Excerpt of a shiur given by Rav Eliezer Berland before the reading of the Torah, Parshat Re’eh 5784

This is another one of the Rav’s apparently ‘random’ shiurim that needs a lot of unpacking.

To keep things easier to digest, I will give some basic additional info in the footnotes to the shiur for this post. And then in the next post, we will take a much closer look at R Israel Ber Odessa, the Saba Israel, and the ‘Na Nach’ movement he came to be associated with.

As usual, things are not what they appear to be, at first glance.

(Translated from Shivivei Or 376)

==

Behold, length of days, this is Ben David [the nephew] of the Rabbanit.

This is the most important family, they ascended [to Eretz Yisrael] by foot from Yemen.[1]

From Aden to Cairo, to the Suez Canal. For three years they put them [in Shiloach village – today the location of Silwan], in the caves next to Rabbi Ovadia m’Bartenura.

Now, a book came out about all of his travels, he was by all the graves of the tzaddikim. He wrote that he saw the wife of Lot, who was turned into a pillar of salt. They put the book out.

So she told me, your mother [i.e. Rabbanit Berland] that Rachel Yanit, the wife of Ben Zvi[2], she helped them to get the permissions.

[Rachel Yanit] was the wife of Ben Zvi[3] [former President of Israel].

And Zalman Shazar [who was also a former President of Israel], he made teshuva [because he saw the avodat Hashem of R Israel Ber Odessa.][4]

==

So he [i.e. R Israel Ber Odessa] travelled to Tiberius, to Rabbi Meir Baal HaNess.

At that time, R’ Shlomo Eliezer Alfandari[5], he was 115 years old. This was 100 years ago, because this was in 5774, and now it’s 5784. So it was 110 years ago. He got to Tiberius, to Rabbi Meir Baal HaNess.

And then, he saw R Israel Dov Ber saying Likutey Tefilot all day long.

He was a young man, who’d been bereaved of his father. He only had his mother. He didn’t know anything, only to recite Likutey Tefilot, and the Tehillim.

==

So, Rav Alfandari, he asked the Rav of Tiberius, R Moshe Cleriss [Werner][6]:

Are you paying him something? And that’s why he’s saying this? You should say ‘thank you’ that he’s allowed to be here, and you shouldn’t kick him out of here!

So, R’ Shlomo Eliezer Alfandari told him, everyone is here only in his merit. From now on, give him a double stipend![7]

==

This was R Israel Odessa.

He told me that he knew that the [N-Na-Nach-Nachman] note was shtuyot (nonsense).

He lived by me for a whole year. All of his children used to come to us. But today, all of them are chilonim (secular).

Because he was told to move to Jerusalem, and he didn’t want to. So, all of them became chilonim, except for one, who was a mizrachnit (dati leumi / modern orthodox].

She used to live in Givat Shaul, and he lived with her for a period of time.

She was married to the Israeli Consul in Greece.[8]

So, we tried to get passports via her, in order to travel to Uman. But in the end, it didn’t work out.

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FOOTNOTES:

[1] Rabbanit Tehilla Berland was born to R Avraham Shaki, a member of the Knesset, or Israeli parliament, for the National Religious Party between 1962-5. You can read more about him HERE.

[2] Rachel Yanit Ben-Zvi (1886-1979) was one of the leaders of the radically ‘secular-socialist’HaShomer and Ha-Po’alot movements. She was also a member of the ‘Zionists of Zion’ movement, together with Menachem Ussishkin, who opposed Herzl’s plan to build a Jewish State in Uganda. She moved to Israel in 1908.

There are hints she never actually married Yitzhak Ben-Zvi, but they lived together. She also helped to found the Haganah Jewish Defense movement, which later morphed into the State of Israel’s IDF.

[3] Yitzhak Ben-Zvi (1884-1963) was the second President of Israel for three consecutive terms., and a senior ‘Labor Zionist’ leader. Most historians agree today that he gave the orders to murder Yaakov DeHaan, who was working with R Yosef Sonnenfeld and the Old Yishuv to thwart ‘political zionism’.

Ben Zvi was very close to David Ben Gurion, and was expelled to Egypt, together with him, in 1915. From there, Ben Zvi and Ben Gurion went to New York, where they founded the ‘HeHalutz’ movement. He was also well-liked by the British Mandate officials. British High Commissioner Herbert Samuel (also a Jew, also a member of the interesting families we keep returning to here on the blog) appointed him to represent the Jewish Yishuv in Israel on the Advisory Council on Matters of Palestine in the 1920s.

He was later the chairman and president of the ‘Executive Committee’, and attended the Round Table Conference in London in 1939 in that capacity.

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[4] Elsewhere, the story is told that Zalman Shazar suffered from bouts of terrible depression. When he saw the simple happiness of R Israel Ber Odessa, aka Saba Israel, this cheered him tremendously, and sparked his own journey of making teshuva. Other versions of the story say that Zalman Shazar began his teshuva process when he saw R Israel Ber Odessa recounting the Tikkun Chatzot prayers at midnight.

[5] R Shlomo Eliezer Alfandari was known as the ‘Saba Kadisha’, and he lived to be well over 100. Some accounts say he died when he was 120 years old. Read more about him on Wiki HERE.

[6] I have been unable to track down, so far, who the main rabbi of Tiberius actually was at this period of time.

[7] R Israel Ber Odessa was actually the shamash, or attendant, of R Alfandari while he was living in Tiberius.

[8] It’s possible this was Israel Sheffer, whose son Gil Sheffer worked directly for Netanyahu, overseeing the Prime Minister’s Office until 2013. The Saba Israel’s family tree is full of ‘privates’, so it’s hard to figure it out. BH we will come back to this in the next post.