Tag Archives: Poland

Jew of the Week: Emanuel Tanay

Emanuel Tanay (Photo Credit: John Lofy)

Emanuel “Emek” Tanay (1928-2014) was born in Vilnius, Lithuania and grew up in Poland. The Holocaust began while he was still young, and he spent the first part of it hiding in a Catholic monastery. After his father died in a concentration camp, Tanay led his family out of Poland, through Slovakia and Hungary, finding hiding places and falsifying papers to keep himself and his remaining family members alive. Following the war, he moved to the US and studied psychiatry. Tanay went on to become a professor of psychiatry at Wayne State University, and was internationally renowned in his field. He dedicated a major part of his career to treating Holocaust victims, as well as working with the German government to provide compensation for survivors. Because of his own experiences in the Holocaust, Tanay worked tirelessly for those suffering from Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). He was part of a group of scientists who got PTSD recognized as a real, treatable condition. At one point, he was described as “the nation’s premier psychiatric theorist on homicide”, and served as an expert witness in some of the most famous trials of recent history, including that of Jack Ruby and Ted Bundy. Meanwhile, Tanay worked for his local Jewish community, too, founding the Jewish Council in the town of Grosse Point, and serving as its president. Tanay wrote three important books, including his reflections on the Holocaust in a book called Passport to Life, highly praised by fellow Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel. He appeared on numerous television shows, and his story is explored in the Oscar-nominated documentary Courage to Care. Sadly, Tanay passed away on the 5th of August from prostate cancer.

Words of the Week

If you wait until you find the meaning of life, will there be enough life left to live meaningfully?
– Menachem Mendel Schneerson, the Lubavitcher Rebbe

Jew of the Week: Sarah Schenirer

The only known photograph of Sarah Schenirer, taken for a passport

Sarah Schenirer (1883-1935) was born in Cracow, Poland to a Hasidic Jewish family. She left her elementary school at age 13 due to her family’s poverty, and took on a job as a seamstress. Meanwhile, she envied her brother’s opportunities to study Torah, and dreamed of creating similar opportunities for women. One by one, her girlfriends assimilated and left the Orthodox Jewish fold. Troubled by this development, Schenirer understood that girls were losing their connection to Judaism primarily as a result of ignorance. She resolved to start a Jewish girls’ education network, and in 1917 opened a girls-only kindergarten for Jewish studies. The school was called “Beit Yakov”. (The name comes from a Biblical verse, referring to God’s command to Moses at Mt. Sinai to instruct the women along with the men.) The idea flourished quickly, inspiring a “Bais Ya’akov” movement across Jewish Europe. By 1923, Schenirer had to establish a teachers seminary to train new instructors, who taught young girls both Torah and secular subjects. The movement gave rise to camps, clubs, a monthly magazine, international conferences, and even its own publishing house to print textbooks. Sadly, Schenirer passed away from cancer, childless, at the young age of 52. At the moment of her passing, over 200 Beit Yakov schools were operating in Europe and beyond, with 35,000 girls studying diligently. Many of these girls referred to Schenirer as Sarah Imenu – “Sarah, our Mother”. Schenirer had a reputation as a wise and caring pioneer, as well as a modest and holy woman. She did not allow photographs of her to be taken, saying “I don’t need anyone to remember what I look like, I want them to remember my vision.” Her vision is alive and well today, with hundreds of Orthodox Beit Yakov girls schools still shining all over the world.

Words of the Week

God is the ultimate oneness, and everything Godly in our world bears the stamp of His unity. All evil derives from the distortion of this oneness by the veil of divisiveness in which God shrouds His creation.
– Rabbi Sholom DovBer of Lubavitch

Jew of the Week: David Ben-Gurion

David Ben-Gurion

David Grün (1886-1973) was born in Poland and at just 14, already started a Zionist youth club with friends to promote immigration to Israel and study of Hebrew. While a student at the University of Warsaw in 1905, he was arrested twice as a member of the socialist Poalei Tzion party. The following year he made his way to the Holy Land and settled there. Just 20 years old, he became the chairman of Poalei Tzion in Yafo. Due to various disputes, Grün left politics and focused on farming in Petah-Tikva and the Galilee. He joined an armed defence group in 1908 to protect Jewish settlements increasingly under attack. In 1912 he temporarily relocated to Istanbul to study law, and it was there that he Hebraized his name to Ben-Gurion (and would convince countless others to do the same over the course of his life, wanting them to drop their old “diaspora” names for a fresh start in a newly resurrected Jewish Homeland). He returned to Jerusalem, only to be deported to Egypt due to World War I, then made his way to the U.S. where he toured for 3 years raising support for the Jewish cause. In 1918 he enlisted in the Jewish Legion of the British Army. After the war, Ben-Gurion resettled in Israel and established the Histadrut, Israel’s first labour union (which is 650,000 members strong today). By 1935, he became the chairman of the Jewish Agency – the largest Jewish non-profit organization in the world – overseeing the immigration and settlement of Jews in Israel. He served in this role until 1948, when he became the new State of Israel’s first Prime Minister. One of his first acts in the ensuing War of Independence was the fusion of all militias into one unified army: the IDF. After the war, he worked tirelessly to establish the state and its institutions, overseeing massive construction projects and mass immigration of Jews from around the world, not to mention an international hunt for Nazi war criminals. Although he worked to create a free, modern, non-theocratic state of Israel, he ensured that the Jewish essence would remain, setting Shabbat as an official rest day, kosher food in all state institutions, and autonomy in religious education. He also focused on Israel’s military might, ordering the creation of special operations units while pushing heavily for attaining nuclear capability. He would serve as prime minister in two stints lasting nearly 14 years, in addition to being minister of defence. After retiring in 1970, he wrote an 11-volume history of Israel’s beginnings, adding to two previous tomes he had written. He passed away shortly after, and is commemorated as the central founder of the modern State of Israel.

Words of the Week

Oil, which saturates everything it comes in contact with, represents innerness. Wine, which causes the heart to spill out its deepest secrets, represents outwardness. Chanukah is oil, Purim is wine.
– The Lubavitcher Rebbe