In 1896, Nathan was the ninth of 12 children born to Louis and Dorothy Birnbaum in New York City. In 1903, Louis had a chance to earn some real money, but contracted the flu and died. Nathan, or Nattie, as he was known to his family, started working after his father's death, shining shoes, running errands and selling newspapers.
Nathan—later to become known as George Burns, arguably the greatest man of 20th-century American comedy—was seven at the time. He and three buddies on the Lower East Side formed a singing group called the Pee Wee Quartet.
At the time, a big department store in New York called Siegel & Cooper sponsored an annual picnic. The highlight was a talent contest with all the churches in New York City being represented.
Around the corner from George Burns' home was a little Presbyterian church, and it had no one to enter the contest on its behalf, so the minister asked these four kids to represent his church.
That Sunday, these four Jewish kids, sponsored by the Presbyterian Church, sang in the competition and won first prize. The church received a purple velvet cloth, and each of the children received an Ingersoll wristwatch worth $0.85.
Young Gorge Burns was so excited he ran home to tell his mother. When he arrived, she was hanging out the washing. He rushed up to her and said, "Mama, I don't want to be Jewish anymore."
Calmly, his mother asked, "Why not?"
He said: "I've been a Jew for seven years and got nothing; I was a Presbyterian for one day and I got a watch." He held out his wrist to show his mom.
Wise in the ways of the world, his mother said, "Nathan, my bubbale, first help me hang up the washing, then you can be a Presbyterian."
George Burns concluded the episode: “While I was hanging up the washing, some water dripped from the wet clothes, ran down my arm, and penetrated my watch. It stopped working, so I decided to become a Jew again.”
One of the great mysteries in Tanach is the almost total silence about Gershom and Eliezer, the two sons of Moses. Some of their childhood events are recounted, including the reunion of Moses with his wife and sons in this week's Torah portion, Yitro. But we know nothing at all about them as adults. There is nothing about their development into manhood, their relationship with their illustrious father, or the role they played in the community. It would have been most natural for Moses' sons to have assumed major leadership roles or at least take some part in public life in the wilderness. Why did this not happen? In the entire narrative of the journey in the desert and the conquest of the Promised Land, they are nowhere to be found.
Contrast this, for example, with their first cousins, the sons of Moses’ brother, Aaron. His four sons occupy a significant role in the Torah narrative as the Priests who inaugurated, served in and then transported the Sanctuary.
The question is sharpened by the Jewish law that regards a leadership position as passing from father to son, except where the son is incapable or unsuitable for the task. The Rambam writes:
The anointment of a king comes as a right to him and to his sons forever, and not only kingship but all the positions of authority and the appointments in Israel will be passed down as an inheritance to his son and to his son's son… as long as the son can fill the shoes of his father in wisdom and in fear of G-d… If he lacks fear of heaven, even if he is brilliant, you do not appoint him to any position of leadership among the Jewish people.
Evidently, Gershom and Eliezer did not assume the mantle of leadership from Moses, nor did they receive any other public office, because they were unsuitable for these tasks. Yet the Torah fails to provide us with even a hint as to the problem.
According to Midrash, Moses always hoped that his sons would succeed him in the leadership. In the book of Numbers, when he is notified of his pending passing, Moses said, “Let The Lord… set a man over the congregation… that the congregation of The Lord be not as sheep which have no shepherd.” Rashi, following the Midrash, states that Moses had his own sons in mind, but G-d rejected his request. Why?
G-d said to Moses: "Your sons sat around and did not engage in Torah. Joshua, on the other hand, served you excessively, showed awesome respect to you, arrived early in the morning and came every evening to your yeshiva, organizing the chairs and spreading out the rugs. Since he served you with all his strength, he is the one to continue and serve the Jewish people… As the verse states, He who guards the fig tree shall eat its fruit.”
Yet this in itself is very hard to understand. How is it that Moses, charged with the task of transmitting the Torah to the whole people, failed to instill in his own sons a feeling for Torah? What was it in their upbringing that led Gershom and Eliezer to depart so markedly from the path of their father? Where did Moses “go wrong”? How could he inspire the entire world, and not his own children?
The answer to this mystery seems simple, if sad.
The Torah portion of Yitro begins: “Jethro, Moses's father-in-law, took Zipporah, Moses's wife after he sent her away, and her two sons… to Moses in the desert... at the mountain of G-d.”
What do the words “after he sent her away” mean? Why did he send her away? On this, the Midrash and Rashi share a fascinating story:
"When G-d said to him in Midian, 'Go, return to Egypt,' Moses took his wife and sons [with him]. Aaron [his brother] met him on the Mount of Gād, and asked, 'Who are these?' Moses replied, 'This is my wife, whom I married in Midian, and these are my sons.' He said to him: 'And where are you taking them?' He replied, 'To Egypt.' He said, 'We feel horrible for the Jews already there, and you want to add more Jews to the suffering?' Moses said to his wife, 'Go to your father's house.' She took her two sons and returned home to Midian."
This means that Moses’ two sons never stepped foot into Egypt. They did not witness the oppression, nor the redemption. They did not observe the suffering, nor the deliverance. They were not enslaved, nor did they see the 10 plagues and the redemption. They were not part of the crying or the song when the sea split. They were sheltered in the safety of Midian with their mother and grandfather. They did not eat the Matzah and bitter herbs in that first Seder of Jewish history the night before the Jews left Egypt. They did not feel the pain of Jewish slavery first hand. The message applies to all of us, in one way or another.
We often make the mistake that in order to ensure Jewish continuity, we need to make Judaism easier. The assumption is that the less demanding Judaism is to keep, the more Jews will stay Jewish.
But this is not the case. Let me ask you to list the festivals in order of difficulty. Which is the most difficult Jewish holiday? Everyone will agree that Pesach is the hardest, Shavuot the easiest, and Sukkot somewhere in between. Now which festivals are kept by the greatest number of Jews? Everyone knows the answer: Pesach is kept by most, Shavuot the least, with Sukkot in between. It is counterintuitive but undeniable: the harder a festival is, the more people will keep it. The proof is Yom Kippur, by far the most demanding day of all, and by far the best attended in the synagogue.
In 1989, when Gorbachev first introduced Glasnost to the Soviet Union, he invited an international delegation of rabbis to visit Moscow as a gesture to the Jewish community. They were to spend six days with the Jewish community. Former chief rabbi of Isael, Rabbi Israel Meir Lau, was part of the delegation. They spoke in various synagogues, gave encouragement and inspired many with hope for tomorrow. On their last night in Moscow, an old man named Berel asked Rabbi Lau if he could escort him to his hotel. Rabbi Lau agreed. The shul was about a half hour walk from the hotel.
Reb Berel began to cry. "You come here, you teach, you sing with us, you have Shabbat with us, you lift us up so high, and then you leave us. You go home and we're here alone, back in the pit of despair again. (In those days, shortly after the fall of the Soviet Union, there was absolutely no infrastructure of Jewish life in the country.)
Rabbi Lau said, "Reb Berel, how old are you?"
"I'm 86 years old."
"What do you do for a living?"
"I'm a butcher, but I have not seen meat in years."
"Reb Berel, the Russians won't care if you leave. I made some connections here. Let me work on it tonight, andtomorrow you can join the flight back to Israel. You'll be out of the pit for good."
The old man let out a loud sigh. "Oh, to see Jerusalem; to touch the Western Wall; to breathe the air of our homeland. It is a dream come true. What I wouldn't do to kiss the land of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob."
And then Berel stopped short, and continued: "How much can a person think only of himself? I have one daughter and she married out, a Russian gentile. They don't live near Moscow. She has two children, two young Jewish boys. One is nine and the other is seven. My grandchildren. Once a month my daughter brings my grandchildren to visit their grandfather. That day is so dear to me. I get dressed up in my Shabbat clothes and I place one grandson on one knee, the second grandson on the other knee, and I say with them, "Shema Yisrael Hashem Elokainu Hashem Echad." I say with them, "Torah Tziva Lanu Moshe." I teach them about Moshe Rabbeinu. I teach them about Shabbat, Rosh Hashanah, and Pesach. I teach them who they are. I sing with them the melodies I heard from my mother and grandmother; I share with them our story, a story that began thousands of years ago and is still going strong.
"Those two hours a month are the only two hours of Judaism they get and they are the most precious hours of my entire month. If I leave with you to Israel, who will tell them they are Jewish? Who will see to it that the chain continues? Who will teach them to be proud to be Jews?"
Somewhere in the world today, there are two brothers, in their 30's, and they know about their heritage. They know that they are "messengers," that they are part of a chain because their grandfather was willing to sacrifice for them.
But this is not an isolated story about one elderly Jew in the former Soviet Union. Every one of us is the grandchild, great-grandchild or great-great-grandchild of someone who made a tremendous sacrifice so that the Jewish spark would stay alive in their family, and Judaism would remain vibrant in their lives. With the amount of persecution our nation has been through, without these sacrifices, we would not be here today as Jews.
One of the great Talmudic sages, Rabbi Pereida, had a student who needed to have a lesson repeated 400 times in order to digest it properly. Imagine! 400 times it took him to get it. And Rabbi Pereida did just that: He taught him each lesson 400 times.
One day, during their learning, a man approached and asked Reb Pereida to join him for a Mitzvah. But Reb Pereida first finished the lesson.
Yet, this time around, even after 400 times, the student still didn’t understand. Concerned for the student’s learning, the Rabbi lovingly asked why this time was different than others. The student explained that once he saw that someone asked the Rebbe to come do a Mitzvah he was concerned that at any minute his teacher would interrupt the lesson, hence he could not concentrate well and he did not get it. The very thought that he will not get it, did not allow him to get it.
What would you do in such a situation?
Rabbi Pereida told him: This time concentrate well, and I will teach it to you another 400 times!
The Talmud continues that a Divine Voice emerged offering Rabbi Pereida the choice of either 400 years added to his life, or merit for the next world for him and his entire generation. Rabbi Pereida chose the latter, and G-d said, “Give him both.”
Clearly, the student was not the most gifted learner, and seemingly, the Rabbi’s time and effort could have been more favorably invested elsewhere. Yet the Rabbi did not forsake him even after hundreds of attempts to teach him, as long as the student was there to learn. This is the type of unwavering commitment and dedication our people had for educating our children with Torah and Mitzvot, even if the challenge was formidable.
Reb Pereida’s characteristic choice of self-sacrifice for this student entitled him to a reward both personally, and for the collective Jewish People.
Shabbat Shalom,
Rabbi Yoseph Geisinsky
Tom Peacock wrote...