Welcome to the website of Ohev Sholom -- The National Synagogue.

Thank you Rabbi Herzfeld. It is certainly a great pleasure for me to be here spending this Shabbat , enjoying yours and Rabanit, Dr. Herzfeld’s very gracious hospitality and meeting with and getting to know you , the community of this Ohev Shalom Congregation..

This is an unusual experience for me. A very precious experience for me. For I know full well that I am here this morning standing on this bimah, not on my own merit, but as a result of Z’chut Avot, the merit of our forefathers, enabled by the merit of my parents to accept Rabbi Herzfeld’s warm invitation to speak about my father Rabbi Zemach Green A’H’ and my mother, Rebbetzin Rebecca Green A’H’ and the (old) Ohev Shalom Congregation at 5^th and I Streets.

And if I become very personal this morning, please bear with me. These recollections this morning are among the most intimate recollections of my childhood. Of many years ago, yes, but clearly etched in my memory, certainly because they are so deeply personal to me, but perhaps even more so, because the period of historical time that I speak of this morning was indeed so very, very unique, fraught with so many specific profound challenges and unfathomable tragedy for the nascent local Jewish community of Washington and to world-wide Jewry - let alone to my father, to my mother, and to us as a family.

My father Zemach, one of 6 children, was born in Sumi, a small shtetl not far from the city of Charkov. His father, Rav Shlomo Yitchak was the Rav of Sumi, his mother (my paternal grandmother Minna Volk came from a long prestigious lineage – our yichus, I’m told going back directly to the Livush). After her husbands death at age 40, my grandmother Minna set out with two of her daughters to make the long trek to settle in Eretz Yisroel. My father, then a student at the Slobodka Yeshiva, followed her several months later as a stowaway with his chavrutah from the Slobodka Yeshiva and arrived at the port of Jaffa in the 1920’s. My father immediately went on to the Hebron Yeshiva (the garin for the yeshiva of Slobodka). After a short time, he made his way to Yeshivat Merkaz Harav in Jerusalem to become a devoted student and ‘ben bayit’ of the then chief Rabbi Kook. He lived at Rav Kook’s home. My mother, Rivka Weinstein was born in Suvalke Poland. She was one of three daughters. She too went to Palestine in the 1920’s . With the exception of her younger sister who later also immigrated to Palestine, all the rest of my mother’s family remained in Poland . All, including her twin sister were subsequently slaughtered by the Germans with no survivors during the Shoa.

In the new Yishuv, my mother a poet (she wrote in Hebrew and Yiddish) became part of the literatae of Tel Aviv of the 1920’s. She trained formally as a nurse at the newly established Hadassah Hospital working from then on, assigned to various locations serving the Yishuv population.

And so, my parents , the yeshiva bocher and the chalutzah met in Rechovot. My mother the nurse, was assigned to Rechovot to care for Rav Kook then convalescing in the only Jewish rehab center of the new Yishuv – which was in Rechovot. My father had made his way from Jerusalem to Rechovot , to naturally visit his ailing teacher, his Rebbe (to be ‘mevaker cholim’ ) and it was here that he met the nurse Rivka in attendance… …and the rest as they say, is history…….in this unusual case, with no ‘shadchan’ in sight.

But with no resources or possibility of livelihood, the young couple shortly after their marriage, decided to leave Eretz Hakodesh, turned to Rav Kook, to then receive his dispensation to leave Eretz Yisroel and set off for the United States.. arriving here in the early 1930’s. After an initial time in New York where my father began his acclimation to America, learning English by reading Webster’s Dictionary which he carried with him everywhere, but mostly while riding the subways, he then went on to Baltimore for a brief teaching assignment. And then finally, he, my mother and by then, two very young boys, my brothers Eitan (Jason) and Emanuel arrived in Washington where Zemach had accepted the appointment to serve as Rabbi at the Ohev Shalom Congregation at 5^th and I Streets.

Their first home, where I was born and lived until I was 9 years old, was at 77 NY Avenue. A very modest, narrow row house that’s still there. A strictly Orthodox home,, A rabbinic household, - a scholarly household, a household of the Litveshe tradition, a household of limud torah. And a home full of guests, -- visiting rabbis, meshulachim, writers, journalists, politicians, balebatim reviewing shul activites or seeking personal advice -- even an occasional setting up of a chuppah for a soldier on leave for a modest Orthodox wedding ceremony in our small living room. Sometimes too, just total strangers – tourists visiting DC in need of a place to stay or a kosher meal.

.My mother certainly understood the mitzvah of ‘hachnasat orchim’ and definitely practiced what she preached. Ours was a tough neighborhood. An immigrant neighborhood with families from the Ukraine, from Lithuania, sons of whom were continuously in and out of reform school and were my brothers’ playmates. A constant worry for my mother. At the periphery but within a few blocks too, was the Black neighborhood, a virtual shanty town out of sight to public Washington. I learned this firsthand, when each Purim after distributing ‘mishloach manot’ to our Jewish neighbors and friends, my mother would then pack up piles of shopping bags, and drag me with her to help her carry and distribute ‘matanot la’evyonim’ to these shanties. She was adamant about this mitzvah as well.

But at the core of all of this hyper activity, the central dominant core, which gave our home a sense of utmost difference and clarity – different from any other Jewish home, and certainly from any other Orthodox Jewish home I knew, was the Hebrew language, which we spoke at home, a view to the larger world, and Zionism.

If I had to describe my father in briefest terms, I would describe him as a deeply passionate man and a brilliant public speaker. All through his life and particularly as a practicing rabbi, he was able to educate and galvanize individuals and galvanize entire communities to action and commitment on behalf of Jewish life. His passion and his oratory were talents. But his abiding strength and power came from his deep love of people and his understanding and sympathy for the complexities of human foibles and interactions. He worked tirelessly, on behalf of Ohev Shalom addressing every detail, and minutia of administration as well as hashkafa for his kehilla. This, at a time when the Jewish community of Washington and particularly of Ohev Shalom, mainly immigrant, was extremely insecure.and vulnerable in their new lives as Americans. It was not an easy shtele. The frictions of class and education between those steeped in the Litveshe tradition of deep scholarship, modesty of means, and Talmud Torah and the less educated, often illiterate who were desperately eeking out a living mostly as peddlers and rapidly moving up, some to vast wealth - was a daily confrontation and ongoing burden for my father.. There was always a steady stream of problems to respond to. To ‘pasken halacha l’maiaseh’ on a daily basis as well as attending to complex personal problems of the many who would turn to him. Perhaps to counter this difficult atmosphere, my father devised and instituted , innovations, some of which we take for granted in Orthodox synagogues today. As a result, to Ohev Shalom itself, he brought in an entirely new warmth and esthetic and dignity that until then was essentially unknown in an Orthodox shul. To the daily workings, to the davening, to the experience and role and responsibilityof the shul and its tie to Jewish education in America. It marked the transition from the European Yiddish world to the new needs of American life. In the early years, my father’s Shabbat ‘drashot’ were certainly in Yiddish as were his daily ‘shiurum’ before Mincha attended faithfully by 50-60 people. But gradually but very consciously, he moved the vernacular of the Shul from Yiddish to English. And as a result of this decision, the number and dedication of attendees never diminished, but rather, grew.

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And he went on to innovate and create institutions of Jewish education beyond the shul’s . He established the “Chavrutah” the organization to advance the Hebrew language, Hebrew literature and Hebrew culture. He established the after school Talmud Torah. He established the Yeshivat Bet Yehuda, the Hebrew Academy,of Washington one of the first yeshivot ketanot to provide fully Orthodox religious and secular, coeducational education. To this day, this yeshiva ketana as you well know, flourishes and continues to educate many, no doubt, of your children and grandchildren. What you may not know , however, is that my father’s establishment of the Hebrew Academy was not an entirely altruistic endeavor. My two brothers, after the age of Bar Mitzvah, as matter of course, were sent off to Baltimore to study at the Talmudical Academy, later to the Ner Israel Yeshiva and my older brother to the Lakewood Yeshiva. I, their daughter, although several years younger, would obviously need at some point a full Jewish education. And it was inconceivable to my parents that a girl, at any age, could be sent away from home. So, my father “simply” established with the primary help of the elder Rabbi Klavan, the Hebrew Academy of Washington. I entered the first kindergarten at the first building at Decatur Street, and then later on to (then) derelict Georgetown to a an abandoned Public School building loaned to the yeshiva from the Distict. School system) And then to the yeshiva’s last location, as I knew it, on 16^th Street.

But it is my father and the astonishingly sharp recollections of the years of the Second World War that are most powerful in my memory. Some of them playful - my father in a silly military cap he wore over his yarmulke during his service in the nightly civil defense corps …. While other memories are merciless - As a child of maybe 4, in my footed pj’s at the top of the stairs, overhearing the whispered, obvious terror in the hushed voices during the many parlor meetings regularly held in our living room that lasted very late into the night….. My father’s ceaseless daily efforts to simply save individual lives. And to the public at large, his radio addresses (in English) during the war years, some of these handwritten copies now in the archives of the JHS …. these radio broadcasts that penetrated to both Jewish and non Jewish listeners’ consciousness, the magnitude of the tragedy unfolding in Europe and to this day moves anyone who reads them

It was during these years, – that my father began his work to establish Givat Washington in the Holy Land. And it was ultimately to this institution, that he gave his health and finally his life. Part of the Yavneh triangle, some of you who know Kibbutz Yavneh or Yeshivat Kerem B’Yavneh may have passed by this now very large campus and wondered at the odd name of Givat Washington. My father founded Givat Washington ---- to house orphaned refugee children - survivors of the Holoucaust, rescued and brought to Eretz Yisroel. The years passed and when this initial need was accomplished, Givat Washington continued to grow to became as it still serves today, as a center to absorb and educate immigrant children as well as serving as the main Teacher’s Seminary and Educational Center under the auspices of Chinuch Mamlachti Dati

It was in these years that his Zionist activities became primary and all consuming. . In DC he was known as the Zionist Rabbi: Some of you may have seen the famous press photo of my father in full white satin robe, his formal High Holliday regalia giving the benediction under the first time flying blue and white flag of the newly named State of Israel at the brand new consulate of Israel. The pride, the joy of the day on everyone’s face in this photo is clear. In this photo I too, appear - a little girl waving a blue and white flag, all smiles. Only later as the crowd dispersed unphotographed, at my mother’s side I witnessed her uncontrollable and inconsolable sobbing as she cried over and over - in public, no less, “Shpet, tzu shpet, zei zaneh ale avec gegangin – un zey kumin nisht tzurik”…… ( “Late…. too late….They have all gone away and they will never come back”….)

My father resigned from his post at Ohev Shalom in order to devote himself full time to Givat Washington. Shortly after, while on a trip to NYC on behalf of Givat Washington, he suffered a debilitating stroke. He recovered partially, but his health was from then on, seriously impaired. The greatest blow came In 1952, when my mother, his beloved Rivka suddenly collapsed and died of a cerebral hemorrhage. My mother was 47 years old. I had just passed my thirteenth birthday 4 weeks before. Her funeral was at Ohev Shalom, at 5^th and I. I remember it even now, as a “suffocating” scene overwhelmed by a vast crowd. I was told later that over 1,000 people had crowded into the shul .

During the nine years he survived her, despite failing health, my father went on to organize the small shul, Mishkan Torah at 7^th and Dahlia Streets. But clearly he never recovered from the blow of my mother’s death, all the while, his physical health continued to deteriorate severely. In 1961, he died at the Mass General Hospital in Boston of complications from vascular surgery. He was 56 years old. Rabbi Zemach and Rabanit Rebecca are buried side by side here in Washington at the old Ohev Shalom cemetery.

My mother’s death certainly was the trauma of my life and clearly the close of my childhood . Her funeral in 1952 was the last time I ever stepped into the shul at 5^th and I. I never visited the new edifice that followed the shul’s move from 5^th and I. I heard vaguely that Rabbi Hillel Klavan had become the shul’s Rabbi….After high school, I had left Washington to work and study in NY, and never really returned except for visiting my father every second week to try to help with his care. Thirty years later, as a tourist visitor to downtown Washington, passing by, seeing the front doors of the old building, open, I stepped in and asked permission to visit the upstairs where the sanctuary had been. The set up of the old shul had the Bet Medrash on the ground floor, with several adjacent rooms that served as reception areas for a Kiddush or other events and smaller rooms to the side, the Rabbi’s office, etc. Up one flight of stairs to the main sanctuary and above that a full U shaped womens’ balcony. I went up the stairs to find The men’s sanctuary unchanged except for the large round blue stained glass window over the bimah that had held a large ‘Magen David’ in the old shul. The Magen David had been replaced with a traditional New Testament bible scene, but otherwise the interior was exactly as I had last seen it 30 years before.. Flanking the side walls, the original stained glass windows with scenes from the ‘Tanach’ and their Hebrew inscriptions, were still there. Same wooden pews with ‘Magenei David’ carved at each end were still there. And upstairs in the womens’gallery, my mother’s seat with the tiny brass marker with her name Rebbetzin Rebecca Green still there…..

The old 5^th and I street Shul was the touchstone of my childhood. The parameters between 77 NY Avenue , and later Georgia Avenue and 5^th and I, as Bashevis Singer might have described, was our chatzer, our courtyard – and I am suddenly flooded with memory ….

Mr Brook, owner of a hardware store, sitting all day studying in the bet medrash. Mr Brill a fine ‘yodea sefer’, Samuel Dworkin of the executive board, Sam Rosenbaum, the Talmud Torah principal, the Shamas, R’ Talansky,The sweetness of Chazan Flussberg’s voice and his choir-boys davening on the Yomim Noraim,,our next door neighbors Chazan Novick and his family, My parents’ friends Rabbi Levinson and his wife Tikva, Rabbi Bogner and his family, the Bernsteins, the Himmelfarbs, the Cafritzes , Nechemia Cohen founder of the Giant Supermarket chain who had come with his wife from Mea Shearim, The Zuckerman family, the Povichs, Congressman Bloom, the Kay Family, the Veiners, the Goldbergs, The Silbert Family, Chaim Grade’s sleepovers at our home, my father’s sister, my Aunt and Uncle Luba and David Greenzaid, and so many, many more……

And finally, I recall the pleasure walking to shul holding my father’s hand every Shabbat morning, joined midway by Rabbi Metz , of Adas Israel (6^th and I) as the two men engaged in deep theological discussion on their way to their respective shuls.

He was, after all, my father. And it is with special tenderness that I remember him and my mother - their relationship with one another, and their dedication to Washington Jewish life , and their dedicated hopes for us their children. We knew even then as youngsters, how unusual a man my father was and we certainly know now as mature and senior adults just how unusual a man he was.

But to all of us, this unusual man, this public man, this Rabbi, especially to the Jews of Washington, a city and a people he loved very much, his vision has left a true and many faceted legacy…… a thriving Hebrew Academy, and a shul called Ohev Shalom that managed to make it through many transitions and now given new vibrancy here at the Ohev Shalom, the National Synagogue and ------ ofcourse, Givat Washington named for the Nation’s Capitol which forever bonds the Jews of Washington to the prayer, the hope, and the destiny that is the State of Israel.

Thank you for listening. And I wish you all, Shabbat Shalom.