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Broadsheet calling for a day of prayer by the Jews living in Erez Israel by R. Zevi Pesah Frank. It states that “The harvest is past, the summer has ended, and we are not saved” (Jeremiah 8:20), there have been three years of violence in the land, “the earth crumbles away” (Isaiah 24:19). It goes on to note that daily the best of our children are killed and murdered with terrible cruelty. Therefore, Thursday, the 28th of the month, Erev Rosh Hodesh ha-Rahamim, is being set for a day of prayer throughout the land. On that day we should search our deeds to improve our ways, everyone knowing that which is appropriate to themselves; everyone should attempt to instruct his sons and daughters in the way of the Torah, with great care to keep Shabbos, avoid nevilah and trefus, keep those mitzvoth applicable to Erez Israel, uproot all strange and foreign ideologies, returning the essence of Judaism to its source. In addition to R. Frank’s name, which appears at the top of the broadsheet and with the signatories, the names of R. Joseph Gershom Horowitz and R. Elijah Ram also appear on the broadsheet.
R. Zevi Pesah Frank (1873–1960) was chief rabbi of Jerusalem and a leading halakhic authority. R. Frank studied under R. Eliezer Gordon at Telz, R. Isaac Rabinowitz at Slobodka, and attended the musar discourses of R. Israel Lipkin of Salant. In 1893 he proceeded to Jerusalem and in 1907 R. Frank was appointed by R. Samuel Salant and the scholars of Jerusalem as a member of the Bet Din Gadol in the Hurvah synagogue. Although he was its youngest member, the burden of the bet din, and the religious affairs of the city fell mainly upon his shoulders. He conducted single-handedly the spiritual administration of the city in the difficult days of World War I. The Turks tried to send him into exile in Egypt, but he hid in an attic from where he directed the rabbinical affairs of the city until the entry of the British (December 1917). The rabbinate was in a perilous state and Frank made strenuous efforts to raise its status, both materially and spiritually. He understood the importance of founding a central rabbinical organization, and immediately after the British occupation, took steps to found The Council of Rabbis of Jerusalem. Later he established the Rabbinate Office, which became the nucleus of the chief rabbinate of Israel, and on his suggestion R. A. I. Kook was invited to become chief rabbi of Palestine in 1921. In the violent controversy which resulted, fomented by the extreme religious section which saw no halakhic precedent for such an appointment, R. Frank brought proof to bear. In 1936 he was elected chief rabbi of Jerusalem. In consequence of his preeminence as a halakhist, the appointment was accepted by all parties, including those who opposed him on political grounds. |
