The Joyful Digging of Ditches
Rabbi Lipnick’s real passion in life, education began early and was the hallmark of his career as a rabbi and it was his relationship with Congregation B’nai Amoona that had always been the canvas that he considered his life since becoming a Rabbi. The story of how he got to education and the pulpit, took a circuitous path.
Rabbi Lipnick didn’t serve in WWII, a decision that has weighed heavily on him almost his entire life. In 1944 he became a pre-rabbinic student at Johns Hopkins University and was given a deferment as a result of entering that program. He finished Hopkins and went on to become Rabbi Lipnick when he graduated from the seminary in 1951. However, he carried a heavy guilt for not serving. He wanted to resolved the guilt by joining the Chaplaincy — he would become a chaplain and serve in Korea in 1951.
As he was preparing to graduate in March and April of his last year at the seminary, he was arranging to go into the chaplaincy. His first preference was the Navy and they really wanted him. but he would have to pass a physical. He headed to Governors Island in New York and promptly failed it. He had high blood pressure (but not really, it was a thing that responded to the cuff and could never get a normal reading). He was devastated and came back and saw the seminary doctor. “We’ll arrange a thing. Take these pills, make the appointment, and make preparations. Sleep, don’t not excited, take a friend, don’t walk steps, don’t open doors, light breakfast.”
He arrived at back at Governors Island following the prescribed advice. He took the pills, he had prepared, slept, took a friend, didn’t walk the steps, didn’t open doors and ate a light breakfast. He failed again and worse than the first time. Dejected, he went and saw the head Chaplain and asked him to help. The head Chaplain of the Navy offered to do his best.
Summer was coming for 1951 — Lou Neuman was to become the director of Ramah in WI. Rabbi had been in Maine and the Poconos (at Ramah). Lou had recruited him to be the head counselor at Ramah. Lou had a theory based on John Dewey about education that he wanted to impose on Ramah in Wisconsin. Rabbi was recruited and Lou insisted he become familiar with Dewey and his methods. Rabbi and Lou dove in and spent the year on what they would do; the atmosphere they would create and the methods they would employ in teaching this young captive audience.
By the time he failed the second physical it was time for camp. Rabbi still wanted to go to the Navy but packed and headed off to Wisconsin and Ramah. While at Ramah Rabbi gets an invitation to go to the Army’s Fort McCoy in WI to become a patient in that hospital. If they could get one normal reading he could get in. Buoyed by the invite, Rabbi left Ramah for five days that could change his life. He found his way to Fort McCoy and was admitted to the Officer’s clinic with Marines that were just returning from Korea. He was there for 3 days. The nurse was surreptitious and persistent on getting the reading. Although they treated him fabulously — the nurse would sneak in in the middle of the night, at odd times, the meal table and even in more private times. Try as the staff might to make him comfortable Rabbi failed again and after three days.
Devastated about failing to gain the chaplaincy and having no job and no prospects he came back to camp. It was clearly the best thing that ever happened to the young Rabbi. The educational experience at Ramah was like none other. It was powerful and helped to determine his whole approach to education. What struck Rabbi was how different these kids where from the East Coast. He related and loved them. They were very different from the East coast kids he grew up with and knew. He took to working with Lou to realize much of what they had planned that previous year. So throwing himself into the Ramah experience he was taken completely by surprise when the vice chancellor at the seminary called him. The conversation was brief and the Chancellor told him that there was a job he wanted him to take in St. Louis.
He told him he wouldn’t accept an assistant Rabbi unless it was an educator’s position. He had two St. Louis kids at Ramah from this very synagogue — B’nai Amoona. If these were the kids B’nai Amoona was sending then he would be interested.
So Rabbi makes his arrangements to come to St. Louis. He came defeated and depressed about being unable to serve in WWII and about failing to redeem himself for not serving. At the time, St. Louis had the second largest educational system next to Park Synagogue. Rabbi Halpern offered him the position. Rabbi reiterated that he didn’t want to be Halpern’s assistant. But I want the Education Director. But he would fill in as needed.
Halpern had a disagreement with Kling (his assistant) and had gotten him because the congregation insisted. So Kling came as head of the school, didn’t know much about education. The clashed on theology — Kling was re-constructionist and Halpern was a traditional. Halpern didn’t want an assistant and was thrilled. Rabbi moved here and lived with the Halpern’s for 7 months the Rebitzen kicked him out. She cooked for him and he lived in the 3rd floor of Rabbi Halpern’s house.
He came to BA on a rebound and never really left. Rabbi has never had a contract with B’nai Amoona. Rabbi has had always maintained that he works for God, Israel and Torah. He has never been an employee for B’nai Amoona. Rabbi has never been “our” rabbi. He has always been his own man and this has served him well for almost 60 years. It is a unique experience among Rabbis and indeed Clergy around the world.
From his first steps onto a boat bound for Israel, fighting for Israel to keep its Independence, his steps marching on Montgomery and with King in Washington, opening minyan to women, seeing the synagogue move homes, the raising of his beloved Shechter, his retirement, a bypass, retrieving an imprisoned Torah, Rabbi Lipnick witnessed events great and small, poignant, happy and desperately sad. But, in the end he has been our Rabbi and indeed the Rabbi to so many people.
9/20/2009- Rosh Hashanah II, 5770
The Joyful Digging of Ditches
I am especially grateful to Rabbi Rose for the invitation to speak to the congregation today on this theme because as is known by anyone who knows me, Israel is and always has been, very close to my heart. I was tempted to use this occasion to try to dissect some of the numerous problems facing Israel today. Problems which are at the forefront of my concern and probably yours as well. But as I thought more deeply, it occurred to me that if I have anything special to offer, if I am to make a contribution to our understanding and appreciation of Israel, the best that I can do is share some of my personal experiences with you. Experiences from the early days of the state. During a time when life was somewhat simpler than it is today and when the miracle that is Israel was, perhaps, more clearly in focus. Actually, this decision to share my personal story was suggested to me by my good friend Herb Bilinsky, our congregational treasurer, who, when he heard some of what I want to share with you, said that this is what I ought to do. Tell my story, he advised. Which hopefully will have the effect of reminding us of the importance of what is surely the most significant event in all of Jewish history during the past two thousand years: The creation of the independent, sovereign state of Israel.
Israel became a state on May 15, 1948. At that time, I was a student living in New York, just finishing up my first year at the Jewish Theological Seminary of America. In the build-up to May 15th, it was evident that the Arab world was not going to take kindly to the declaration of Israel’s independence, that the Arab world would do everything in its power to thwart the state, even as it was coming into existence. Indeed that proved to be the case. Seven Arab armies invaded the young state in an effort to kill off the 600,000 Jews who lived there and destroy the state before it could take its first breath. As a staunch supporter of the state, I felt that I and the rest of the Seminary student body, should lend a hand in the war effort by providing either a fighting contingent or a support group which would journey to Israel and participate in what was obviously Israel’s war of survival. I broached the idea of forming such a group to the then President of the Seminary, Rabbi Louis Finkelstein, and he declared the idea to be a bad idea. That it was my job and the job of the rest of the Seminary student body to study Torah even or especially during this critical period. Needless to say, as a lowly freshman, and without any kind of a military background, I accepted his judgment which, in the wisdom of hindsight, may have been correct. I desisted from carrying the idea forward. Well, as we all know, Israel won the war without my help and succeeded in establishing itself as an independent state.
Yet, I will admit that the experience of being turned down caused me, perhaps unjustifiably, to be resentful. To the point where after my first year and around the beginning of my second, I began to have thoughts of chucking my whole rabbinic education and leaving the Seminary. Ultimately, I did return for the second year. But, eventually, about midway through, I resolved that I had had enough and that I would withdraw. It was at that point that some very kind people in the Seminary administration took a personal interest in my situation and urged me not to act hastily. They proposed what turned out to be an extremely generous offer, an almost unbelievable offer, as I think back to it now. If I would agree, they said, to finish out this, my second year, I would be allowed to spend my third year in the state of Israel. Assuming that I would complete certain study assignments that they would give me, I would receive a full year’s credit and be allowed to return for my fourth and final year, half of which would be consumed with studying for comprehensives, which was the practice in those days. An offer that I couldn’t refuse and which I eventually accepted. So, I successfully completed the second year and began to prepare to leave for a year in Israel.
It was July of 1949, just one year after the founding of the state. I gathered all of my resources, financial and otherwise and secured a ticket to Haifa aboard a ship called the Gierison. It was a former liberty ship which was being given to Turkey and which somebody had the bright idea to outfit with dormitory bunks and schedule a stop in Haifa. Passage on that ship, from New York to Israel, cost me all of a $150.00. Also, it was well known at that time that there was very little to eat in Israel. So, I bought a case of canned tuna fish to take along and a case of George Washington instant coffee. I also acquired and eight inch Bowie knife, a pair of combat boots, a backpack and enough cash for a return ticket to America, if things would not work out. As to spending money, I possessed a grand total of $85.00 which I hoped would carry me through the year. I prepared to go to Israel at this rather late date from my point of view. Resolved that I would spend the year making whatever small contribution that I could to the welfare of the young state.
My parents, who lived in Baltimore, Maryland, some 200 miles south of New York, decided to come and to see me off. My Mother, in particular, loved to come to New York. One, to visit me and also because she enjoyed visiting a favorite cousin there by the name of Morris Bublitsky, whom she invited to dockside to see me off. We gathered at the dock that morning. I loaded my stuff aboard the ship and I said a somewhat emotional goodbye. But, as I was going up the ship’s gangway, Morris Bublitsky grabbed me by the arm and said, “You know Bernie, I have a brother living in Haifa. I will write him an airmail letter” (a big thing in those days) “and tell him that you are coming.” I thanked Morris, and promptly forgot what he had said.
Thus it was that I and several hundred other people began slowly, very slowly, to make our way across the Atlantic Ocean in an old tub of a ship to the new state of Israel. Most of the passengers aboard the ship were Jews, but, not all. A fair number were Christians to whom the founding of the Jewish state represented the fulfillment of their own theological commitment. One group, for example, had manned the Exodus ‘47, two years earlier, and were now returning to cast their lot with our people in the Promised Land. As for the Jews, most were holocaust survivors who had escaped with their lives and little else. They had ended up either in the Americas, North and South or, in some cases, the Far East, and were now edging their way back to the new Jewish state.
Many were seeking family members, parents, children, and spouses, other relatives, from whom they had been separated during and after the war and with whom they now hoped to be reunited. If you can imagine, emotions ran very high during the journey. This was no ordinary tourist group and certainly not a pleasure party. Most of these people had suffered unimaginable horrors and were not embarking on what they prayed would be a whole new start in life. Especially if they could do it in the company of long-lost family and friends. Those of us with some camping and youth group background soon swung into action. We organized anyone who was amenable into an Israel-bound “learning community.” Soon we had daily classes going in all sorts of subjects with Jewish content — classes in dance, in music discussion groups on Israel politics and culture. I taught a course in beginners Hebrew— subsisting, because I kept kosher, on ekmek (the Turkish word for bread) and sou (the word for water) with an occasional can of their tuna fish thrown in sufficient to keep me going, but not much more. The ship slowly plied its way across the Atlantic towards Gibraltar and the Mediterranean. The voyage was supposed to take two weeks. But one of the three engines quit in mid-Atlantic so that overall the trip took 20 days. There was one stop in Algiers where the whole Jewish community, including the venerable Rabbi, came out to greet us and to wish us well. They brought us presents and sweets because they had heard that we were on our way to a new/old place called Israel. We slept during that voyage not at all. Nights were spent forward on the ship’s bow under the stars talking and singing and napping. As the prow of the Gierison cut through the water, bringing us closer and closer to the land of Israel.
And then the day scheduled for arrival came. Not a wink of sleep that night for anyone. As dawn began to break, everyone gathered forward for that first glimpse of land. First, in the far distance, you see clouds, and as the ship gets closer and closer, you make out what you think is land fall. Gradually, ever so gradually, you approach the shore line. I shall never forget when the Israeli pilot came aboard, just outside of Haifa. He climbed up the ship’s ladder and bounced onto the deck. We had of course, prepared a welcome, in Hebrew no less. I remember vividly how he was wearing a nautical hat decorated with gold braid on the bill and a Mogen David, also out of gold braid. Our first contact with a real live Israeli! And then the ship hove to and swung around the break water of Haifa, as it slowly sidled sideways, towards the dock. At this point, every single person aboard the ship was lined up on the deck along the side rail. Squinting and straining to make out the faces of the people who were gathered on the dock five or ten feet below. Hoping to recognize a father or a mother, a sibling, or a spouse, and in the process being overcome. As they cried and screamed, fainted and swooned. I remember that the scene became so intense that I had to leave. I went down below to get away from what was quickly becoming a virtual maelstrom of emotion. And as I sat on my bunk, an even scarier realization suddenly hit me. These people, most of them, were looking for loved ones, but I was arriving in a strange country, half way around the world, knowing not a soul, having no idea where UI would go or where I would lay my head that first night. With a bankroll of only $85.00, and I felt alone and, if you will forgive me, more than a little sorry for myself.
Soon I heard someone calling down the stairwell, “Lipnick, Lipnick, come up here.” I climbed the stairs and some of my friends made a path through the crowd and pushed me up to the railing. There, not 20 feet from where I was standing, at about eye level, I saw a man sitting on a pile of sacks, and he was saying in Hebrew I am looking for Lipnick. So I answered sheepishly, “I am Lipnick.” And the first world out of his mouth were, “Where have you been all of this time? I have been sitting here five days and nights waiting for you. Where were you? I am Dudek Bublitzky.” Then, I muttered something about the ship breaking down, and he said in one of his favorite expressions, “Never mind, where is your stuff?” The next thing I know, a big ten ton truck backed up against the ship, opened its back doors and received my trunk and duffle bag and cases of food. It so happens that Dudek was a truck driver, a person who owned his own truck which put him at the top of the social and economic heap in those days and also gave him access to the Haifa docks. Thus it is that for a guy who didn’t have anyone to meet him and who didn’t know a single soul, I ended up being the first person off the ship. Sitting like a king in the front cab of a big truck on my way to a section of Haifa known as Hodar, where Dudek lived.
We arrived at his apartment and then I shall never forget what happened. After depositing my stuff in his place, Dudek handed me a key to the apartment and said, in Hebrew, “This is your place for as long as you want it. I will be back at eight o’clock to pick you up for dinner.” Let me tell you a little bit about Dudek. He was born in Russia, in Kishinov, where my mother and her family were from. He had come to Israel about ten years before, from Russia, by bicycle! Yes, that was his mode of transportation — all the way from Russia to Israel. He worked hard, acquired a truck, and made his living ferrying people and material from the docks in Haifa, mostly new immigrants and their possessions, to the tent cities which had been erected for them. Many of them, pitiful remnants of the Holocaust, who were coming to a place they had never before seen, but which was the only place in this wide, wide world that wanted them and welcomed them. I know because later I worked on Dudek’s truck, especially during Operation Magic Carpet. When the young state brought in the Jews of Yemen, primitive and uneducated people for whom the doors of Israel were thrown wide open.
The first blessing then that Israel represents that I want to derive from my own personal experience, should never be forgotten and that is that Israel, for the past 61 years, remains the one place in this wide planet where a Jew is welcome home as a member of the tribe who is entitled to life and liberty and protection. Without excuses and without apologies — The one place in this vast earth where a Jew is accepted, not by sufferance, but by right. I witnessed it in 1949, and it remains true to this day.
Now, it soon became obvious to me since my “bankroll” was not going to last all that long, I would have to find gainful employment. Yet in those days, I should point out, that if you were able-bodied and willing to work, which I was, one could always exchange a day’s labor for a bed and three square in a kibbutz, which I did on more than one occasion. The first job I got was as a correspondent for the Jewish Agency, attached to the Israel Defense Forces, or more precisely what was a fighting force of young men and women who spend part of their time in agricultural or building projects in addition to their military training. My first assignment was to join a contingent which traveled to and was stationed in Eilat on the Red Sea, which, at the Rhodes Armistice Agreement, just a couple of months before, had been awarded to Israel. Our Job was to fortify the place. It consisted on only three mud huts and not a single blade of grass or anything else that grew from the ground. The one thing that Eilat represented in those days was potential. It was to become Israel’s outlet to the Indian Ocean by way of the Gulf of Eilat or Aqaba. So we arrived at Eilat, known by its Arabic name of Um Rash Rash. We set up our tents and proceeded to dig trenches, as well we should have, because the British, who were still ensconced in Aqaba, just across the bay, maintained there a gun boat which would shell the hills behind us each morning. Not to kill us, God forbid, but to remind us on a daily basis of who was still in charge. Eilat was tough duty because it was unbelievably hot. We lived in tents; we had no refrigeration and precious little water, all of our water being purified from sea water. Everyone was soon plagued by dysentery.
But I shall never forget that when I left Eilat, on my way back to Tel Aviv, I traveled by command car through the desert. There were no roads in those days, only camel paths. The trip took 19 hours to traverse about 100 miles. I remember arriving at civilization around evening time, hungry and caked with the dust of the desert, but mostly hungry. I picked out a house, knocked on the front door and invited myself to dinner. And the lady of the house — I tear up as I recall what happened — seeing that I had just come from the army through the wilderness, the lady of the house gave me an egg to eat for dinner. Surely her only egg, and how precious that egg was. Yet, she gave it to me, a perfect stranger. I remember spending that night sleeping on the beach in Tel Aviv.
This experience then leads me to a second conclusion regarding what I consider to be the greatness of Israel. Not only does Israel represent the one place a Jew can go to and be admitted without question, but it is also the one place where Jews, after they arrive, are cared for and shared with, indeed as members of one family. In our day, this kind of warmth is extended mostly to Jews but not only to Jews. It is extended to non-Jews as well, numerous Sudanese, Thais, and Vietnamese and others, are recipients of Israel’s largesse and willingness to care for people who are in need.
With the first third of my year behind me, I decided to seek other employment I applied for and got a job as a common laborer in a work crew which was building a Naval station outside of Haifa in a place called Bat Galim. They offered me a job to teach the young cadets but I preferred this kind of work since it spoke to my fantasy of building the state with my own two hands from the ground up. And indeed, we did build it from the ground up. We did all sorts of work — building fences, laying concrete sidewalks, construction and numerous other projects, including cleaning out sewers!
Therein lies a story. Our crew was under the jurisdiction of a Chief Petty Officer whose name was Ovadiah. He was a Yemenite Jew, strong as an ox and a bit of a slave driver. I remember once being lowered into a sewer, actually a catchment tower of the sewer and being given the job of cleaning the walls of the tower. Another man would lower a bucket into the sewer and I would fill it with the crud that I scraped off the wall. It was very unpleasant, foul smelling work, to say the least. But one thing that that tower had was great acoustics something like a shower at home. So while I was working, in order to ease the burden a bit, I began to sing. In those days I had a pretty good voice, and singing gave me some comfort. Soon, I looked up and I saw a pair of feet dangling from the manhole and soon another set of legs and feet, until my fellow workers ringed the whole manhole listening to my singing. So I stopped singing. But what I didn’t know is that two of the feet belonged to Ovadiah, who ordered me to keep singing. When I had exhausted my repertoire, Ovadiah ordered a stool lowered into the sewer and then he said Baruch, as long as you sing, you don’t have to work. But the moment you stop singing you are going back to work. So, for the next two or three days, I arrived at work, was lowered into the sewer, sat on my stool, and spent the whole time singing, not working.
There are many more stories to tell, but suffice to say, that the Naval base was built and continues to operate to this day as the home base for Israel’s small but powerful Navy. So once again, not only is Israel a home to all Jews who wish to come there, not only is Israel a place, where, because you are a brother or a sister, that you are cared for but it is also a place of great achievement. A place that is rising out of the desert — From naval bases to homes and cultural centers. A place that is becoming a great, great center of cultural and academic excellence, a place where Nobel prizes are awarded to authors and scientists, where innovation and creativity are applied to all sorts of problems, a place, in other words, where the Jewish genius flowers, as nowhere else in the world — Another of the core values of that precious little place and another part of the greatness of Israel.
That winter, we couldn’t work all that regularly because there was, an unusual amount of rainfall and in the hills, snow. Of course, I utilized the time to work on my study assignments which I took very seriously. My studies in Talmud, bible and, of course, Hebrew, but it was during the same bad weather that I decided to visit a friend of mine and his wife whom I had heard had just arrived in Jerusalem. I took the bus to Jerusalem and waded through the storm to their one room shanty. After dinner my host said, “You know who is here in Jerusalem? Howie Singer,” a friend of ours who had just been ordained at the Seminary and whom I knew and liked very much. So, we slushed through the streets of Jerusalem and arrived at Howie’s place. We knocked on the door and Howie answered it. I said, “Hello Howie”, and I shall never forget what happened next. He did not acknowledge the greeting. He just stared at me and said, “Would you please say that again.” I obliged and then we entered the house. It turns out that Howie was the chief script writer for the new shortwave radio station that Israel had created in order to beam news of the new state to Jewish communities throughout the world. At that time there were three different language divisions. Yiddish which would beam to Eastern Europe, Arabic beamed to Jews in Arab lands and an English language section, beamed to England and South Africa. Today I believe, they broadcast in 21 different languages! It seems that the English Language Division was trying to find an announcer for the broadcasts which were scheduled to start in the spring. When I said “Hello Howie,” he figured he had his man. Subsequently, I underwent several auditions and was eventually hired as the chief announcer for the station.
There were a few problems that had to be ironed out. One was my American rather than English accent. You will recall that this was the era of the “ugly American” and there was concern that British and South African communities would be put off by anything other than a British accent. The second problem was that, in those days, as an American citizen, I was not permitted to work for a foreign government under threat of losing my American citizenship. So I adopted the radio name of Bernard Jerome, mine and my brother’s name, and kept my identity to myself.
With one of the problems ignored and the other solved, I embarked upon really one of the most exciting adventures of my life: Broadcasting live to far flung Jewish communities, thousands of miles away who couldn’t believe that there was a new country in the world called Israel, which had arisen like the Phoenix from the ashes of the holocaust. I broadcast six days a week at midnight for 45 minutes because it was three or four hours earlier in the west. In a kind of a variety show consisting of music, interviews, speeches, skits, political commentary, and the like.
We even had a famous scholar teach Talmud on a regular basis. His name was Rav Assaf, and what a sight it was. I would be in the announcer’s booth and he in the studio in the middle of the night with his Talmud propped up against the microphone teaching, with the aid of his “gruben finger,” an unseen but attentive audience.
My folks in Baltimore and my brother in Utica bought shortwave radio sets and used to listen to me on a daily basis. The job also gave me quite an opportunity to devote to my studies. I attended classes at the Hebrew University taught by Martin Buber and Ernst Simon, among others and made considerable headway on my assignments.
But the fan mail that we received from faraway places — little hamlets, far off the beaten track — was not to be believed. The dominant theme was disbelief. How could it be? Is it possibly true that there was now an independent state called Israel? I’d end every broadcast with the Israel Philharmonic playing the Hatikvah, which never failed to bring tears to my eyes and I presume, to the eyes of everyone listening.
So the fourth and final conclusion that I want to derive from my experience during that year in Israel and which I feel is as relevant today as it was then, is the pride and the nachas that every Jew in the world, no matter where he lives, can take in the knowledge that after 2,000 years of statelessness and after the slaughter of a third of our people, we have accomplished something that no other people has ever accomplished and that is the return to our homeland. The resurrection of our ancient language and the reconstitution of ourselves as a free and independent state.
Well, I returned home to America in June of 1950 with $80.00 left of the original $85.00. I graduated the Seminary a year later, and came to B’nai Amoona shortly thereafter.
I have been back to Israel perhaps 50 times in the last 60 years, but at least four of the principles and the greatness that Israel represents can be derived from that first experience and continue to be in effect. Those principles are perhaps somewhat more complicated today than they were then but they are still operative, I believe, in our day and for the foreseeable future. Namely, that Israel is the one place in the world where a Jew is welcome to come as to his own home. Two — Israel is the one place in the world where there exists a solemn obligation to care for and nurture people, especially Jews, who are in need. Three — Israel is the one place in the world where we see a state rising from the desert, where we see the flowering of Jewish cultural activity and Jewish genius to help realize our mission of establishing the kingdom of God on earth. And finally, Israel is the one place in the world which, despite its numerous problems, internal and external, will always be a source of wonder and pride to our people wherever they may be and a rallying point for the Jewish heart and the Jewish soul. Long may Israel prosper and may God protect and defend her always.
Now may I ask you to rise and join me in closing this “broadcast” by singing with me Hatikvah, Israel’s National Anthem, the words of which are on the sheet in your Rosh Hashanah packet.
