Yossele Schumacher Calls for Peace Amongst Jewish People

A call to Join www.Shabbat.com from the historic Yossele! Yossele Schumacher was born in Russia and immigrated to Israel as a child with his parents. Due to financial difficulties, his parents requested that Yossele's Haredi grandparents, Nachman and Miriam Straks, take care of him. After a few months, the grandparents were falsely informed that Yossele's parents had written Gromico (the foreign Minister of Russia) that they be able to come back to "Mother Russia" as they have no house , no work and lack of food. Thus, the grandparents were determined that Yossele not go back. Fearing that the Schuchmachers might end up in Russia, the religious community of Jerusalem took the boy from his grandparents and hid the boy in 1960 with another family in Bnei Brak. In the shadow of a court order for his return, the community disguised Schuchmacher as a girl and placed him in the care of a Frenchwoman and convert to Judaism named Ruth Ben-David, who took him with her to Europe. Yossele would spend two years total in France and Switzerland under her care. By this time, authorities in Israel had increased their search efforts, leading Ben-David to again disguise Schumacher as a girl and smuggle him into the United States in March 1962 where he was hidden in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. Following Schuchmacher's disappearance from Israel, the grandparents were imprisoned and police arrested the couple that had hidden the boy in Bnei Brak. Sometime later on, Ruth Ben-David, still in France, was caught and sequestered in a house. After a week of intense interrogation, she buckled. By this point it was July 1962, and with Schuchmacher's location identified, two officials from Shin Bet came to the door of the home Yossele was living at in Williamsburgh and the boy was removed from the house. The abduction of Schuchmacher caused enormous controversy in Israel between many Haredi Jews — who supported the grandparents and claimed that Schuchmacher's parents were communists who wished to bring the boy with them back to Russia — and secular Jews, some of whom yelled in Jerusalem, Epho Yossele? ("Where is Yossele?").