Tuesday, June 26, 2007

Jewish Press on Cantor Sidney Selig

6/15/07

--Lessons In Emunah


By: Gemma Blech Wednesday, June 13, 2007

The Story Of An Oleh
Sidney (once Siegfried) Selig was born in Frankfurt, Germany in 1924. The years between then and now – his "golden years" in Jerusalem –were long and hard. From his childhood in Germany to his youth and adult years in the safe haven of America; then, after 32 years as chazzan at the Ohav Shalom synagogue in New York, Siggy (as I have long known him) made aliyah to Jerusalem in 1987. Siggy, now wheelchair-bound, decided that it's time to have pen put to paper and tell his life story.
Sidney's story starts before his birth. He was the second child born to David and Gunda Selig. A first-born son who mysteriously died after 36 hours preceded him. The result was that the new baby Selig was excessively protected, and when faced with the future horrors of his childhood, he was quite unprepared. He describes himself as having been an immature and lonely little boy.
His father was a prosperous shirt manufacturer in the days of stiff collars, cuff links and middle-class respectability. He left school at 14 to work in the shirt business, where he prospered as a result of hard work and being his own best salesman.
David Selig would leave home at 5 a.m. each Sunday and not return again until the following Friday. During the week, his wife and young son would stay home, and a local gentile merchant would deliver food and vegetables to the door. Young Siggy, meanwhile, was never allowed out of the home alone; thus he never adjusted to the rough and tumble of the neighborhood.
By the late 1920's, David Selig realized his precious son needed to be well educated. While Siggy attended a secular junior high school, his father engaged David Katz, a teacher at the respected Hirsch High School, to teach Chumash to his young son. Prophetically, Siggy remembers this faithful teacher focusing unendingly on Parshat Lech Lecha (Genesis 12-17). The story of Abraham leaving the land of his birth and uprooting for a strange land was to become a real source of strength in later years.
As the anti-Jewish ferment in Germany increased in the 1930's, Siggy was finally moved to the Hirsch High School, the big Jewish school across town. But it was while he was still at the junior high school that he learned something that he would never forget. His teacher, a violin player, taught his willing Jewish student that he must "learn to sing like a violin, so that no one hears your breathing." He learned that early lesson well, and it was at the Hirsch School that Siggy began his real love for Jewish education.
An early Frankfurt memory is the visit to the family home in 1936 by a gentile policeman called Peter Hörr, who had been at school with Siggy's father. One day, the policeman arrived at the family home unannounced. His job was to "pick up Jews," but this visit was to say, "David, make sure you get away from here, as I have already had to pick up too many Jews." Though this warning came in good time, it was not until long after Kristallnacht (in 1938) that young Siggy was finally able to escape to England – on one of the last of the Kindertransports.
In 1899 David Selig had received a letter from his uncle, Joseph, in the United States, telling him how well he was doing in his newly established cattle business. He encouraged the family to join him. The letter was proudly headed, "Buyer and Shipper of Livestock and Fine Horses – Ligonier, Indiana."
A letter from America in those days was quite an event, and David Selig kept that letter until it became a crucial aid in their escape. By the mid- 1930's, no one could leave Germany unless they could present to the authorities a documented invitation for them to come to the U.S. Thus the 1899 letter indeed became the passport to freedom and safety for the whole family.
Sidney Selig, the chazzan, in 1961
After a long wait, and with much anxiety, the young Siegfried was finally sent off – alone – to England on one of the aforementioned last Kindertransports. One important memory stays with Siggy about that traumatic departure. It was May 9, 1939, and the rules about luggage taken abroad were very strict. Siggy had been given a small portable typewriter as a bar mitzvah present, and the customs official suddenly heard about it. Inexplicably, Siggy's father was sent home to get the precious present, and that typewriter served Siggy for years.
There still exists part of a journal handwritten by young Sidney after their arrival in the U.S. In it, he asks (referring to the Shoah in Germany), "… How did all this start? Where were the original roots? The Christian religion takes its headline from Leviticus in our Holy Scriptures, 'to love yourneighbor as yourself.' The quotation is purposely in the singular, as each one has this responsibility on his or her shoulders. What suddenly happened in Germany, where this quotation was true for hundreds of years? A sudden change from democracy to dictatorship; and yet, wait, it's a fad, it cannot happen here. We, of course, are Jewish, but we are Germans – or so we thought. We live [d] very well with our non-Jewish neighbors in the truest sense of the quotation from Leviticus…"
Even as Siggy remembered and wrote some of the history of Hitler's rise to power, he could hardly have known then of the appalling depths of the "Final Solution."
Sidney also writes of the family journey from England to America – thankfully, by this time, joined by his parents. "The passengers had an eventful trip; not enough [that] a war had started (the waters were rough all the way from England), but being chased by a U-boat for its gold bars cargo was truly not a pleasure … At last security in sight – dry land! [It] turned out not to be so dry at all. There was lots of residue of a most recent snowfall visible all over the streets. On board, one could see young and old, parents, grand [parents], boys and girls, old friends, newly formed friendships [wondering] what to expect on this, their first trip to the free land… Many came from KZ [concentration camps] or prisons [who] had stayed in England until their time period of awaiting their visa to the U.S…"
It's clear that the whole experience was quite overwhelming. We can be grateful for these brief pencil notes from so long ago – and written in English, which was still a relatively new language for the once German boy.
By the time the family reached America, Joseph Selig had died, and his daughter and son-in-law had taken over their father's responsibility for the small family. The couple sent them three train tickets to travel to Minneapolis, where they were now running a roach extermination business. The tickets came with an explanation that they could work for him for free, until their debt for the tickets was paid off. It was Siggy, a now slightly more mature 15-year-old, who asked about work on Shabbat, and was told, "There is no Shabbat here." In reaction Siggy replied, "No Shabbat, [then] we don't come; I never work on Shabbat!" He returned the train tickets with thanks for all they had done – not least, in saving their lives.
Arriving in the U.S., the family decided to settle in Manhattan. Finding work in those pre-Pearl Harbor days was never easy; but despite the difficulties Siggy never worked on Shabbat, despite gentile pressures around him to do so. Once he worked at Orbach's department store, but when the High Holidays came that job came to an abrupt end.
In 1951, Siggy's father – at a relatively young age – died, leaving Siggy and his new wife, Inge, to care for his mother. She lived with the couple until she was 82, and it was only after her death that Siggy and Inge could make their longed-for aliyah to Jerusalem. Their belief had always been that the Moshiach was coming soon – to Jerusalem – and they should be there, not in the U.S. To their disappointment, so many of their American soul mates did not share their Zionist passion.
Sidney Selig in Jerusalem, Chol HaMoed Pesach/Yom HaShoah, 2007/5767.

Photo credits: Gemma Blech

Once Sidney settled permanently in Israel, he became a faithful volunteer and fundraiser. Both Shaare Zedek Hospital and the Jerusalem Yeshiva in Har Nof have honored him and Shoshanna, most recently on the occasion of their 55th wedding anniversary. When Sidney turned 80, the Jerusalem Academy of Dvar Torah honored him with a Keter Shem Tov [The Crown of a Good Name] award. The celebration was held in their splendid sukkah, in the presence of Ashkenazi Chief Rabbi Yona Metzger.
Sidney is no longer too active; instead he hands out little message slips to all his friends and neighbors – and occasionally to strangers, as well. It reads as follows: "Say twice every day and learn by heart: At the end of each day, we can hopefully say, that we enjoyed the sun's ray, and brought smiles, all the way! A smile or two can never harm, surprisingly it will keep you calm!"






Kol Tuv- Best Regards,
Rabbi Richard Wolpoe
RabbiRichWolpoe@Gmail.com

Friday, June 08, 2007

Rabbi Wolpoe NIshmaBlog Master

Rabbi Wolpoe is now the BlogMaster @

http://nishmablog.blogspot.com/


For more interesting articles please see this blog!

Good Shabbos
Rabbi Richard Wolpoe