Foreign Encounters

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When I look back on my countless trips abroad, I recall some very unusual encounters that could only happen to an observant Jew. I would like to share a few of them with you to give you an idea of the kind of experiences I am referring to.

Some years ago I carried on some negotiations with the Government of Antigua for a contract for which I was invited to appear before the full-dress Cabinet of Ministers. It so happened that at the time I was working on a very important manuscript in my library, which I was preparing for publication: a Yemenite manuscript of Rashi on the Torah, handwritten in the early 1400s, well before printing was invented.

In my work, I compared word for word, line for line, my manuscript with the traditional printed editions. In fact, I found numerous variants and even some additional material that was never printed. This exciting work occupied my every free moment. As a result -- and this is mentioned in the introduction to my book -- my research was carried on at every place where I had to make business trips during that time. The list of countries and towns where I did this work is quite extraordinary: Trinidad; Bahamas; Paris; Nairobi, Kenya; Rome; Amsterdam; Seychelles (Indian Ocean): London; Panama; Lagos, Nigeria; Zurich; Stockholm; Barbados; Togo; West Africa; Tel Aviv; Jerusalem and Antigua. Wherever I went on these trips, I took with me the sefarim (Torah books), manuscripts and other sources needed for my Rashi project.

Coming back to Antigua the night before my Cabinet appearance, I sat in my hotel room with all my “tools” spread out before me: the sefarim; my index cards and notes. Suddenly, unannounced, who enters my room but the Premier of Antigua, Mr. George Walter, a very tall and friendly West Indian, who came for a social visit. When he saw what was spread out before me he was understandably puzzled and asked me what I was doing. It took me a few moments of collecting my thoughts to figure out how to explain to a West Indian -- a descendent of African slaves -- who Rashi was and what the nature of my research was. My challenge, primarily, was how to explain to him why, after 800 years since Rashi lived, I would still be interested in clarifying every word and sentence in Rashi’s commentary. To my surprise, the premier seemed to understand perfectly what I was saying.

The next morning as I entered the Cabinet chamber with all the ministers sitting around the Cabinet table, the premier opened the meeting by introducing me and explaining to his colleagues word for word what I had told him the night before. They appeared impressed. Whether they, too, understood what I stood for, I don’t know, but it certainly helped me in my negotiations, which very quickly led to the conclusion of the contract I had been hoping for -- with the help of Rashi!

The first president of independent Togo was a very colorful and brilliant African of Brazilian descent: Sylvanus Olympio da Silva. He spoke several languages and had been a successful businessman in London before entering politics in his native country. There are hundreds of thousands of Africans of Brazilian descent along the West African coast -- freed from slavery in Brazil, returned to their ancestral homes and still bearing Brazilian-Portuguese names.

At one point I spent a lot of time in Togo’s capital, Lome, to conclude a contract with the government there. Negotiations dragged out, and I was keen to return home as soon as possible. Shavuot was coming close and I was worried about whether I would finish my business in time. One day, my youngest daughter, then three years old, said to me over the telephone from New York: “Daddy, come home!” I could not resist that call.

I immediately went to the private home of the president, where I found his wife, quite a formidable African lady. While waiting for the president to come home, I told her about my daughter’s call. As a mother of several children, she knew how I felt. When the president came home, she did not mince her words and immediately gave an order to her husband: “Sylvan, give this man his contract! His daughter wants him home!” As powerful as Olympio was, he was putty in his wife’s hands. He would not dream of countermanding her commands. I had my contract the next day and was comfortably home for Shavuot -- thanks to my daughter’s moving call.

I mentioned Christianborg Castle, which gives you an inkling of the history of the West African coast. This part of Africa was colonized during various periods in the colonial era by a variety of powers, including Denmark. When the Danish King Christian VII ruled, he built the castle, which also served as a deposit house for slaves being delivered by the black captors of fellow Africans after winning tribal wars. When you come to Copenhagen, the capital of Denmark, you can also visit a Christianborg Castle there.

For our hike to the Castle, we took along one of our employees, a European whose English was not brilliant. We started out, the employee carrying my wife’s shoes and my jacket. In Africa it is unheard of to see a white visitor moving about in anything other than a taxi or limousine. So when some of our friends, themselves Cabinet ministers, saw us walking, they could not believe their eyes. One car after the other shrieked to a halt, and the drivers invited us to enter their cars. They all seemed to know that we were on our way to visit the President. Our employee -- before I myself could give an explanation for our walk -- blurted out: “We have to walk for religious purposes!” Our African friends accepted that explanation silently but incredulously …

The visit went off quite uneventfully. But the next day we were invited to attend a parliament session, which was a very colorful spectacle, as all members wore indigenous, native dress -- the famous, colorful, woven “kente cloth” -- in the most diverse colors and design. My wife and I were sitting on the balcony trying to follow the proceedings. Suddenly, one of the parliament members -- a government minister who had stopped for us in his car on Saturday -- pointed to us and spoke animatedly to all his colleagues. Before long, they were all pointing at us, and laughing in the hearty laugh, so typical of Africans. We were of course puzzled as to the reason for their merriment.

That night we were the guests in the house of the minister, and we asked him for the reason for all the laughter in parliament at our expense. “Oh, you know we were so impressed by you. I told all my colleagues that when you went to visit our president, you were so intent that you prayed the whole way to the palace, and therefore could not take time out to enter a car!”

Well, as you can understand, once it was established that we honored their president with such religious fervor, our esteem rose quite a bit in Ghana. All because of Shabbat!

I had occasion to pass this information on to Kenyan President Daniel arap Moi. He immediately expressed great curiosity about our prayer, so I decided to produce a beautiful, gold-lettered, leather-bound book containing the prayer, which I presented to him on my next visit to the State House. He was immensely grateful.

This happened shortly after a military coup had been attempted to topple President Moi. The coup failed because the conspirators could not locate the president. When I presented the Jewish prayer, the President said to me: “I think it must have been the Jewish prayer for the president that saved my life. The rebels could not find me, so they failed. Without the Jewish prayer they might have succeeded.” I used the opportunity, as I did at many occasions, to urge President Moi to establish diplomatic relations with Israel, which had been cut in 1973 at Egypt’s urging. He promised to follow my advice, and a few years later, ambassadors were exchanged between Israel and Kenya and mutually beneficial diplomatic relations were established.

The interesting sequel to all this took place about two years ago when President Moi arrived in Jerusalem on an official state visit. My wife and I were invited to a reception given at the King David Hotel. The top leaders of Israel were there. And President Moi took the occasion to introduce me to Foreign Minister Shimon Peres as the man who had helped establish friendly relations between the two countries -- in a sense, all because of one pious Jewish prayer in our synagogue!

Not every traveler may have such interesting experiences, or take note of them, but I believe that an observant Jew has many more opportunities to be part of extraordinary circumstances and events than other travelers. I could go on and on to enumerate them. They all add up to one realization: “It is great to be a Jew -- in whatever situation you may be!”

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