Ruth Blau (Ben-David) edit
Ruth Blau is a well-known figure in 20th-century Jewish History. Born Lucette Madeleine Ferraille into a French Catholic family, she decided to convert to Judaism with her son Claude after the establishment of the State of Israel.
Described as a "Jane Fonda from another side", Ruth was a fervent Zionist, who became a fervent Orthodox Jew, and made world headlines twice, first with her participation in the Yossele Schuchmacher affair and later by her marriage a few years later with the late Rabbi Amram Blau, founding leader of the Anti-Zionist Neturei Karta.
Young years edit
Madeleine Ferraille was born in 1920 in Calais into a Catholic family. She was the only daughter of Octave Ferraille, an electrical technician and Jeanne Catherine Isaert. Madeleine's family moved to Paris when she was three years old. She began religious instruction in 1929, attended catechism twice a week at the Church of Saint-Sulpice and made her communion two years later. After graduating she attended the Lycée Fénelon .
in 1937, Madeleine met a young man, Henri Baud who was two years her senior. She married him two years later, in September 1939. The day after their marriage, Henri returned to the French army behind the Maginot Line while Madeleine became a teacher in a village in the Hautes-Pyrénées, seven kilometers above Luchon. Madeleine's son Claude was born a year later in Rodez on September 5, 1939. She lost her position as a teacher and enrolled in the fall of 1941 at the Faculty of Letters in Toulouse for a degree in history and geography. She felt that her married life was not successful and she began divorce proceedings on September 5, 1942. She cut off all contact with her former husband, going so far as to behave like a widow while he was alive and well. The divorce was finalized in Pau on July 31, 1944.
During World War Two, she was an active member of the French Resistance. Madeleine claims that she helped Jews during the war, though this issue seems to be a matter of dispute. After the Liberation of France, she returned to Paris. Unable to find a job teaching, Madeleine briefly became an editor at the French Air Ministry and earned her living by doing translations and correcting correspondence homework. After earning a degree in literature in 1943, she enrolled at the Sorbonne for a doctorate in history. In 1947, she settled with her son in Geneva, selling insurance in the evening and working during the day on her doctoral thesis. When she returned to Paris, she set up an import-export company selling textiles.
Conversion to Judaism edit
In 1949, when Madeleine was 29, she visited the recently founded State of Israel. She and returned to France as a fervent Zionist. She became a member of the Women's International Zionist Organization (WIZO), and in 1950 she decided to convert to Judaism. Her conversion was officiated though the liberal (Non Orthodox) synagogue of rue Copernic and she took on the new name of Ruth Ben-David. In that synagogue, she met a young rabbi Jean Poliatschek , who was invited as a speaker. At that time he was 37 and she was 31. However, her history as a convert to Judaism caused a scandal. She found only a few defenders which included the Orthodox rabbi Abraham Elie Maizes who later became her mentor.
Preoccupied with her complicated relationship, Ruth Ben-David neglects her business and pays no attention to her partner's financial malfeasance. He fled to Israel while Ruth Ben-David, who owed thirty-nine million francs in customs duties, was imprisoned for two months (one year according to her son) at Petite Roquette . There she met Rabbi David Feuerwerker , then prison chaplain.
When she was released from prison in 1951, “[acceding] to the wishes of Rav Maizes”, she converted a second time, under the direction of Samuel Jacob Rubinstein , the rabbi of the Orthodox synagogue on rue Pavée 13 . His ten-year-old son was also converted and took the name Uriel two years later, while preparing for his bar mitzvah at Kibbutz Yavne 6 .
From the school of Orsay to the Yeshiva of Aix-les-Bains edit
In 1953, the relationship between Ruth Ben-David and Rabbi Poliatschek came to an end. Ruth Ben-David briefly tries to settle in Israel before returning to France. Living far from Jewish centers during the week, she spent her weekends at the Gilbert Bloch school in Orsay , where Rabbi Léon Ashkenazi, known as Manitou, trained many young Jewish intellectuals in search of their roots .
According to Ouriel Ben-David, it was his mother who "converted" Manitou to Zionism, debating with him and arranging series of seminars for him at Givat Washington and Yeshiva Merkaz Harav. Manitou asserted that he had always been a Zionist, while Ruth Ben-David refused to admit later that she had never been 6 . She gradually broke away from the community of Orsay to join that of her mentor, Rabbi Maizes, enthusiastically adopting its more rigorous rules.
Ruth Ben-David and her son now spend their weekends at Le Pletzel , in the Marais . There they meet with Mechel Reisz and Reb Itzikel (Moshe Yitzchok) Gewirtzman, major community figures of the Franco-Belgian Haredi community. She made long stays with the latter in Antwerp , in Belgium , of which she spoke little. In 1956, two years after the departure of Rabbi Abraham Elie Maizes for a neighborhood near Mea Shearim , she decided to stay at the Yeshiva of Aix-les-Bainsand becomes there, according to its terms, “strictly orthodox” while its son adapts badly to this new life. He decides to leave France definitively in 1959, and to enlist, against the advice of his mother, in the Israeli army ; however, she made him promise to get in touch with Rabbi Maizes .
The Kidnapping of Yossele Schuchmacher edit
Rabbi Maizes managed to delay the young man's commitment for two years by sending him to study at the Yeshiva of Beer Yaakov. During this time, he dispatches him for menial services which gradually implicate him in what will come to be known as the Yossele Schuchmacher affair. The rabbi was a close friend of Nahman Shtrakes, a Beslover Chasid who was assigned to the education of his grandson Yossele. Shtrakes refused to return Yossele to his parents who have become devout communists and secular jews, and who were rumored to desire to return back to the USSR. Knowing Ruth Ben-David's past as a member of the French Resistance, the rabbi begs her to exfiltrate Yossele from Israel. Ruth agrees and disguises Yossele as a girl and, falsifying her son's old passport, gets him out of Israel under the name of Claudine. Determined to be involved to the best of her ability, Ruth Ben-David hides Yossele in a yeshiva in Lucerne, Switzerland , then in the Novardok yeshiva in Fublaines and, finally, in the United States. The Israeli Mossad was told to spare no effort to find and return Yossele. When she Ruth to France, she was sequestered for a few days by the Mossad. Having no choice she revealed Yossele's hiding place to Modad Chief Isser Harel. Yossele Schumacher was discovered in June 1962 in Williamsburg (Brooklyn) and returned to his parents.
At this point Ruth Ben-David became a public figure, fanatical for some, heroic for others. Many legends were formed around her: she was a descendant of Marranos , that she was a former cabaret dancer, and how she distinguished herself in the rescue of Jews during the war etc.
Controversial marriage to Rabbi Amram Blau edit
Ruth Ben-David, now 45, finds herself reluctantly at the heart of a new scandal a few years later. Her son Ouriel, eager to marry her off in order to increase his own chances of finding a good match, suggests that she marry Rabbi Amram Blau , a recently widowed father of ten and spiritual leader of the Netourei Karta , a movement Lithuanian anti-Zionist movement (Amram Blau himself founded his movement after cutting ties with his brother Moshe, when he learned that the latter, president of Agudath Israel , undertook to negotiate with representatives Zionists in 1937 18 ).
Unexpectedly, Amram Blau shows interest in the proposal after receiving assurances from Ruth Ben-David that she would abide by the Neturei Karta way of life . However, he takes his eldest sons and a notable who also coveted the “young and beautiful convert ” 19 by surprise . The case is taken to the rabbinical court of Edah Haredit and Amram Blau is asked to revoke his engagement, which he refuses 18 , invoking the virtues of the union of Boaz with Ruth the Moabite and Deuteronomy 23:2 ( “He who has his genitals crushed or mutilated will not be admitted into the assembly of the Lord .. - from which it follows that Amram Blau, having been wounded in this place shortly after the independence of the State of Israel, could only remarry a convert) 19 . The campaign that unleashed around the union of the charismatic leader with a "dirty and arrogant convert 2 " is mercilessly violent and ends in his dismissal 18 . Called to the rescue, Joël Teitelbaum , Rebbe de Satmar is “unable to mend this dispute 19 ” and the rabbi, ostracized, is forced to marry in Bnei Brak , theSeptember 2, 196518 . He returned a year later to Jerusalem but the Netourei Karta movement was irremediably split 19 , 21 and the rabbi's grandchildren were instructed not to speak to his new wife 18 .
Controversial activities and positions edit
After the death of her husband, Ruth Blau remained in Mea Shearim. Although still ostracized by the Blau family, she lead an independent branch of the Neturei Karta that has remained loyal to her husband. She continued to mobilize ardently, publishing her memoirs in 1978, participating in an interview-show with Yossele Schuchmacher and maintaining a personal friendship with Ayatollah Khomeini after the Revolution of Iran.
Ruth Died on January 10, 2000. She remains a controversial personality to this day .
References edit
https://content.time.com/time/subscriber/article/0,33009,834305-1,00.html
https://www.nikwik.com/stories/suspense/ss3/
https://www.jpost.com/international/israeli-reunites-with-ny-woman-who-helped-in-his-abduction
https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/news/articles/yossele-schumacher
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/723696/summary
https://www.geni.com/people/Ruth-Blau-Ben-David/6000000009633511041
https://www.google.com/books/edition/The_Making_of_Modern_Jewish_Identity/Iu6aDwAAQBAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1&dq=Madeleine+Lucette+Ferraille&pg=PT156&printsec=frontcover
Jacques Gutwirth , Archives of the Social Sciences of Religions , vol. 48,1979 ( read online [ archive ] ) ,
p. 256 Kaplan 2010 Blau 1978 ,
p. 10. Blau 1978 ,
p. 10-11. Blau 1978 ,
p. 15. (en) Greer Fay Cashman, “ No stranger to controversy ” , The Jerusalem Post,May 24, 2000 (consulted theJanuary 8, 2013)
Blau 1978 , p. 16-17. Blau 1978 ,
p. 17. Blau 1978 , p. 18. Blau 1978 ,
p. 36-37. Inbari , The Making of Modern Jewish Identity: Ideological Change and Religious Conversion, 2019. [ archive ]
Blau 1978 , p. 40-41. Blau 1978 , p. 42. Blau 1978 , p. 50-51. Blau 1978 , p. 70. Blau 1978 , p. 95-96.
See also Élie Wiesel , All Rivers Go to the Sea: Memoirs , Paris, Seuil ,1994, p. 421-424& Blau 1978 , p. 171 (en)
Yair Ettinger, “ Notes on a scandal ” [ archive ] , Ha'aretz,July 25, 2010 Landau 1993 , p. 154 The Bible: Bilingual edition: French translation under the direction of Grand Rabbi Zadoc Kahn , Paris, Librairie Colbo,1967, p. 327
Micha Odenheimer. We do not Believe. we will Not Follow. [ archive ] "Archived copy" (11 July 2011 version at the Internet Archive ) Appendices External links Authority records :Virtual International Authority FileInternational Standard Name IdentifierNational Library of France ( data )Library of CongressNational Library of IsraelWorldCat IdWorldCat Archive Belonging to Reb Amram Blau Sheds New Light on the Rabbi 1965 Marriage to a Convert. [ archive ] With photos by Amram Blau and Ruth Ben-David. Series of letters between Rabbi Amram Blau and his wife, the convert Ruth ben David. [ archive ] Bibliography Ruth Blau ,
The Guardians of the City: History of a Holy War , Paris, Flammarion ,1978, 300 p. ( ISBN 978-2-08-064118-2 ) (he)
Kimi Kaplan , 'Houtspedikke shmoutsedikke guiyoress: Haparasha shel nissouei Amram Blau veRuth Ben-David , Ben-Gurion Research Institute for the Study of Israel and Zionism,2010 ( read online [ archive ] ) , p. 300-336 (in)
David Landau , Piety & Power: The World Of Jewish Fundamentalism , New York, Hill & Wang,1993, 358 p. ( ISBN 0-8090-7605-5 )
On the first meeting of Ruth Blau and Khomeini: The Flame and the Sulfur ( Lucien Bitterlin ), Vegapresse, 1988.
Motti Inbari . The Making of Modern Jewish Identity: Ideological Change and Religious Conversion . Routledge , 2019 . ( ISBN 0429648596 ) , ( ISBN 9780429648595 )