Veterans: Rabbi Moshe Sachs

A veteran of two wars, Sachs never wielded a gun or drove a tank, rather he catered to the Jewish soldiers' spirit and welfare.

By JERRIN ZUMBERG
Moshe Sachs 88 224 (photo credit: Courtesy )
Moshe Sachs 88 224
(photo credit: Courtesy )
Rabbi Moshe Sachs is a self-proclaimed "saver." He has kept thousands of documents and letters over the course of his life, from correspondence with travel agents for boat passage to Palestine in 1947 to his wife's immunization certificate as old as the Jewish state itself. Sitting in his breezy Jerusalem apartment surrounded by some 10,000 books and wearing a blue-and-white crocheted kippa, Sachs fingers through two of his recently self-published books that string together the piles of material he has saved over his 87 years into single narratives. A veteran of two wars, Sachs never wielded a gun or drove a tank, rather he catered to the Jewish soldiers' spirit and welfare. PREPARATION Born in Baltimore on December 30, 1920, Sachs attended an Orthodox synagogue or, if he was with his grandmother, a Reform one. He went to a progressive Hebrew school, and participated in the Gordonia Labor Zionist youth group. Sachs said it was his "good fortune" to have had such exposure to diverse ways of Jewish life and identity. His strong connection to Jewish life eventually led him to the Jewish Theological Seminary for rabbinical school, and to his wife Fran, whom he met at a Zionist meeting. He later served in the Pacific after being drafted as a US Army chaplain just one month before the Nazis surrendered. "The Germans gave in because they knew I'd joined up," Sachs joked. While in the Pacific, Sachs, then 25, marked the beginning of his career as a man resourceful and determined enough to enable traditional Jewish life under even the most adverse of circumstances. During Pessah of 1946, between offering Hebrew lessons and tending to the needs of Jewish (and Christian) US military men on Okinawa, the young rabbi appealed for enough matza to celebrate the holiday. Sachs soon found himself watching endless boxes of matza pile up on his US Army base, enough for a dozen Seders. JOURNEY Upon completing his service in 1947, Sachs took advantage of the GI Bill to study at the Hebrew University. He and his wife traveled two and a half weeks by boat from New York to Haifa with doctors, engineers, philosophers, dancers, hassidim and kibbutzniks. "Unbeatable company," Sachs described them in a letter home. This first journey laid the bedrock for Sachs's later aliya in 1976. ARRIVAL Within a month of arriving in Palestine, the Sachses were undergoing basic training in the Hagana - a five-day course he sarcastically called "intensive," but one that he still chose to describe in letters home as "a guided trip through the surrounding hills." The young couple were quick to color their letters with versions of the truth so as to ease the anxieties of concerned family members begging them to return home. His appropriately named Uncle Sam wrote: "You belong here! Now! There is no advantage to Palestine in you being there... [or] to remain where you are under what to me seems to be an erroneous belief that by remaining you are showing steadfastness to Judaism - while by coming home you are deserting that cause. You are deserting nothing." In response, the Sachses penned long essays defending their decision to stay in Palestine. The stubborn couple remained through and after the war, living in Jerusalem and aiding in convoys to and from the besieged city. WAR OF INDEPENDENCE As Sachs established himself in the Hagana, he played a self-described "social service rabbinic role." Several times he found himself under gunfire while dealing with soldiers' troubles. Sachs says his job was to visit all the frontline areas and report back on conditions at each military post - the soldiers' access to cultural activities, if they had games and books, proper clothing, access to kosher food, etc. For Pessah 1948, Sachs organized a Seder for Hagana fighters in Jerusalem's Talpiot neighborhood. He sat beside writer S.Y. Agnon, whom he had asked to conduct the service. RETURN The pressure to return to the US mounted in 1949 when a family illness on Fran's side and insistence from the family that they raise their children in America sent them back to her hometown, Minneapolis-St.Paul, toward the end of that year. The trip was originally planned as a leave of absence from Sachs's new job with the World Zionist Organization, but the break turned into a near 30-year stay in the US. LANGUAGE Sachs never had a problem with Hebrew. He is a product of a group of determined Baltimore Jewish leaders who were set on producing "the educated Jew that could speak Hebrew." The strong Hebrew background allowed Sachs to speak the language fluently upon landing in Palestine and within months he was communicating with Hagana soldiers on the frontlines and writing up multiple-page reports to the movement's leaders in charge of soldier welfare. REST OF THE STORY Returning to America only "got us into the same trouble," Sachs said. It went from demands for them to come home to "don't you dare go back." They were convinced to stay, at least until their children were grown. But by 1976, after earning a PhD in psychology, spending many years in a Minneapolis pulpit and as an active member of the Free Soviet Jewry Movement, the tug of the Holy Land was too much to keep Sachs in America. Their three children were grown and independent, so he and Fran moved back to Israel in 1976. They settled again in Jerusalem, making their "real aliya" as Sachs put it. "We had to come back," he said, content that some 30 years later one of his three children lives in Israel, calling that "pretty good for an American Jewish family." ADVICE Sachs has built succot out of the floors of army tents, taught Hebrew on remote Philippine and Japanese islands and counseled Hagana soldiers on the frontlines, but he remains humble, calling his role "a simple one" and assuring that others did far more important work than he. "I don't have to be proud. But the Jewish world can be proud of what it has done under extraordinary circumstances," he says. "I've been very fortunate in my life and I never could have foreseen it." To propose an immigrant for a "Veterans" profile, please send a one paragraph e-mail to: upfront@jpost.com