I’ll often hear from Jewish visitors to Baltimore about the strange looking shul at the corner of Fallstaff and Park Heights. The architecture stands out – the light pink Middle Eastern colors, the pointed arches meant to invoke Persian palaces, the shul is obviously a shul for Iranian Jews. The question I’m often asked is, why are Iranian Jews living in Baltimore and how did they get here? But what really puzzles visitors is who this Iranian shul is dedicated to. Across the front façade it reads, The Herman Neuberger Memorial Building. Herman Neuberger is the furthest thing from an Iranian Jew.
Herman Neuberger was born in Wurzburg, Germany. If you were to make a continuum of Jews of all denominations and stripes, you would have German Jews on one end, and Iranian Jews aaaaall the way over here on the other end. Modi likes to make fun of the differences between Ashkenazim and Sefardim, but Yekkes and Iranians, that is next level.
I remember the first Iranian wedding I attended – I came more or less on time. The bride and groom were not there yet. You go to a Yekke wedding on time and you are late.
At a Yekkish wedding everyone’s dancing in perfect rhythm, in a perfectly circular circle, music is calm. At a Persian wedding, it’s like a dance club with rabbis who are belly dancing…
They don’t even eat the same food. A German Jew eats chicken with three pieces of salt, not four. A Persian Jew’s chicken is buried underneath a mountain of rice, buried under turmeric, saffron, sumac, limes, tamarind, cumin.
Try taking seconds at a German Jews house, you get death stares. At an Iranian Jews home if you don’t take triples and take some home for later you have just insulted the host.
You say Good Shabbos to a German Jew, if you look really closely, you’ll notice that he is nodding his head ever so slightly. A Persian Jew? [kiss, kiss, kiss, kiss] SHABBAT SHALOM!!!
So why, ladies and gentlemen, is Ohr Hamirzach, a center for Iranian Jews dedicated to the memory of Rabbi Herman Neurberger, a quintessential German Jew?
One word answer and that is ‘achrayus,’ responsibility.
Whether we take responsibility or not is a key feature of who we are. In my humble opinion, there are two types of people in the world, those who take responsibility and those who do not.
And responsibility is also an exceptionally important value in Judaism. That is the only way to make sense of Yosef’s audacious action after interpreting Pharaoh’s dream. Yosef, a foreign slave, was brought out of jail to interpret Pharoah’s nightmare. Yosef masterfully does so, explaining that the dreams represent the Egyptian economy, bullish for seven years and then a seven-year collapse. But then Yosef goes ahead, pulls out his calculator, and starts to devise an investment plan. He’s pulling out power-points and spreadsheets. What is he doing? What a chutzpah! He was given a task, interpret the dream. Why is he now devising a plan of what needs to be done? That’s not his job?!
The answer is that Yosef was a descendent of Avraham Avinu who was told that Sedom was going to be destroyed. Avraham did not just accept that as a fact even though it came directly from G-d. Instead, he petitioned G-d to save them.
Because as Jews, we believe that we are not passive players in this world. We have achrayus, responsibility to do whatever we can to make the world a better place, whether or not you were asked to do so. So when Yosef, a great-grandson of Avraham, heard that Hashem was telling Pharaoh what He was planning to do, it was unfathomable that this information was shared just to inform Pharaoh. No. Hashem was telling Pharaoh so he could do something about it.
I don’t think we appreciate how radical this idea is. There are other faith groups that do not go to doctors and for good reason. If you believe that G-d is in control and made you ill, then you have no right to fight that. Even many Jews grapple with variations of this idea. They ask, should I not work so hard because I should have faith in G-d that He will provide? Or, as some like to frame it, when does my Hishtadlus end and my Emunah begin?
Now among the classical sources I believe there is only one Jewish source that suggest that we should not exert ourselves fully and instead we should believe in G-d. There are people who apply this to their work ethic and that is fine. However, if that is your philosophical approach you should probably be consistent. I have never heard anyone say, I am not going to go to such a good doctor because I have faith in G-d. Never in my life have I heard a Jew say that. And that’s because the more classical view is that we are expected to on the one hand believe everything comes from Hashem and at the same time believe that we are expected to exert ourselves to the fullest.
That’s why Pharoah is blown away by Yosef. No one in Egypt, in this pagan society would dream of overcoming G-d’s plan. If G-d said there will be hunger, who are we to argue? But Yosef says no, I have achrayus to do something about it.
And this is why Herman Neurberger’s name is on Ohr Hamizrach.
In 1979, the government of Iran was toppled. The Shah fled the country and the Jews were thrown into turmoil. How would they survive under the rule of the antisemitic Ayatollah?
Rabbi Herman Neuberger had forged some connections to Iranian Jews a few years prior. He also had friends in high places in the American government. And so, without anyone asking him to do anything, he made it his business to persuade the state department to accept Iranian Jews as political refugees and he oversaw the immigration of over 1000 Iranian Jews to Baltimore.
Getting the Iranian Jews out of Iran was often a matter of life and death. His children related how, while this was going on, one Seder night, he didn’t join them at the table. He spent the entire night on the phone. He took a quick break before midnight and had a piece of Matzah and then went back to making calls.
He was not related to these people in any way. No one asked him to do this. No one said this is your job. But he saw a problem and understood that he was responsible.
That was what Yosef was doing in Pharaoh’s palace. That’s what the Chashmonaim did when faced with Greek persecution. The Chashmoanim were priests in the Bais Hamikdash. These Jewish children’s books usually depict Yehuda Hamaccabi as a body-builder. He was probably a slightly overweight rabbi with a receding hairline. But he took responsibility. He and his family understood that when you see something, you have to do something. And they did. This past week, a small ray of light coming from the deep darkness of Sydney, Australia, were the heroics of Ahmed el-Ahmad, a Lebanese man who saw the terrorists and could have easily walked away. He didn’t. He ran to the fire. He saved countless lives. He too was a Ba’al Achrayus, a master of responsibility.
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Did anyone here ask Ayala Pensak to update our bulletin weekly? I didn’t think so.
Did anyone ask Zev Pensak to make our kiddush every single Shabbos?
Did anyone ask Zev to make sure our heating systems are working? That our janitorial staff is on-task?
Did anyone ask the entire Pensak family to cook huge Shabbos meals for the entire shul every few weeks?
Did anyone ask Zev to be on site every day for months to make sure our front lobby came together the way it did?
The answer to all these questions is no. But the Pensak family, learned from their parents, and they are Ba’alei Achrayus. They are people who run into the line of fire, people who do for others, people who respond before anyone asks them to do so.
Shaya, today is your Bar Mitzvah. Aside from being a great brother, a good athlete, an amazing friend, you are curious – at a young age, you came to speak to me about deep theological questions, you are up with the news to know what’s going on in the world. And you are born into this special family of people who take responsibility. I hope and pray you take your many skills and use them as you take responsibility for the world around you.
Now I imagine all of us would like to believe that we should be counted as someone who takes responsibility. I imagine all of us would like to believe that if there was heaven forbid, a terrorist attack, we would be the one to charge the shooter. I imagine all of us would like to believe that if we lived under a tyrannical antisemitic regime, we would take up arms and fight back.
Well, you’re in luck, I created a little test for you to see if you are indeed such a person.
Earlier this morning, I came to shul before anyone was here, went up and down between the rows in this room and dropped tissues. Yes, tissues. Did anyone see them? Did you pick up the tissue you saw?
There are two types of people in the world; those who take responsibility and those who do not.
Yosef, the Chashmonaim, Bondi Beach, those things thankfully don’t happen very often. A ba’al achrayus is always looking around to see what they could do. Is there someone around me who could use a hand? A smile? A hello? Are there a group of people who I could support in some way? A ba’al achrayus does not wait to be asked; he or she steps in on their own.
And so the real litmus test of whether or not we are a person who takes responsibility is when we see something, something small, that is out of place, and instead of just walking by, we stop, we bend down, we pick it up. Next time you do so, please know, that you are walking in the footsteps of our great ones, and that you are a real ba’al achrayus.