Notes & News
NOTES & NEWS Pinchas H. Peli 1930-1989 The Jewish world is bereaved. We have lost an activist and visionary—a man whose heart embraced all of us, a man whose life exemplified the possibility of a...
...A member of moment's Editorial Advisory Board, Peli wrote an article as recently as the December 1988 issue of moment ("A Religious Renaissance— Can It Happen in Israel...
...As a great teacher, Peli was at once a formidable scholar, a deep thinker, and a lover of people with an unusual ability to communicate...
...Shuker has produced smuggled letters and tapes from Yemenite Jews that ask the Israeli government for help...
...Wolf, who met with Shuker in Israel last year, suggests that American Jews contact their senators and representatives to push the issue to the fore of the U.S...
...He knew the joy of the isolated scholar's study, but he spent most of his life reaching out to Jews who wanted to learn...
...These are our brothers and sisters...
...Our dear brothers," reads one letter, "you know we are in exile...
...Apparently, Yemenites have been inflamed by the images of Israeli soldiers striking or arresting Palestinian youths shown on television every night...
...No Jew has emigrated from Yemen since 1969...
...We have lost an activist and visionary—a man whose heart embraced all of us, a man whose life exemplified the possibility of a future in which Judaism would enlighten life, a future in which no Jew would reject another...
...Steeped in traditional rabbinic texts, he was equally at home in modern critical Bible study...
...At his last lecture more than 1,500 people attended...
...Yemenite Jews In Desperate Straits Nearly 6,000 Jews remain in Yemen and they face persecution and annihilation if the world remains silent, charges an organization of Yemenite Jews in Israel...
...Peli traveled widely, serving as visiting professor at Yeshiva University in New York City, at the Catholic university of Notre Dame, at Cornell University, at the Seminario Rabbinico in Argentina and at the Makuya Bible Seminary in Japan...
...When he began to write poetry as a young man, he took the name Peli, the Hebrew word for "wonder," so as not to offend his very Orthodox family with his secular pursuit...
...I'm not the kind of guy who can read about these Jews and not do anything," Wolf explained...
...After two years of picketing and petitioning, the ABA decided not to renew the joint agreement...
...In 1986 Peli came to Washington, D.C., as the first scholar-in-residence of the Foundation for Jewish Studies...
...The remaining Jews in South Yemen emigrated after the 1967 Six-Day war...
...William J. Wolf, an attorney in Phoenix, Arizona, calls his one-man operation the American Council to Save Yemenite Jewry...
...Rabbi Peli was 59 years old and had lived in Jerusalem all his life—a rabbi descended from a long chain of rabbis...
...A devoutly observant Jew, he could share doubts with the skeptic...
...We don't forget you day and night...
...The situation for Yemen's Jews has deteriorated in recent years, according to David Shuker, chairman of Israel's Public Committee for Yemenite Jewry...
...Reportedly, persecution of Yemenite Jews has worsened even more since the onset of the intifada...
...Please ask the government of Israel to bring us to Israel so we can unite with our families...
...Peli was a friend and disciple to both Heschel and Soloveitchik...
...Figures for the number of Jews in North Yemen differ...
...We've got to save these people...
...He is also survived by his mother, Rabbanit Rivka Hacohen, who is in her nineties.—H.S...
...Though Jewish families had emigrated to Palestine as early as 1882, in recent times the majority of Yemen's Jews emigrated to Israel in the early 1950s in an Israeli action called "Operation Magic Carpet...
...challenging all Jews—in the Diaspora and in Israel— to embark together on a spiritual renewal of Judaism to demonstrate that ' 'Judaism still has something valuable— perhaps vital—to offer a troubled world...
...The winners will be announced and their achievements highlighted in the next issue of moment...
...Pinchas Hacohen Peli died on April 3 of cancer complicated by pneumonia...
...One outcome of Shuker's September 1988 news conference was the formation of an American organization to help Jews in Yemen...
...With it all, he was blessed with a wonderful family—a loving wife, four children and a growing brood of grandchildren...
...We don't have any satisfaction from the gentiles...
...Professor of Jewish studies and chairman of the department of Hebrew literature at the Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, and co-founder of the Foundation for Jewish Values in California, Peli became known worldwide from his lectures, and from his essays and 11 books, including Torah Today: A Renewed Encounter with Scripture (B'nai B'rith Books, 1987), Abraham Joshua Heschel: An Intellectual Biography (New York University Press, 1986), On Repentance: The Thought and Oral Discourses of Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik (Oroth, 1980), and Shabbat Shalom (B'nai B'rith Books, 1988...
...Moment's National Community Service Award Winners To Be Announced Next Issue moment's Community Service Awards attracted 163 nominations...
...Wolf has been involved in the Soviet Jewry movement since 1983, and was one of three United States attorneys in the American Bar Association who challenged the ABA's "Declaration of Cooperation" with lawyers in the Soviet Union...
...But according to Israel's Public Committee for Yemenite Jewry, the figure is closer to 6,000...
...Responding to Peli's engaging personality, charming humor and extraordinary ability to teach, thousands of Washington Jews came out for a marathon of 117 lectures in three months...
...government's human rights agenda...
...A committed Orthodox rabbi, he was outspoken in his support of Jewish religious pluralism...
...Prior to the founding of the state of Israel in 1948, there were 55,000 Jews in North and South Yemen...
...In 1982, some 2,000 terrorists from Lebanon arrived in Yemen, Shuker said at a news conference in Israel in September 1988, and have raped Jewish women, kidnapped Jewish children, stolen Jews' property and forced Jews to convert to Islam...
...S.F.S...
...It is hell for us...
...According the American Jewish Committee, there are 1,000 to 2,000 Jews still in Yemen...
...For many of those who learned with him Peli opened the doors to modern Jewish philosophy and traditional rabbinic commentaries...
...A sizable part of Washington's Jewish community became what were dubbed, "Peli groupies," going from lecture to lecture, energized by Peli's teaching and by the discovery that it was not too late to begin to learn about Judaism...
Vol. 14 • June 1989 • No. 4
