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Jewish The WeekHistory In News By Rabbi Pini Dunner Rav of Young Israel North Beverly Hills
JANUARY 26, 2017 | The Jewish Home
Jewish History
Memoirs Of A Forgotten Rabbi The Troubled Life Of Rabbi Tzvi Hirsch Ferber PART I Rabbi Tzvi Hirsch Ferber (18831966) was a Lithuanian-born Torah scholar who spent most of his adult life as the spiritual leader of a small community in the West End of London. He remained there for over 50 years, struggling to maintain his dignity and his principles in a setting that was completely indifferent to the things he found important. His relationship with the lay-leadership of his community, as well as with his fellow employees, was fraught with difficulty and tension, as all of them were people devoid of any sensitivity to Jewish ritual law and they tended to run the synagogue as a moneymaking operation, without taking Jewish law or the rabbi into consideration. Rabbi Ferber was a no-nonsense strictly observant Orthodox rabbi of the old school, and highly regarded for his Torah scholar in the world beyond his own community. During the many decades he led his community, he took to writing so that he could feel creative and productive, and was also a regular visitor at the nearby reading room of the British Museum, where he became a familiar fixture and was given unfettered access to ancient Hebrew manuscripts and published books that were no longer in print. He began publishing books of Torah commentary before the Second World War and continued to publish books well into his old age. These books were his outlet, his only source of job satisfaction throughout his ‘exile’, as he referred to his life. They were all very well written, and contained well constructed ideas that demonstrated a wealth and breadth of knowledge, as well as a literary ability that surpassed many contemporary colleagues. The introductions to his books often contained small anecdotes from his private life, or stories of his youth and his family history. But these were peripheral to the overall book content, which was always Torah oriented, focused on generic and impersonal topics relating to Torah portions, or festivals, or prayer, or other such topics, rather than issues emerging out of his private life. But even these small glimpses were revealing, whetting the appetite for more information about the author of these incredible books. After his death in 1966, Rabbi Ferber, a marginal figure in his lifetime, receded into the footnotes of orthodox Jewish history in the UK, and might easily have
been totally forgotten had it not been for the discovery of his unpublished memoirs at around the turn of the twenty first century. The story of the memoirs is itself fascinating – how did they come to be written, and why did they remain unpublished for so long? The story of the memoirs’ bizarre compilation and history, as well as the remarkable narrative contained in the memoir itself, is the story that will be exclusively told by Rabbi Pini Dunner in the columns of this newspaper in the weeks and months ahead. It is a story that will reveal the extraordinary life of a devout immigrant rabbi whose origins were in the aristocracy of Lithuanian Jewry, but who became trapped by circumstances in a rabbinic position he despised, and in a world that was changing beyond all recognition. The name Rabbi Tzvi Hirsch Ferber z”l was familiar to me already at a very young age. It was uttered with reverence, with respect, and with incredible admiration. Rabbi Ferber’s books on the shelf at my parents’ home were well used and very tatty. My late father z”l would regularly adorn our Friday night table with Torah ideas drawn from these books, ideas which were insightful, satisfying and original. There was a particular pride in the fact that their author had been a London rabbi, someone who my father and his family had known during his lifetime. Indeed, when my grandfather, Rabbi Yosef Tzvi Dunner z”l, was appointed as the presiding rabbi of London’s Union of Orthodox Hebrew Congregations in 1960, and soon afterwards as a member of the rabbinical executive of the Agudat Israel of Europe, he regularly made the trip to London’s West End, to consult with Rabbi Ferber, and discuss communal issues both at home and with reference to Orthodox Jewry around the world. There was, however, a curiosity in all this that was not lost on me, even in my youth. How was it possible that this extraordinary man, this revered leader, lived in the West End of London? Strictly Orthodox Jews all knew that the West End was a spiritual desert, a place devoid of Torah, a place where all the resident Jews, besides for a minute number of exceptions, were not Sabbath observant. How could it be that this great man managed to sustain his own status as a leader for, and person who gave advice to, people who lived in the areas of London in which devout Orthodoxy had established itself, areas quite a distance from his home, and in which
Mrs Freida Ferber, whose untimely passing at the age of 50 in 1934 prompted her grieving husband to begin writing his memoirs
there were a number of other serious Torah scholars and esteemed rabbis? It was a puzzle that remained unsolved. We were told that Rabbi Ferber was a man of principle, a man of vision, a man of clarity. That his advice was considered Torah wisdom; the unbiased, untainted view of a man who had his roots in the pre-war world of Lithuanian Jewry. But this only made it all the more curious! What was he doing in the West End? Why had he never moved to the centers of observant Jewish life that had emerged in London during the years between the First World War and the Second World War? And perhaps most importantly how was it possible that he had managed to keep up his level of Judaism, as required of all religious Jews, but in particular to maintain his revered status, in the midst of the spiritual desert in which he lived? As the years went by Rabbi Ferber slipped away from my consciousness. When I arrived at Gateshead Yeshiva one of my earliest friends there was a boy called Tzvi Gurwitz. As the great-grandson of Rabbi Ferber and born shortly after his death, he was named after him. But no one mentioned Rabbi Ferber. It was his other grandfather, Rabbi Leib Gurwitz z”l, the late esteemed Rosh Yeshiva of Gateshead, who gave him standing with the other boys in the yeshiva. The memory of Rabbi Ferber had faded away, and although many individuals continued to benefit from his numerous published works – especially after they were republished in the mid-1980s
Rabbi Tzvi Hirsch Ferber of London (1883-1966)
– the strictly Orthodox community, and certainly the non-Orthodox community, had forgotten this great man. The history of his memoirs is therefore of some interest. Their publication will probably propel their author into the public consciousness from which he has been absent for decades. His books are all out of print, and the men who consulted him regularly have all passed on or long retired from their public positions. Those who knew him and appreciated him, or heard his Torah lectures and speeches and appreciated them, are also long departed or very elderly. His children have all died, and just a few years ago the last of his sons-in-law, Mr Chaim Lewis, whom I knew well, died at the age of 98 in London. So where have these memoirs been since they were written? How did they come to be written? Why were they never published? Were they meant for publication? How did I obtain them? Why am I publishing them and for whom? I will try to answer all these questions in the lines that follow, so that the readers of Rabbi Ferber’s memoirs can fully appreciate what it is that they are reading, and understand how and why the memoirs have come to be published by me after all these years. In 1934, after a period of difficult illness, Rabbi Ferber’s beloved wife Freida passed away at the young age of 50. Details of how she died, and the devastation her death caused for her husband and children, are described in detail in the memoirs. What Rabbi Ferber does not describe