Whose new year?

1, 2016 — who’s new year is it? I am reminded of the following story. Rabbi Yechezkel Abramsky was somewhat of a legendary figure for having exited a communist prison camp in 1931. Rabbi Abramsky was a great Talmudic scholar whose multivolume work on the Tosefta, a Talmudic work, is a classic. Therefore, certain Jewish circles around the world followed his communist imprisonment closely, somewhat akin to the widespread attention paid to Anatoly (later Natan) Sharansky’s imprisonment by the USSR in Siberia, 1978-1986. In 1931, out of nowhere, the sage Rabbi Yisrael M. Kagan, in Poland, is reputed to have turned to a colleague suddenly and said: “They just let out Rabbi Abramsky.” Rabbi Kagan had no email or even telephone; spiritually, he knew. And […]