A rabbinical assembly unduplicated in nearly 2,000 years of Palestine history today called upon governments and church powers of the world to take whatever effective measures were possible to halt Hitler’s systematic extermination of the Jewish people in Europe.
More than 400 rabbis, representing every sect in Judaism and including refugees from Europe, gathered in an ancient synagogue for a conclave unlike any held within the walls of the Old City since the destruction of the Second Temple in the first century. Sitting on the marble-tiled floor of the Holy Land’s oldest synagogue, seat of Palestine’s chief rabbis for the last two centuries, the rabbinate, assembled in the manner of the Sanhedrin of old, heard Chief Rabbi Isaac Halevi Herzog address separate appeals to temporal and spiritual rulers of all nations.
Extraordinary rituals of mourning attended the appeal, which was climaxed by a procession to the Wailing Wall, in which Chaplains of all the Allied military forces in Palestine joined. Robed in black, the rabbis rent their garments, recited Psalms 73, 79 and 142, the prayer of supplication beginning, “Our Father, our King” and “Yizkor,” the prayer of mourning for the dead. The flickering light of a thousand candles and lamps was cast upon the solemn assemblage. The synagogue was filled with wailing when, after the shofar had been sounded six times, the aged Gerer “rebbe” from Poland, whose entire family was recently murdered by the Nazis, ascended to the Holy Ark, leaning on the arm of Chief Rabbi Herzog, and told the assembled rabbis that “all of us must unite and trust in God’s mercy.”
Declaring the assembly had been convoked to “raise the conscience of humanity in view of the massacres perpetrated on our people in the Nazi-occupied countries,” Chief Rabbi Herzog said.
“This great rabbinical assembly appeals to all nations and governments in the name of the living God, in the name of hundreds of thousands of martyrs and in the name of the remnant struggling in torture and agony: Awake to the divine and historic call of Israel’s supreme agony. Rescue those who can still be rescued. Take measures while there is yet time to stay the fiendish hand of the assassin. Let all humanity unite to save a nation from slaughter, use all means to take out of the valley of death those doomed to utter destruction. Let the gates of all lands be flung wide open. Let shelter be accorded to these fleeing from the inferno, until God vouchsafes grace to His people and their historic cradle.”
In the appeal to the spiritual leaders of the world, the Chief Rabbi stated, “See what has been wrought on the people of the Prophets; the blood of their sons and daughters and babes has been spilled like water throughout Europe. Gather all your hearts and souls and might; use your influence to halt the shedding of innocent blood, Have we not all one Father and has not one God created us?”
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.
