Moishe Hirsch, a victim of circumstance

A columnist in The Jerusalem Post has written a very humanizing column about Moishe Hirsch, the recently deceased former "foreign minister" of the Neturei Karta.

Rabinovich, the author of the piece is a cousin of Hirsch and remembers him growing up. He doesn't seem to know how the red-headed kid who played punchball became the leader of the NK and famous for his relationship with Arafat, but it seems to be more of a right time and place (or perhaps wrong time and place) kind of thing rather than he really believed in the ideology.

The article is very interesting and gives a human appearance to Hirsch, rather than the monstrous one we have all come to know him with.

Moish’s motion was memorable. He would begin from a deep crouch, like a tiger prepared to spring, but instead of just taking a step, he would take one step after another until he was a third of the way to first base before hitting the ball. There was no way an infielder could throw out a runner with a lead like that, especially one as fast as he.

The image of Moish standing on first base with a roguish smile trumps for me the vilification – “self-hating traitor,” “child killer” – from those who knew only the outrageous, black-clad figure they read about in the newspaper.

Notoriety was the last thing anyone would have envisaged for “Red” Hirsch in the old neighborhood. When he died last month even the international press took note: “Anti-Zionist Rabbi and Arafat Ally Moshe Hirsch Dies in Jerusalem,” read the Associated Press headline.

As a young man, he was far from a brooding Khomeini-in-the-making as his detractors might have it. He was Danny Kaye. Both were redheads for starters. And Moish had the implacable good nature, the wit and sparkle that was the hallmark of the comedian. You left almost any encounter with him smiling.

I don’t remember him being noticeably more religious than any of the other fellows who went to yeshiva on New York’s Lower East Side, although he and I were not age peers so my up-close memories of him then are fuzzy. He was a regular on the ball fields of Hamilton Fish Park. But he was religiously knowledgeable enough for my parents to ask him to prepare me for my bar mitzva. He was patient as a teacher and a reassuring presence alongside me on the synagogue bima when the day came.

A year later, when I decided to leave yeshiva and go to a secular high school, he came to my house and tried to persuade my parents to change my mind – I can still hear his knock on the door – but he never pursued it beyond that point or made me feel guilty. As his studies advanced, he became a religious authority for the extended family. Such was his liberal way of interpreting the law that whenever a question arose about whether something was permitted or not, the cry went up from those who wanted it approved, “Call Moishie.”

At some point, the fellows from his and my older brothers’ circles started going out with girls, a terrifying life-form hitherto outside a yeshiva boy’s ken. I may be doing Moish’s memory a disservice but I have a vague recollection of being told – could it have been by him? – that he would prepare himself for such occasions by writing topics for conversation on his palm in anticipation of awkward silences.

At some point, he enrolled in the prestigious, university-level yeshiva in Lakewood, New Jersey, about an hour from New York City. It was there that his life took a major turn. As I understand it, the head of the yeshiva was asked by a prominent Jerusalem rabbi, Aharon Katzenellenbogen, to send his best student as a groom for his daughter. The yeshiva head chose Moish, who accepted the call. His affable personality fit easily into the new Yiddish-speaking milieu of Jerusalem’s haredi community, the Yiddish itself offering it even greater scope.
[...]
Moish’s motion was memorable. He would begin from a deep crouch, like a tiger prepared to spring, but instead of just taking a step, he would take one step after another until he was a third of the way to first base before hitting the ball. There was no way an infielder could throw out a runner with a lead like that, especially one as fast as he.

The image of Moish standing on first base with a roguish smile trumps for me the vilification – “self-hating traitor,” “child killer” – from those who knew only the outrageous, black-clad figure they read about in the newspaper.

Notoriety was the last thing anyone would have envisaged for “Red” Hirsch in the old neighborhood. When he died last month even the international press took note: “Anti-Zionist Rabbi and Arafat Ally Moshe Hirsch Dies in Jerusalem,” read the Associated Press headline.

As a young man, he was far from a brooding Khomeini-in-the-making as his detractors might have it. He was Danny Kaye. Both were redheads for starters. And Moish had the implacable good nature, the wit and sparkle that was the hallmark of the comedian. You left almost any encounter with him smiling.

I don’t remember him being noticeably more religious than any of the other fellows who went to yeshiva on New York’s Lower East Side, although he and I were not age peers so my up-close memories of him then are fuzzy. He was a regular on the ball fields of Hamilton Fish Park. But he was religiously knowledgeable enough for my parents to ask him to prepare me for my bar mitzva. He was patient as a teacher and a reassuring presence alongside me on the synagogue bima when the day came.

A year later, when I decided to leave yeshiva and go to a secular high school, he came to my house and tried to persuade my parents to change my mind – I can still hear his knock on the door – but he never pursued it beyond that point or made me feel guilty. As his studies advanced, he became a religious authority for the extended family. Such was his liberal way of interpreting the law that whenever a question arose about whether something was permitted or not, the cry went up from those who wanted it approved, “Call Moishie.”

At some point, the fellows from his and my older brothers’ circles started going out with girls, a terrifying life-form hitherto outside a yeshiva boy’s ken. I may be doing Moish’s memory a disservice but I have a vague recollection of being told – could it have been by him? – that he would prepare himself for such occasions by writing topics for conversation on his palm in anticipation of awkward silences.

At some point, he enrolled in the prestigious, university-level yeshiva in Lakewood, New Jersey, about an hour from New York City. It was there that his life took a major turn. As I understand it, the head of the yeshiva was asked by a prominent Jerusalem rabbi, Aharon Katzenellenbogen, to send his best student as a groom for his daughter. The yeshiva head chose Moish, who accepted the call. His affable personality fit easily into the new Yiddish-speaking milieu of Jerusalem’s haredi community, the Yiddish itself offering it even greater scope.
[...]
Moish’s good humor never failed him, even toward the end. When I went with his brother, who had arrived from the States, to visit him at home, it was pretty clear that he did not recognize us, although he may have sensed that he once had. When we asked how he was, he replied with a half smile, “Never better.”

Moish had turned his life into a paradox. Reb Amram and Leibel Weisfish had been other-worldly, Old World figures. Moish was of this world and also of generous, outgoing temperament. Yet he had taken up a role viewed as demonic by the broad society, embracing a man who had brought terror to Israel’s cities. From his humble one-room apartment in Mea She’arim, Moish had mounted the world stage but earned the contempt of most of the Jewish people in whose name he presumed to be acting. The human psyche is a strange and wondrous thing and it would not do to overanalyze it. To me, the Khomeini image was never real. But Danny Kaye was there to the end.