Elie Wiesel’s Haunting, Mysterious and Brilliant Master

"Mr. Shushani" reportedly knew the entire Hebrew Bible, Talmud and countless other texts by heart. His Nobel-laureate student never knew his real name.

"A wandering Jew, he felt at home in every culture." (Collage: 'Mr. Shushani' and Elie Wiesel [Credit: Gideon Markowitz, Dan Hadani Archive, Pritzker Family National Photography Collection at NLI] / Shushani's notebooks at NLI)

“His birthplace was, now Marrakech, now Vilna, then Kishinev, Safed, Calcutta, or Florence.”

Very little is known or agreed upon regarding “Mr. Shushani” (also known as “Monsieur Chouchani”), a mysterious and almost mythically brilliant man who served as the personal, influential teacher to Elie Wiesel, Emmanuel Levinas and other leading 20^th century Jewish intellectual figures.

And perhaps – at least according to Wiesel, who penned the quotation above regarding Shushani’s place of birth – that was exactly how the enigmatic figure wanted it.

By all accounts, Shushani had an extraordinary photographic memory, reportedly able to recall and cite the entire Hebrew Bible, Talmud and many other Jewish texts by heart, while also mastering various fields of mathematics, physics, modern philosophy and different languages.

Pages from the notebooks of “Mr. Shushani”. From the National Library of Israel collection. Click image to enlarge

According to National Library of Israel archivist David Lang, who has catalogued dozens of Shushani’s recently received notebooks at the Library, the astonishing depth and breath of knowledge is self-evident in those notes, where diverse textual sources are cited without missing a beat despite the fact that he certainly did not have physical access to the sources while he wrote.

These connections also came through in person. In All Rivers Run to the Sea, Wiesel recalled one of many encounters with Shushani:

“[H]e asked us to question him about anything we wanted, the Bible or politics, history or the Midrash, detective stories or the Zohar. He listened to our questions, eyelids drooping, waiting for everyone to finish. And then, like a magician, he gathered it all together to create a mosaic of stunning richness and rigor, harmoniously weaving our questions and his answers together.”

The disheveled, brilliant figure left such an impression on Wiesel that the Nobel laureate dedicated an entire chapter to his teacher in another book, Legends of Our Time, entitled “The Wandering Jew”.

In some ways, Weisel’s descriptions of Shushani makes it all the more surprising that he revered the man:

“Always dirty, hairy, he looked like a hobo turned clown, or a clown playing a hobo… Anyone encountering him in the street without knowing him would step out of his way with distaste. To his own great satisfaction, moreover.”

And yet, over three years in post-War Paris, Wiesel was Shushani’s disciple:

“At his side I learned a great deal about the dangers of language and reason, about the ecstasies of sage and madman, about the mysterious progress of a thought down through the centuries and of a hesitation through a multitude of thoughts. But nothing about the secret which consumed or protected him against a diseased humanity.”

Shushani zealously guarded his identity and few details about his personal life are known today, more than fifty years after his death. Even his name remains a contended mystery. Wiesel concluded it was “Mordecai Rosenbaum,” while most leading scholars today, including philosopher Shalom Rosenberg, also a disciple of Shushani’s, believe that it was “Hillel Perlman”.

Both decidedly less exotic than his self-designated appellation.

Whether he was Mordecai, Hillel or something else, Shushani’s control of language also boggled the minds of those who knew him.

Wiesel poetically recalled:

“He had mastered some thirty ancient and modern languages, including Hindi and Hungarian. His French was pure, his English perfect, and his Yiddish harmonized with the accent of whatever person he was speaking with. The Vedas and the Zohar he could recite by heart. A wandering Jew, he felt at home in every culture.”

A wandering Jew indeed, Shushani traveled across the globe throughout his life, apparently penniless, and – according to Wiesel – without a passport.

“At the end of 1948,” Wiesel recalled, “he left me without saying goodbye… His last lesson was like all the others…”

His departing words:

“Think over my lesson and try to destroy it.”

Then Mr. Shushani disappeared. For years, Wiesel would by chance meet others who had known him, or heard about him and his whereabouts.

Shushani’s travels brought him throughout Europe, the United States, allegedly to North Africa and elsewhere, including Mandatory Palestine and the young State of Israel where for a few months in the late 1950s, he wandered among religious kibbutzim sharing his knowledge and perhaps gaining some too.

Ultimately, Shushani landed in Uruguay. Wiesel heard from others that he was there.

In Legends of Our Times, published the same year that Shushani passed away, Wiesel hauntingly mused:

“Often I am seized by the desire to take the first plane leaving for Uruguay, to see him one last time to confront him with the image I have kept of him. Then too I need him to rouse me again, to suspend me between heaven and earth and so permit me to see what brings them together and what separates them…

That is what makes me tremble each time I think of him in Montevideo, where he awaits me, where he calls to me: I am afraid to plunge once more into his legend which condemns us both, me to doubt, and him to immortality.”

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Prof. Shalom Rosenberg was Mr. Shushani’s student at the time of this death, and recently donated 50 of his teacher’s notebooks to the National Library of Israel, where they will be available to the general and scholarly publics for the first time.

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This article has been published as part of Gesher L’Europa, the National Library of Israel’s initiative to connect with people, institutions and communities across Europe and beyond, through storytelling, knowledge sharing and community engagement.

A Rare Glimpse of Jewish Schools in Hungary after the Holocaust

Jewish schools after the destruction: View rare photos smuggled into Israel from post-war Hungary

Dr. Yochai Ben-Ghedalia | 12.10.21

Hungarian Jewry Hungary Jewish Culture Photographs

The community of Holocaust survivors in Hungary after WWII numbered about 150,000 Jews. Many tried to leave the communist-controlled country for the Land of Israel and the Americas, but the gates closed in 1949, and Zionist activity was banned. At the same time, many others tried to rehabilitate the glorious Jewish culture that had existed in Hungary until the Holocaust. Special emphasis was placed on education since, remarkably, maintaining Jewish educational frameworks in the communist state was still possible. Many other Jews joined the new regime, and even held senior positions in it.

The National Library of Israel’s Central Archives for the History of the Jewish People has now revealed hundreds of photographs documenting Jewish education in Hungary in the decade after the Holocaust.

The photographs were smuggled into Israel through what would later be called “Nativ—The Liaison Bureau”, which acted on behalf of the State of Israel to strengthen the Zionist and Jewish connection among Jews beyond the Iron Curtain. Some of the photographs were even officially submitted to Israel’s diplomatic representatives in Budapest.

The photographs show the variety of religious streams that characterized Hungarian Jewry even after the Holocaust. They document classroom learning, alongside holiday activities and group photos. From them, one can learn about the strong connection to the Land of Israel among the Holocaust survivors and about Jewish and Zionist education in Hungary.

Some of the younger children in the photographs were born after World War II to parents who survived the Holocaust in Budapest, or who had returned from forced labor. Other children—the older ones—were themselves Holocaust survivors.

Despite the fact that the communist regime imposed severe restrictions on Jewish education, in the decade after the Holocaust, Jewish educational frameworks of various streams, including Hasidic yeshivas, continued to function. However, some of the Talmud Torah schools were actually general Jewish schools and did not resemble ultra-Orthodox institutions elsewhere.

The “Hungarian uprising” against the communist regime broke out in 1956 and was quelled by a Soviet invasion. After the uprising, which had been marked by anti-Semitic nationalist tendencies, and especially after the Soviet crackdown, many Jews emigrated from Hungary.

At the same time, the authorities further restricted national life in the country, while relations with Israel saw a downturn, before they were severed completely in 1967. The photographs provide a rare glimpse of the Jewish schools in Hungary after the Holocaust, just before the final lowering of the Iron Curtain.

Most of the photographs preserved at the National Library are from 1955 and have been made accessible with the support of the Leslie and Vera Keller Foundation for Enhancement of the Jewish Heritage.

Remembering Babi Yar When Others Didn’t

For two decades, one of the worst massacres of the Holocaust was all but forgotten

Zack Rothbart | 29.09.21

Gesher L’Europa Russian Jewry Soviet Jewry The Holocaust Ukrainian Jewry

Early efforts in the 1960s to locate and identify remains at Babi Yar, where some 100,000 people were murdered just twenty years before. From the Emmanuel (Amik) Diamant Archive, the Central Archives for the History of the Jewish People at the National Library of Israel (Photo: Joseph Schneider).

On September 29-30, 1941, the Nazis and their collaborators committed one of the Holocaust’s largest massacres, murdering nearly 35,000 Jews in just two days at the Babi Yar (sometimes written “Babyn Yar”) ravine, which was then just outside of Kyiv, and which is now located within the modern Ukrainian city. More than 100,000 people total were murdered there in just two years.

The Babi Yar ravine. From the Emmanuel (Amik) Diamant Collection, the Central Archives for the History of the Jewish People at the National Library of Israel (Photo: Joseph Schneider). Click image to enlarge

Yet for years the memory of Babi Yar was in many ways forgotten – the result of efforts to erase and re-write history, as well as the fact that the role and images of the death camps often overshadowed the centrality that other mass murders, like Babi Yar, played in the story of the Holocaust.

In the 1960s this began to change.

In 1961, Yevgeny Yevtushenko’s famous poem, “Babi Yar“, was published. An original manuscript of it has been safeguarded among the National Library of Israel’s collections since shortly thereafter.

Five years later, Anatoly Kuznetsov’s book of the same name came out, and a broader movement led by young local Jews interested in their own heritage and history continued to grow. The personal archive of one of the leaders of this movement, an engineer named Emmanuel (Amik) Diamant, recently came to the Central Archives for the History of the Jewish People at the National Library of Israel in Jerusalem.

Babi Yar, 1966. From the Emmanuel (Amik) Diamant Collection, the Central Archives for the History of the Jewish People at the National Library of Israel (Photo: Joseph Schneider). Click image to enlarge

In 1966, on the 25^th anniversary of the massacre, an unofficial memorial sign was hung at the Babi Yar site, which on subsequent anniversaries drew thousands of local Jews and would become a central force in the awakening of Soviet Jewry.

Grassroots efforts also began around that time to locate the mass graves in the area, something else which was certainly not a priority for the Soviet authorities.

Early efforts to locate and identify remains at Babi Yar, 1966. From the Emmanuel (Amik) Diamant Collection, the Central Archives for the History of the Jewish People at the National Library of Israel (Photo: Joseph Schneider). Click image to enlarge

Some of these activities were captured on film by Joseph Schneider, a Holocaust survivor, Red Army veteran, anti-Soviet dissident and Zionist activist whose archive also recently came to the CAHJP.

Joseph Schneider, 1960. From the Joseph Schneider Archive, the Central Archives for the History of the Jewish People at the National Library of Israel

These photos reveal the grisly yet critical early efforts to better understand the legacy of Babi Yar and remember its victims.

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The Central Archives for the History of the Jewish People recently signed an agreement with the Babyn Yar Holocaust Memorial Center to share information and resources about Jewish life in Ukraine before the Holocaust, a collaboration which will significantly help scholars better understand the stories of those murdered at Babi Yar.

The Jewish Model from Tunisia

A rabbi, a moneychanger and a goldsmith meet in a German photography studio in the early 20th century. No, this is not the opening line of a joke. It is the beginning of a mystery, since all three characters are in fact the same person

Nati Gabbay | 16.08.21

Jewish Communities Jewish Culture North African Jewry

It all started in 1903 when a German photographer named Rudolf Franz Lehnert arrived in Tunisia. Besides being a gifted photographer, Lehnert was also a bit of an adventurer. After crossing the entire continent of Europe on foot, he arrived in Tunisia, where he chanced to meet another European photographer named Ernest Heinrich Landrock. The two became enamored with Tunisia and the charm of North Africa and decided to set up a photography studio together called Lehnert & Landrock.

Lehnert crisscrossed the deserts, capturing with his camera the landscapes, sights and people, especially the women, of North Africa. The printed photographs in various techniques made their way from North Africa to places around the world. And the world, it seems, fell under the exotic charm of Tunisia. Later, because of World War II, the two moved to Egypt and documented it as well, before eventually returning to their beloved Tunisia.

This article focuses on a number of these postcards which have ended up in the collections of the National Library of Israel.

While documenting the sights of Tunisia, Lehnert also encountered local Jews, whose different dress and unusual customs must have fascinated him and his clientele. He immortalized Tunisian Jewry with his camera, particularly the community’s customs and its women. However, a closer look reveals that one endearing Jew starred in many of the photos, becoming a sort of “in-house model” for the studio.

In a postcard from 1904 featuring the title “Rabbi,” we see the man photographed for the first time in the guise of a rabbi carefully studying the page of a book (possibly a Talmud):

Click to view in the National Library catalog

The next year, the studio produced another postcard, also titled “Rabbi.”

Here he is again, this time wrapped in a tallit and tefillin reciting the morning prayers in a postcard labeled “Rabbi praying.”

Another postcard from 1905 adds a twist to the plot: the “rabbi” has suddenly become a Tunisian moneychanger.

And here again as the familiar figure of the old rabbi. This time he looks straight at the camera.

Perhaps our rabbi /moneychanger is in fact a goldsmith?

So who is the mysterious Jewish model in all these photographs, whom the two European photographers obviously found so appealing?

After this article was originally published in Hebrew, one of our Facebook followers, Victor Cohen, told us that this mysterious man is none other than Rabbi Yehuda Zeitoun from the city of Monastir in Tunisia. Cohen, a great-grandson of Rabbi Zeitoun, says that among his many occupations, the rabbi was also a goldsmith, merchant, mohel and a reciter of liturgical poetry. If so, it turns out, the various photographs simply document the rabbi’s varied pursuits. Cohen notes that Rabbi Zeitoun’s son, Rabbi Hai ben Yehuda Zeitoun, was the chief rabbi of the city of Sfax and was even awarded a medal for his work from the ruler of Tunisia.

In any case, the face of this accomplished multi-talented person became a representation of the figure of the North African Jew across large parts of the world.