Feeding the Flame of Jewish Life in Romania, One Community at a Time

View pictures from Rabbi Hacohen's travels here

This past week of Chanukah, while visiting 14 individual Jewish communities in the Transylvania region, Rabbi Hacohen, the Chief Rabbi of Romania, did not repeat even one sermon. "I look at the faces of the Jews in each place and take inspiration from them," he explains. "I speak to each person, see his reaction and know what he wants to hear. In their language I bring them back to their childhood with Chanukah gelt and dreidels, and they want to listen more and more."

Indeed, despite the sub-zero temperatures and winding, snow-blanketed roads of Transylvania, Rabbi Hacohen – whose illustrious career could certainly spare him this exhausting outdoor adventure – insists on personally leading the "Hannukiada," an annual "marathon" of Romania's central Jewish leadership to outlying communities in order to light Chanukah candles with them. It is because the tradition – which began with his predecessor, the legendary Rabbi Rosen – has special meaning for Rabbi Hacohen, who has been carrying it out for some years. In the early 1970's, while he was serving as Chief Rabbi of the Kibbutzim and Moshavim of Israel, Rabbi Hacohen found himself in Communist Romania. "It was in the communities hundreds of miles from Bucharest – many of the same remote places that we visit today during the Hannukiada – that I really discovered my Judaism."

The rabbi shared a story of one such place – Botosani. A Jewish community of historical importance, Botosani is now home to 80 Jews and an exceptional synagogue that dates back to 1834. "It was -20 degrees celcius and roads to the city were blocked off because of insurmountable snow. We were coming from another community and it took us so long that we were running seven or eight hours late," explains the rabbi, emphasizing that there was no heat in the synagogue where the community was waiting and no way to advise them of the caravan's tardiness. "When we arrived they were all still waiting – frozen. All those hours later! They took the Torah scrolls out of the ark and began dancing around, crying and celebrating." As in each of the destinations, the community prepared a meal for the Rabbi and Jewish leadership of Romania, complete with verenikas – the local version of sufganiot, or fried donuts – typical Chanukah fare. "Though these are poor communities, the tables are full of kosher food and decorated with beautiful flowers," says the rabbi. "In places like this, it is not necessary to light candles to illuminate the synagogues; the light is in the faces of the people as they welcome us."

That Jewish tradition endures in the vast Transylvanian countryside is heartening. Once a vibrant community of 800,000 Jews before the Second World War, half of Romania's Jewish population survived the War and subsequently emigrated. Today, the country's Jews number some 14,000, many of whom reside in the isolated villages of Transylvania. JDC, in partnership with the Federation of Jewish Communities in Romania (FEDROM), has for years helped provide for their material and spiritual needs.

In addition to providing relief, welfare and medical services to thousands of Romania's elderly Jews, JDC continues to enrich the lives of Romanian Jewry through social and community development as well as religious activities. JDC/FEDROM's Hannukiada epitomizes these activities, confirming for each and every Jew that no matter where he lives or what his needs are, the Jewish community will reach him.

In fact, Rabbi Hacohen would periodically visit the one remaining Jew in Sighisoara, a medieval community in central Romania. A few years ago the man showed the rabbi into the synagogue and the Rabbi noticed that it was freshly painted and asked, "Who did all of this? You are only one man!" The man, who was the sole Jew remaining from a pre-war community of 3,000 Jews, said that from time to time visitors from the U.S. and Israel to their parents' graves had given him donations in order to help maintain the Jewish sites, and he had fulfilled that promise. Touched by what he saw, the rabbi asked, "Why are you still here, as the sole Jew in the community?" The man, fiercely loyal and dedicated to continuing the tradition of his ancestors, replied "My wife and three children were killed in the Holocaust. G-d did everything he could have done to make me not Jewish anymore. I fought with him for years…and I am Jewish in spite of Him!"

Rabbi Hacohen, renowned for decades of Jewish spiritual leadership, says that it is the intense spirituality of people in these small Jewish communities that inspires him to continue the Hannukiada tradition in the face of perilous roads, heavy snow, and darkness. He even insists that if he were able to have Chanukah in Romania all year round, he would not tire of it. Asked why, he ponders a moment, smiling as he strokes his silver beard. "During the Festival of Lights and always, we have to take care not only when and where it is easy to have a Jewish community, but in those historic communities where they are still holding a candle that lights the life of Jews around the world."