Romanian Chief Rabbi Moses Rosen, the leading figure in the postwar Jewish community here, died in Bucharest on Friday after suffering two strokes in April.
The heart of the 81-year-old rabbi stopped beating after nearly a month of struggling against the effects of the strokes. The news of his death stunned the diminishing Romanian Jewish community, whose members had hoped and prayed that the rabbi would recover.
Jewish leaders from New York to Jerusalem were quick to express their praise for Rosen, a figure who tirelessly struggled with the Communist leaders in Romania on behalf of the country’s Jewish community.
Rosen, who had been chief rabbi of Romania since 1948, wielded an extraordinary amount of influence within that country as a religious leader and a frequent envoy to the United States on behalf of Romania.
He enabled nearly the entire postwar Jewish community of Romania, about 400,000, to emigrate and settle in Israel. The exodus was unique in Communist Eastern Europe.
Before World War II, there were approximately 800,000 Romanian Jews. But that number was cut in half during the Holocaust. There are now only some 18,000 Jews, most of them elderly, living among Romania’s 23 million people.
Rosen maintained an astoundingly strong Jewish religious and cultural life throughout Romania with the extensive help of the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee, providing Jews who remained, even in the most isolated communities, with kosher food, religious life and quality care for the elderly.
Rosen was sometimes subjected to criticism for channeling money to Romania’s Communist regime in exchange for providing the country’s Jews with exit visas. But he remained steadfast in his efforts to secure safe passage for the country’s Jews to Israel.
ZIONISM ‘NOT TO BRING JEWS TO PHILADELPHIA’
In an incident that sheds light on his Zionist fervor, Rosen once told a hopeful emigre who inquired about leaving for the United States, “We didn’t create this (Zionist) movement to bring Jews to Philadelphia.”
In the years following the violent fall of dictator Nicolae Ceausescu in 1989, Rosen fought against a resurgence of Romanian anti-Semitism when many in the country sought a scapegoat for Romania’s economic woes.
Rosen was born in 1912, in Moinesti, Moldavia, where his father was the local rabbi.
He recalled in his autobiography that “though small, this community became famous in the history of the rebuilding, because it was from Moinesti that the first Romanian Jewish settlers left for Palestine in 1882.” The group was known as the Hovevei Zion, the “Lovers of Zion.”
In his autobiography, “Dangers, Tests and Miracles,” as told to Joseph Finklestone of the London Jewish Chronicle, Rosen recounted a life of danger, arrests and intrigue.
He was sometimes criticized for his love of pomp and circumstance and his own sense of self-worth. Jokes abounded about Rosen as a “Jewish pope” because of his flowing purple and black robes, his tall, mitered hat and a California-size Magen David worn around his neck.
But there was method to the man.
In presenting himself to the Romanian public as a high religious figure, he earned the respect given to Christian Orthodox figures in a country where physical trappings meant much. And in so doing, he enabled the small Jewish population to be accorded a measure of respect and protection it desperately needed.
After Rosen’s death, the Federation of Romanian Jewish Communities received condolence messages from Romanian President Ion Iliescu and other members of the Romanian government, who praised the rabbi and assured the country’s Jews that they will continue to condemn any manifestation of racism, anti-Semitism and xenophobia.
The news of Rosen’s death, along with the messages from the government’s leaders, were broadcast on Romanian television.
In New York, Ambassador Milton Wolf, president of the JDC, issued a statement saying that with Rosen’s death, the Jewish world has “lost an extraordinary leader and a courageous man. He combined religion and diplomacy, Torah and political wisdom in an indefatigable effort to ascertain a dignified Jewish life for his community,” said Wolf. “We at JDC were fortunate to be his partners for 45 years in this endeavor.”
JDC Executive Vice President Michael Schneider accompanied Rosen’s body from Bucharest to Jerusalem for burial.
‘THE LAST OF THE GIANTS’
Rabbi Arthur Schneier of New York, senior rabbi of the Park East Synagogue and founder of the Appeal of Conscience Foundation, was a longtime friend and colleague of Rosen’s and a frequent host to him in New York.
Schneier, who traveled to Bucharest for the funeral service there and who also accompanied the body to Jerusalem, said in a statement Sunday, “I am deeply saddened by the passing of Chief Rabbi Rosen. He was a giant of world Jewry, a man of courage, a committed Zionist and a powerful advocate of the Jewish people.
“He will be especially remembered for his achievement in winning the right of Romania’s Jews to make a new life in Israel and his struggle, no less successful, to revive Jewish life in Eastern Europe,” the statement read.
Elan Steinberg, executive director of the World Jewish Congress, called Rosen “the greatest Zionist leader ever” for his having motivated 400,000 Romanian Jews — nearly the entire Jewish population of that country that remained after the Holocaust — to make aliyah.
Israel Singer, WJC secretary-general, described the rabbi as “without a doubt the last of the giants, the end of an era, a man from another century transposed into ours. At once a rabbi, the president of his community, a negotiator with communists and fascists alike, a man who fought them all and yet could talk to them.
“A paradox, a conundrum wrapped in a contradiction. He really was all those things, and after him there is nothing,” Singer said.
(Contributing to this report was JTA staff writer Susan Birnbaum in New York.)
JTA has documented Jewish history in real-time for over a century. Keep our journalism strong by joining us in supporting independent, award-winning reporting.
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
