unpopular Stamp Act. Like many colonists, Sheftall strongly opposed excessive British taxation, and became chairman of Savannah’s Parochial Committee of American patriots. When the Revolutionary War broke out, Sheftall immediately volunteered to fight, and in 1777 became the commissary-general of Georgia’s troops. He went on to attain the rank of colonel, making him the highest-ranking Jew in the Continental Army. Sheftall was captured during the First Battle of Savannah in 1778, yet continued to arrange major funds to the American cause from the prisoner-of-war ship he was being held in. The British would purposely give him pork, which he refused to eat, and even greased his cutlery with pork fat, which he refused to use. He was only freed in a prisoner exchange two years later. Having lost everything in the Revolutionary War, Sheftall moved to Philadelphia in 1781 to try a new business. During his brief time there, he also helped build Philadelphia’s historic Mikveh Israel synagogue. Sheftall returned to Savannah to work at its port as Georgia’s official Inspector of Tanned Leather. In 1790, he became president of Savannah’s Mickve Israel synagogue. That same year, George Washington wrote a letter to the congregation (the first ever by a president to a Jewish community) where he wrote: “May the same wonder-working Deity, who long since delivering the Hebrews from their Egyptian Oppressors planted them in the promised land – whose providential agency has lately been conspicuous in establishing these United States as an independent nation – still continue to water them with the dews of heaven…” Like fellow Revolutionary hero (and the very first Jew of the Week) Haym Solomon, the vital loans Sheftall provided to the nascent US government were never repaid. Sheftall was buried in Savannah’s first Jewish cemetery, which he had himself established years earlier.

Words of the Week

May the children of the stock of Abraham who dwell in this land continue to merit and enjoy the good will of the other inhabitants, while every one shall sit in safety under his own vine and fig tree and there shall be none to make him afraid.
– George Washington, first president of the United States, to the Touro Synagogue in 1790

Jew of the Week: Rav Chaim Kanievsky

Prince of Torah

Shmaryahu Yosef Chaim Kanievsky (1928-2022) was born in Pinsk (then Poland, now Belarus) and made aliyah with his family to Israel when he was six years old. He never left the Holy Land thereafter. His father was the great “Steipler Gaon”, Rabbi Yaakov Kanievsky, and his maternal uncle was the famed Chazon Ish. Following in their footsteps, Kanievsky became a rabbi, too, and was recognized as a sharp scholar at a young age. As a yeshiva student during Israel’s Independence War, he briefly served in the newly-formed IDF and defended Jaffa (though he did it spiritually, spending most of the time at his post learning Torah!) He then married the daughter of another great rabbi, Rav Elyashiv. Rabbi Kanievsky typically studied Torah for about 17 hours a day. He would wake up at midnight to pray Tikkun Chatzot (mourning for the destruction of the Temple and the exile of the Jewish people) and then learned for the rest of the day, starting with eight (double-sided) pages of the Talmud Bavli, followed by eight pages of the Talmud Yerushalmi, and then selections from a number of Jewish legal codes, the Tanakh, as well as Midrashic and Kabbalistic texts. What normally takes a typical rabbi a lifetime to study, Rav Kanievsky would complete every year! He was famous for his total mastery of all Torah texts, with photographic memory and an ability to mentally “scan” these texts for any word or phrase. He was often called the “Prince of Torah”. In addition to his studies, Rav Kanievsky wrote over a dozen popular books and commentaries. Hundreds of people would line up daily to ask questions and request blessings. His blessings were known to be fulfilled, often miraculously, and his legal rulings were followed closely by religious Jews, especially those in non-Hasidic Ashkenazi communities. He regularly responded to thousands of letters, too. Rav Kanievsky lived simply in a small apartment in Bnei Brak his whole life. After the passing of Rav Shteinman in 2017, he was widely-recognized as the supreme authority on Jewish law, and the top gadol hador. Sadly, the Prince of Torah passed away shortly after the conclusion of Purim last week. He had completed his yearly study cycle the previous day. Some 750,000 people came to his funeral, making it among the largest in Israel’s history.

Words of the Week

In a lottery, it is not the ticket that wins but the person.
– Rabbi Chaim Kanievsky

Jew of the Week: Menachem Begin

In Memory of an Israeli Founding Father

Menachem Begin (1913-1992) was born in what is today Belarus to a religious and Zionist family that came from a long line of great rabbis. Interestingly, the midwife that delivered him was the grandmother of fellow Belorussian Jew Ariel Sharon! Begin went to a religious cheder elementary school, and then a religious Zionist high school, and was also a member of Hashomer Hatzair, the Zionist youth movement. In law school at the University of Warsaw, he organized a Jewish self-defence group to fight rampant anti-Semitism. After graduating, Begin joined Ze’ev Jabotinsky’s Betar organization and soon became the head of its Polish and Czech branches. When Germany invaded Poland in September of 1939, Begin fled to Lithuania. The following month, Lithuania was invaded by the USSR and Begin was imprisoned for his Zionist activity and for being a supposed “British imperialist”. Begin was tortured and sentenced to 8 years in a labour camp. He was released in 1941 and put into a Polish resistance force to fight the Nazis. By the end of 1942, Begin’s commander issued him a leave of absence so that he could go to Israel to fight for the Zionist cause. Begin arrived in the Holy Land and joined the militant Irgun, arguing that the Zionist leadership was too soft and that the British had to be expelled. Against the wishes of the Jewish Agency, Begin organized a revolt against the British, with a step-by-step plan that he modeled on the Irish independence movement. The insurgency was launched in February 1944. Begin’s plan worked, and the British would leave three years later, allowing Israel to declare independence. Throughout this time, Begin was Britain’s “most wanted” man and stayed in hiding, appearing in public rarely and usually disguised as a rabbi. Begin went on to sign a deal with Ben-Gurion to combine their forces and create the IDF, though the process was far from smooth. He then formed the right-wing Herut party, winning 14 seats in Israel’s first election. The Herut party was sidelined as “extremist” and only participated in the governing coalition briefly following the Six-Day War. It only became more prominent in 1973 when, following the Yom Kippur War, Herut joined several other parties to form the new Likud coalition. In the 1977 election, Begin won a landslide in what has been called the mahapakh, a “revolution” in Israeli politics. The main reason for his win was that Begin reached out to Mizrachi and Sephardic Jews, who long felt like second-class citizens under Israel’s Ashkenazi establishment. Begin did not disappoint, and as prime minister started a “Project Renewal” to inject major funding into Mizrachi communities, transforming 82 “slums” into thriving towns. He also pioneered major education reform in Israel, making secondary education compulsory and removing tuition fees for it. Begin’s “economic transformation” shifted Israel away from a socialist economy towards a free-market economy (which saw several hiccups, and admittedly came with both positives and negatives). Most famously, Begin met with Egyptian president Sadat to negotiate the Camp David Accords, resulting in Israel’s first peace treaty with an Arab adversary, for which he won a Nobel Peace Prize. Nonetheless, Begin was severely criticized within his own party, accused of no longer being the hawk he once was, and reneging on his own principals. Perhaps to mitigate this, Begin launched a massive campaign of Jewish settlement in Judea and Samaria (the “West Bank”) and Gaza, quadrupling the Jewish population in these regions, and later formally annexed the Golan Heights. Begin’s other famous achievement was Operation Opera, in which Saddam Hussein’s nuclear reactor was destroyed by the Israeli Air Force in 1981. This gave rise to the “Begin Doctrine”: that Israel would never allow an enemy state to develop nuclear weapons. In November 1982, Begin’s beloved wife passed away and he fell into a deep depression. Together with his own failing health, and Israel’s quagmire in Lebanon, Begin resigned as prime minister and left the post to Yitzhak Shamir. Begin lived out his life in seclusion, leaving his apartment only to say Kaddish at his wife’s grave. Begin died of a heart attack and had requested a simple Jewish funeral, with no state honours. Unlike other leaders who are buried at Mount Herzl, Begin asked to be buried at the Mount of Olives. His funeral was attended by some 75,000 admirers. Altogether, Begin served on the Knesset for 34 years, and over that time had stints as Minister of Communication, Justice, Labour, Transportation, Foreign Affairs, Defence, and Agriculture. He wrote two books. Next Monday is his yahrzeit.

Historic Footage: Menachem Begin and the Lubavitcher Rebbe

Words of the Week

I am completely and unequivocally opposed to the surrender of any of the liberated areas [of Israel] currently under negotiation…
– Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson, the Lubavitcher Rebbe

From the Jew of the Week Archives: Ukrainian president Vladimir Zelensky