Hesped (Shira Nadich Levin)

My Ema was a woman with so many focuses and interests in her life, and she excelled at them all. She adored her parents and was a magnificent daughter. She was devastated when her father died when she was 31 but remained utterly devoted to her mother, who spent almost all her time with us. My mother saw her mother, my Savta, almost daily and we spent all our vacations together. My mother and her brother, Uri, had a relationship that rose above brother and sister. While my uncle was a wonderful and loving man, he was honest in judging others - but could find no fault in his sister. My mother loved so very deeply her other siblings, whom she acquired through marriage. Her brother’s wife, Shoshana, has been a critical figure in my mother’s life for about 70 years and my Aunt Esther was such a sister to my mother, as she showed again only this past Sunday when she traveled back and forth from Baltimore to be able to say good-by to my mother.

It’s too late for students to interview WWII era Jewish champion of faith (Baltimore Examiner 2.22.08)

The kids in the eighth grade at Yeshivat Rambam, a Jewish school on Park Heights Avenue at Strathmore, have been getting ready to interview Holocaust survivors. Their oral history project is several months too late to include a giant from those days, a man raised in a grocery store not far from their school, down at the corner of Smallwood and Pressbury streets. Rabbi Judah Nadich, a World War II Army chaplain with the rank of lieutenant colonel, was General Eisenhower’sadviser on Jewish affairs when refugees flooded Western Europe at war’s end. He died at age 95 Aug. 26 in New York City.

Jonathan Sarna on Rabbi Judah Nadich

(below is a speech given at a sheloshim service for Rabbi Judah Nadich)

RABBI JUDAH NADICH (1912-2007)

I did not know Rabbi Nadich personally.  Nommi and I sat in class together at Ramaz (along with Diane Richler, then Comet), but in the antediluvian days when we were in grade school, only Mothers came to visit the class, not fathers.  I do remember Nommi’s mother and I even remember her grandmother, Mrs. Ribalow, who lived near us in Manhattan, and who my parents used to occasionally visit on lonely Shabbat afternoons.

After Liberation Jews Had Old and New Problems

After Liberation Jews Had Old and New Problems

Eisenhower sickened by concentration camps

By Judah Nadich, special to the Washington Jewish Week (1993)

To say that the American Army did not fight the war in Europe from 1942 to 1945 in order to rescue the Jewish victims of the Nazis is a truism.  But it cannot be gainsaid that as a result of the American – and Russian – victory, Jewish survivors were liberated.

Finding Happiness (Bar Mitzvah of Alexander Nadich Levin, 1991)

I must first of all express my appreciation to Rabbi Lincoln for this most gracious introduction. David, I thank you.

During the many years that I served as rabbi of this congregation, I had the privilege of speaking to a large number of boys who became bar mitzvah and girls who celebrated their bat mitzvah. As I think back through the years, I estimate the total must have been at least 1,000 or more, but never was there one like today. Today is a first! My grandson has become bar mitzvah on this very bimah! Yes, during the 30 years that I preached from this pulpit, Hadassah and I had the infinite joy of witnessing the bat mitzvah of each of our three daughters and yes, mine was the great happiness of preaching the sermon and addressing our oldest grandson Tani when he became bar mitzvah. But that was in Teaneck, New Jersey. Today is a first, our grandson Alex becomes a bar mitzvah on this bimah where I have spoken to so many others over the course of the years.

Rabbi Nadich and President Eisenhower (1962)

 

The Children Speak: Address Delivered at Dedication of the Sculptures (December 7, 1980)

This is a sacred day and this is a precious moment, for today we commune with the spirit of a little boy, with the spirit of a little girl, with the spirit of thousands of little children, with the spirits of a million Moishe’lech and Shloime’lech, Rivka’lech, and Sarah’lech, innocent children and pure, whose young lives were cut short by the unspeakable murders in the pits of Treblinka, the gas chambers of Majdanek, and the crematoria of Auschwitz.  Who knows what they would have become had they grown naturally into adulthood?  Perhaps poets and singers, artists and musicians, who would have brought greater beauty into an ugly world; or scientists and mathematicians, analysts and researchers, who would have brought greater truth into a deceitful world.  Or perhaps saints and pietists, rabbanim and tzaddikim, who would have brought greater reverence into a profane world.  Perhaps among them there was the person who would have found the cure for cancer, or the one who would have given humanity the plan for world peace.  And if not, if not, if they had become shoemakers and peddlers, blacksmiths and drivers, did they not have the right to live?  What heinous horror swept a million little children to their untimely death?  Cursed by their murderers for all time!

A People’s Death and Life (Sermon Preached on Yom Kippur, 1980)

How wonderful it is to look out at a congregation such as you are on this evening.  How uplifting, how inspiring, and not for me alone but for you, too.  It must be elating to sit in a crowded synagogue that reflects vitality and excitement and to be part of a congregation that is completing a new religious school building, showing growth and dynamic life.

REMEMBER! (sermon preached on Rosh Hashanah, 1980)

This sacred day is called by several names.  We usually call it Rosh Hashanah, but in our liturgy it is also called Yom Teruah, the Day of the Sounding of the Shofar, and also Yom Hadin, the Day of Judgment.  In the prayer book, however, the most common name for this day is Yom Hazikkaron, the Day of Remembering, and one of the basic themes of the prayers of Rosh Hashanah is Zikhronot, remembrances.

From the Writings of Rabbi Nadich: Ben Gurion, October 1945

Soon after my return to Frankfurt, I was called to the office of a member of General Elsenhower’s staff, shown a telegram from Paris requesting permission to enter the American zone of Germany and asked whether I recognized the name of the person signing the wire. The name was David Ben Gurion, then the head of the Jewish Agency for Palestine.