Dovi Safier Previews: A Light From Lublin

due to some technical difficulties we were having with a microphone some of my audio is unclear it is my pleasure to have Dobby Safir some people pronounce his name Schaefer Zephyr he'll tell us exactly how to pronounce his name but I think I gotta write to share with us very quickly it is air of circus and he just released through magazine a beautiful article to have not yet read on Romero Shapiro it is called I believe Echoes of Lublin maybe that's the music he'll talk about all the details but it is my pleasure to be able to put this out on the altar platform and share it and you could I think still pick up your magazine go quickly because they do sell out before grand theft and make sure you get a copy of that so first of all how are you today excellent excellent um you got it right I think you are the first one ever I've done a bunch of interviews you're the first person ever Devi Safir actually even though it's spelled with an O and it's spelled yes it's not my fault you could blame my parents excellent okay so you know we both growing up you know I think we both listen to sports radio um there was this guy I think he's an old man by now um Mike Francesca and he's like I think he always was like I'm gonna present like the other side of what everyone else is saying so I'm assuming that your article about Shapiro is not going to be focusing on dafia maybe that's probably what most people known for he was many other things so maybe you want to begin with that is that a correct assumption that the focus of the article is not about yeah I think that uh the the project well when I started speaking about it with my editors at Mishra about a year ago the overall project is more than just an article I called it uh uh project Romeo Shapiro without tafia that because I'm a post is not here me but uh because I think that uh a lot has been written about that side of Romano Shapiro Romero Shapiro never merited and his wife malcolo never merited to have children of their own and he would refer to his two children as dafyami and um and we'll see as part of this project maybe there's a third child involved which is his music um which really has outlasted him um and continues and some of these songs which you didn't realize probably or hey as you know as you hear the you know the musical album so uh it's a it's a multi-faceted project um called the the article is called the light from the blood of light I don't even remember but interestingly that the night until the night before it was called building for eternity because I wanted really to focus more on you know building the Yeshiva and the title and then a friend of mine pointed out that building for eternity is also the name of the new book written by Israel basser on the great philanthropist Paul my reifman so uh we decided not to go with that so light from leblind a light from leblind is really a play on his name mayor um light um and uh as you'll see um at the end of the article after you read the whole article you're rewarded with a little peace from myself and Shirley Bornstein and noted definitely maggotier maybe they noted that human cheer called from yavneh to leblen which discusses was essentially a lighthouse then emitted Torah across Poland across Eastern Europe which helped enable dafyami um and I'll I'll just you know I'll leave you to read that to get the full details because I think it's it's definitely better to you know when you read it than when I say it over or at least hear from him so you've written articles in the past you know you write one every week which is uh certainly an interesting unique way of presenting Jewish history but you've written some longer articles most recently about Jenny Fagan Miller you've written about the bells of Rebel you've written about old men in nursing homes and a few others what guy into the near Shapiro was it some family connection personal connection something you dug up in an archive and like you ended up in some rabbit hole like oh wow this is great if you tell us a little about that um so so I think that when you get into and and I've asked this question to many uh historians rabbis friends who are the most influential figures um and 20th Century Judaism um definitely when you talk about the first half of the 20th century pre-war um and whose impact right still is still very much with us I think there's probably a few figures that you can get into pre you know talking about pre-war um somebody once asked roshishiva um this question um who are the most influential figures um you know the past half century um this is I guess was it was sometime in the middle of the 20th century and he said that there are three people that he's very much of a kind of he's jealous of the they have one Israel Shapiro because he got the balabatum lemon to learn dafyami second was Sarah schneer because she enabled the revolution which was base yaakov and uh as a Byron Cutler and Romero Shapiro both said that yeshivas and colomb could not exist without basiakos because it would be nobody for anyone to marry um and and everyone knows what the situation was with women at the time especially in Poland for the war um and the third person he mentioned was to get a rubber because he got his stadium before his man but uh in all seriousness when you look at those who have had a lasting impact 20th century or first half of 20th century figures that have had a lasting impact you can talk about the altar of sabotka who's tell me them um you know really built uh the the post-war Toro World um you get into sarsnir right you can get an and you can get into I I think there there are several others but but uh but when you talk about today the person that affects our lives um definitely when it comes to a male I think the answers of Mary Shapiro because because of that Fury and because changed change the entire trajectory of the casino system and even the greater Yeshiva system um and when I write I either like to take somebody that people don't know about at all or really you know don't know much about um remember Leo young was an example I felt like he was someone that people knew his name and they totally misunderstood and underestimated his impact um on Clyde's role as a whole and uh Jenny Miller who people had never heard of before and that I've written at the same time about uh about alter about the altar of sabotica about uh Schmo resubsky people like that um who are who are better known but uh in this case with Romero Shapiro I'm really focusing on the less known aspect which is the Yeshiva and people think they do know about maybe they've been there on tours but I'm telling you you read the article you'll discover you really don't know that much or you don't know as much as you thought you did because there really is a lot that's never been written for so you mentioned changing the trajectory of Yeshiva system I'm sure someone whose article will get a fuller understanding you want to tell us what that means then in Europe and even today has been affected by the way Shapiro um built out very very much so so hillsideman the the famous uh survivor of the war of the ghetto the Yiddish uh writer he says uh he wrote once about polish yeshivas included in the art in this in the article and he wrote you know one of the main issues with yeshiva's was the sectarianism securianism how how these and the partisanship how these yeshivas were strictly for those that belonged that will see them of that rabba and parents were afraid you know if they belonged to a certain Hasidic Dynasty and let's say that dynasty didn't have the best issue but they would never send them you know they wouldn't they wouldn't send them to a different Revolution because they were afraid that they would lose them to that rubber you know he almost jokes that they were more afraid of losing him to another hasidist and they worked losing him to one of the isms uh of the time um and Ramirez Shapiro saw a need for an elite Yeshiva which could include all kinds of them that he himself was a shark giver and the charcoal rabbit was very much behind this idea and the girl rabbit was by this idea as well he tried Gareth experimented with an idea like this the Warsaw which I would say was not a successful experiment for several reasons but uh it had its it had its time for a few years or I guess it was a you know mild success but um was done in a way that was so Grand and it made such noise that anybody who was an elite Hasidic student from really across the world they wanted to come to this Yeshiva um you know I've gone through the art the archives the Yeshiva which amazingly still exists mostly and you could see the applications that were sent in and and the vast very vast majority were not accepted but everyone had some kind of way you know that they thought they were going to get there you know to get into the Yeshiva because everybody wanted to be there even if they didn't belong there they knew they weren't up for it they figured maybe maybe some way I could weasel my way in because you know uh Ruby Chief Rabbi Israel mayor Lau told me this story and he said it many times he's actually named for mayor Shapiro was his father's first cousin you know he talks about how in the I guess also other YouTubers open the um the Yeshiva bokram would sleep in stores at night they were hired out as watch I mean in exchange for for being Watchmen in the stores they were locked into these stores at night and you can only imagine what that was like and you talk about you know you're trying to raise the Rama of Torah and you have Yeshiva at night are locked into stores as Watchmen um right he and remember Shapiro famously said at the uh at the opening of Yeshiva or the groundbreaking I remember which one we have to thank the thieves in Poland right because if not for them we wouldn't have had any yeshivas but um overall I think that the the Yeshiva was very different from this Yeshiva in that it was basically centered around the court of the Rebel and there was not an organized per se Yeshiva with a proper Shiva there were no it was a dorm they really weren't even meals whether it was the tag system or or but it was not a and I use you could see in the article I share several anecdotes um from different Memoirs different people who shared with me um you know ways that yeshivas you know it was difficult you know there was definitely not there was not a lot of pride in being part of these you know being uh all that so it's very interesting it seems to be he had this combination of elitist a concerning elitism right there you have to be like Top Notch to get in um but at the same time like he wanted this to be have an effect on the regular personal so I wonder how that like actually played a role like in modern day not modern day Modern Day Poland at that time so actually I I we answered that question it's really we're surely Boston and I tried answering that question in the essay we wrote that follows the articles I think it's a good question but I'll let the the that essay do the talking perfect okay I want to jump because I know which is probably fascinating to many people who are living in the United States of America I'm sure a vast majority of people who made all this I've never ever heard of path middleblind it might be on their bucket list to visit one day I'm sure you could tell them that it's a good place to check out get a good understanding of what Yeshiva looked like the building is intact um I personally have ever been there I wanted to go there but um last minute cancellation um but I'm going to talk about that his trip to America what was it different than just a standard fundraising trip that storm only of the grocery list of that time Cape Town America know I mean at the same time which I'm sure ties into this romance Shapiro was in the the breath of his capabilities was just beyond what he was involved in as a Russian as as a ROV as an orator as as a politician is I'm I'm throwing a lot in my ones let me Focus first on the American part then I think the oratory skills came in very much you know in the way he interacted with people in America so so it's fascinating so if mayor Shapiro was a was a uh a congressman right he's a member of The Polar stem um which was done in 1922 um the the Agora sisral had had kind of in the first seven 1918 um they had two representatives and they felt like they weren't pulling their weight and they figured that if they United in a it was the only time it happened in Israel later on but the united with the Mizrahi and all the other minority parties into a block and and they figured that one of the ways to get people to go out and vote was to put up godalia Israel especially charismatic ones to run and it's unconventional thing but you know uh or the part of it was in the Lithuanian Parliament right it's not a it's not an unprecedented thing but uh Romero Shapiro ran um and he he became this figure that was known throughout Poland in that already then in 1942 and 1923 is when he gives his famous speech at the first concealer godolls Israel where really people don't realize this but that fiomi was a small part of his announcement his talk at that casino you're really more focused on the plight of the yeshivas in Poland um and out of that a few months later the the beginning of the campaign to build Hotmail blind um was announced and he raised money in Poland and then he went to Western Europe to try and raise some money and uh he was he was mostly unsuccessful in Western Europe um in places like Germany it was really he his you know he was in the rebel but you should figure like that does not really you know it doesn't necessarily so so I think his goal in America was to raise six figures I'm sorry I have a sinus infection and I'm sneezing and I'm sniffling and it's it's I hope you're part of me for that his goal in America was to raise a hundred thousand dollars or so let's say I I don't remember the exact figure and I'm not sure if we even have that um what about his trip to America like why was it so he he arrived in America kind of thinking this is gonna be like Europe you'd go around induction about the importance of Tara and the Yeshiva and what was going on to see the world at the moment and I think he realized pretty quickly that there wasn't that much interest in that in America I think that that you know this is this is this is one of the first trips taken by a Gaga blue Israel to America during into war years um it was a trip taken by the clichemda and a couple of others in 1921 on behalf of a good sister all the major trip we know about was on behalf of the essential invented committee wizard of cook the driver of rum and her motion Mordecai Epstein and the material Herald which one did you know about that I don't think most people know about that one they know about your trip they bought bear trip yeah but but uh I think the the oh one second I think that you you you learned in uh yes you know about that but I think people know about that 1924 trip they're definitely seen pictures of it um you know those those pictures of them wearing still fight hats and and that trip was about raising money for relief in the wake of World War One um for the yeshivists um for the Carolina um and the next trip was was a Romero Shapiro and he came I would say somewhat unprepared um for for dealing with America um and his first few months were a dismal failure um and I think what changed was he realized that um if he was gonna go and speak about politics and speak about world affairs which he was an expert on it was an expert in history he was an expert really in everything which is so fast and his wit is you know he's got going through his you know going through newspaper articles and just seeing you know the quotes from him you know all the cuff are are incredible and I've included many of these I'm not going to spoil them here um in the article but but in America he realized that being a politician um you know I'll give you one short example he's in Cincinnati and and they were asking him about you know prohibition and he was talking about how in Poland you know they have a in the wake of World War One and uh Civil War there you know there was uh there was a huge deficit in America believe it or not you know 100 years ago had had a government had a surplus uh budgetary Surplus in the federal government so he remembers said you guys have prohibition and you don't have any vodka he says uh you know jokingly he says well you know you provide us with money we'll provide you with vodka but uh his wit wasn't was in Torah his wit was was in a sense humor is what was in his ability to really he's really able to converse any subjects and you see the titles of the speeches they quickly morphed from from Torah lectures to discussions about politics world affairs and people came out to hear this Rabbi this Majestic Rabbi who was a member of the ceremony traveled from New York all the way you know he stopped in in conventional places like you'd imagine Baltimore and Philadelphia and Boston and Detroit obviously Detroit was was a major place at that time because they're also a casino but uh Cleveland and then and then he went out west as far as places like uh Omaha and Denver Colorado and then he turned back but all in all he raised about uh about seventy thousand dollars after expenses we travel and PR and probably some commissions of he had to pay the people that helped him he raised fifty three thousand dollars which I think was a disappointment but compared to what happened the first few months he he came back you know uh feeling pretty decent about it and he was able to finish most of the issue and she ended up opening up he came back in in the middle of 1927 Yeshiva opened two and a half years later uh was never completed until 1938 actually the first five floors were finished the sixth floor which actually was named for Jenny Miller Fagan who paid for it um was not finished until the second CMS was just held in Yeshiva in 1938. there's so much to talk about I mean the Yeshiva itself told famous library with Yeshiva and some of this farm that are coming out whether they're you comment whether they're you know on with the stands in the classroom Library um you could talk about um you have to mention that he died at a very young age so um everything that he accomplished happened at a very young age you also mentioned um just commenting that Rabbi Lau is named after him I think of things a nice strong mayor right um I just a very interesting anecdote one year I emailed out um at today's Arts I learned in memory of uh in his name and everything and then I got an email back from someone it's actually a message someone I know someone you know as well I don't know if she would want me to say her name publicly she says thank you so much I just had my fifth board I believe and we were thinking about who to give the name after and I got this message this email and I named my son after I expect my husband and we thought he's like a perfect person the name after um and they mean their baby after after Rabbi after marriage Shapiro so that's an interesting ending babe they're maybe just talk about you know if you want to wrap this up I don't want to keep you here that long and again everyone should please magazine even though there's not a paid commercial for Mr Speaker but we put our ads there so um yeah I think it's I think uh just to add on I think it's important the the article is online but I think the online version is not a complete version it lacks a lot of what what's in the uh print edition the print edition actually has a pull out poster which kind of maps out his trip across America all the interesting uh people he meets the places he goes some of the some of the stuff he uh he spoke about and really just scratches the surface I wish I would have had more I couldn't give a share or anyone who's there uh no but he did give sure he gave us your at REITs and after he gave it sure reads there's there were four tell me them there including the father of uh America who wrote uh um Rabbi Drazen as well from uh Baltimore I'm Sorry by tabach from Baltimore who has a very interesting Memoir by the way worth reading um who wrote a letter uh to the one of the English papers uh stalling that chair which was in Paris I believe um he gave a Sharon in the in HTC which we now know is the Skokie Yeshiva he gave me Shiva Ashira and Yeshiva Islamic Kluger which is now known as Hassan Cipher and he also gave a share in tarvidas where he met a young man named whose name is godalia sure 16 year old and he was blown away by him and he gave him a save for his safer or mayor he inscribed it I think he realized who this man was going to become um he'd also die at a young age but he spent shabasim in bar Park and he spent Shabbos in Williamsburg um and uh there's a lots of you know there's lots of cute things there's lots of sad things when you think about what America work was at the time that people would bring their children to see this man who was like you know okay this is your chance to see one of these people one of these figures it'll be extinct pretty soon you know I saw him in Europe I told you about them so I'm going to take you to see him and we'll give him a couple of dollars too but you know nothing too significant but going back to the Yeshiva side there are some Unsolved Mysteries the library is is the membership Bureau set out to build the largest um Jewish library in the world definitely he built large Yeshiva library in the world the estimates for the amount of storm they had were anywhere from 40 to 80 000 I've seen different numbers but these things tend to be exaggerated by the Yiddish press but we don't know what happened to the library for many years people believed there was a whole story went around that the Nazis burnt it they set a huge bonfire and they burnt the farm as far as we know that story is not true there's no there were no eyewitnesses that went back and reported on it and it was not something the Nazis usually did because why would they take a very valuable Library well they valuable libraries they carted off at Prague where they were going to have a museum of the extinguish race um so and this Farm have cropped up over the years from that Library definitely a few hundred of them some of them are different yeshivas throughout Israel different Mahones but we don't know what happened the vast majority of that library is still missing who knows maybe at some point uh we'll find it um there's uh there's a friend of mine who I met someone who a Polish researcher's name is I don't want to pronounce his name wrong Peter Nazareth who's been researching this subject and has been trying to create a digital library um with all anybody who has these uh these stamps of the Yeshiva he's asked them they send them in and he's posting them online and he's trying to track them but that's a fascinating subject the model of the base of migdush which they had in Yeshiva because mayor Shapiro and his love was very dedicated to learning kutchem and as part of that they had a beautiful you know model of the base samigdush which which an artist uh named I forget his first name then Weintraub spent a couple of years First Learning and traveling really to different museums different archives understanding everything he could about the base immigration and then building this incredible model um I actually have in there the insurance policy for twenty thousand slantes that they had for the Mesa make Dash um my guess it was never collected upon um but um that was just one feature of the Yeshiva but uh the dormitories the you know the fact that they had a dining room and they were served every meal with by waiters on Fine China um right some of like the famous stuff what'd you say laundry they talked about the laundry yeah everyone everybody was it's a little bit Eerie uh in hindsight but everyone in Yeshiva was assigned a number and they would have that number sewn on their clothing and everything and then they would leave their clothing outside the room and by the end of the day they would have it larger for them which I could have used in these shoes that I went to right I'm not sure if any issues have it today Furious it let us know I'm curious about that um one last one last question it's almost half an hour I don't want to keep you and and they're like a person like that people don't know about who's like his right hand man like you know a lot of times it's a girl like who has an unknown person or a couple of unknown people like maybe you uncover in this article I have no idea so it's very interesting mayor Shapiro was only alive for for less than three years of the yeshiva's existence right he spent six years fundraising for it he died in 1933 when you shoot it open in the middle of 1930. so right we're approaching his 90th yard site now so the last six years or so six and a half years of the Yeshiva were without him so the Yeshiva struggled in the beginning to find its uh find the rashiva there's there are people like with shock that were considered you know Lithuanian uh Russia that were considered even um but the two figures that stand out and I I write about the moments extensively but definitely give them a decent amount of coverage was number one was the who was there during a mayor's time um who was another world we otherworldly figured he was a kabbalist um he was someone that was just totally he lived he lived really in a different world um everyone who who spoke about him was a was a town was a close talmud of his um you know this the way they speak about him you don't you don't hear others spoken about that way by good Island so there was something there but but his style was really different than her Mayors and ultimately after a mayor passed away was was looked at as something that was extreme by the Schulte which was the committee that was set up to guide the Yeshiva and they went through a bunch of different Russia's for short times and ultimately the culture Glover about known as The kajal Glover gun rhc or CIA frommer ended up being the rashiva and you know his his Torah has made a comeback uh in recent years anybody who attended why you knows in the library his half-brother dedicated um dedicated one of the floors as a plaque to him so they may be familiar with him from back then but kosher Glover's tire has made a definitely a comeback in recent time but when you look at the you know you look at newspaper articles from Italian Memoirs what they talk about when he talked about the culture Glover his Holiness young boy his daughter his whole avoida was was something really really really special um and uh you know he took a trip in 1935 with his Reba the rebel of sakachov which is also you know both he and her mayor had plans to try and settle which never happened or mayor said originally Hattie had he thought about it he would have originally settled you know really originally set up the issue winner so so the the the culture Glover is another figure definitely worth reading but here and exploring further a new book came out from him from Hebrew from uh Rabbi damage was done a lot of research on this both of Ray Shapiro uh and on the culture Glover his father was a student there okay excellent so I'm looking forward to reading the article on any last words what someone should look forward to obviously the music you mentioned let me just one minute what do you do with the music at the beginning when I when I embarked when we came up with this idea about a year ago the project I said if we're doing a marriage Shapiro we've got to bring back his music I think that people they know many of his songs they don't know all of them maybe you know them a little bit but I think that something that it was done many years ago somebody put out an album or a medley and uh I I wanted it to be brought back um and uh team but along with it um you know they and uh Ellie Marcus and Shia birko two great singers um Ellie is an old friend of mine um she uh I haven't yet gotten to know but they do a great job uh the album is called Echoes of leblind it's available Apple music Spotify 24 6 mishra.com wherever you get your music um and it's worth listening to and I think you'll be singing these songs the whole circus definitely a simple style from some of these songs like ashrae ish um are already sung in many shows but um really uh these are beautiful songs that I'm happy that we're able to share them once again okay thank you let's do this again maybe the outside's coming up seeing them on saying they're nothing's coming up I'm sure that many other things that you have uh in that little study of yours that you might be interested in sharing one day so you always invited back for future discussions when we both have more time next time I want to go on with a loser brought so lizard brought absolutely anytime I'm sure he'll be I don't think your background is as um all catching as is actually what we do with him which might be something you might have been doing because after we finish a podcast if you want to do it right now put you on the spot when you've done a podcast we said you want to share some interesting book or say for that you have in your study and he turns around and pulls one and talks about it for a minute so if you want to do that I'm not going to ask you how many hours you sleep at night um when you go on my chefkins podcast you could answer that question but if you want a book on your desk maybe hold it to this do you wanna you wanna uh let's see let's cinnamon right here this book right here although it's a little bit of a tease because it's kind of hard to find kalbach one of the great rabbinic Martyrs of the Holocaust somebody who really reshaped um who helped interestingly was a chaplain during World War one who who was sent um together with uh within princess card I believe to um to Covenant to to be the uh rabbinic uh guide or figure in that district and he helped build schools for girls he really helped the Lithuanian Jews organize in a German Way ultimately got was involved in the Karen Atari was a close friend of Mayor Shapiro there's a it's a great story with him or mayor Shapiro which is in the article um but uh he is somebody that absolutely is worth learning about from the famous singers and son or grandson that was the mosquitoes if you can't get the book which I know is hard to get hold of Ryan Lobby has a long talk about him somewhere where you can get a hold of which is also he spoke about him Kishore one year and uh spoke about his martyrdom and um really his life uh his entire life was one big kid um and um I first learned about him from Yeshiva um who was a very great nephew of his I want to make a mistake um but um he he's he's absolutely uh somebody that everyone should know about if they don't already okay we can go on and on there's a lot to talk about thank you very much have a good time you're happy of the mishpaka get the music going I already listened to it on my 24 6 apps good stuff okay preventative thank you for having me let's see