The Mediterranean is calm and beautiful. The S.S. Izmir plows it s way through the blue waters. It is Friday, late in the afternoon.
“All Jewish passengers aboard are invited to attend the Friday Evening Service which will be held in the Second Class Bar,” the Ship’s Rabbi announces over the loudspeaker.
Before night fall my wife Rachel lights the Sabbath candles in the Bar. The hall is packed with men and woman from many countries chattering in a Babel of languages. Visitors to Israel returning to their countries of residence, Israelis traveling abroad.
After the service the Rabbi Recites Kiddush.
Later he makes Kiddush once more. This time in the kosher dining room. His is a powerful and melodious voice and he leads the diners in song. “Let us celebrate the Sabbath with songs,” he enjoins us with enthusaism.
The S.S. Izmir plies between Haifa, Istanbul and Constanza, calling at several smaller and larger ports.
It is a Turkish boat. The Turkish Maritime Lines are not particularly concerned with the religious needs of the Jewish passengers, and it is mainly due to the initiative of Yitzvhak Shubinski, the Israeli representative of the Turkish Maritime Lines and one of Israel’s major industrialists, that a kosher kitchen and a rabbi were installed on the boat. Shubinski, a warm Jew and contributor to Torah institutions invested great efforts to accommodate observant passengers, not so much for commercial reasons as for the love and respect of Jewish traditional values.
Rabbi Joseph Mordcai Weiss is the boat’s rabbi.
I had ample opportunity to watch him at work. When you see him at his varied tasks, you come to realize that being a ship’s rabbi is perhaps one of the most difficult rabbinical positions.
He organizes the daily minyan. On every cruise and sometimes even at the short stops, the composition of his congregation changes. Passengers embark and disembark. At one time a majority of his “congregants” are Ashkenzim, at another they are Sephardim. When the majority are Ashkenazim, he leads the minyan in prayer according to the Ashkenazi rite and in Ashkenazi pronunciations. When there are more Sephardim and there is no one else around to serve as reader, he conducts the service according to their nussach and in their pronunciation.
He supervises the kosher Kitchen. But this is not all. He takes care that the Turkish cooks who prepare the food put into it some “Yiddish Taam.” For if, G-d forbid, the passengers won’t relish the meals, you may be sure they won’t blame the kitchen staff but vent their anger upon the rabbi who is responsible for the kosher menu.
Rabbi Weiss takes pride in the fact that “his” kitchen is the best aboard the boat. This is not without its consequences.
It happens on every trip! Jewish travelers who failed to register for kosher food upon hearing of the excellent service in the kosher dining room meekly request the rabbi to reclassify them as “kosher.” “We are Jews, aren’t we? We want to eat kosher,” they plead.
Why didn’t they register before? “Ah we didn’t know that kosher food was available.” The rabbi does his utmost to accommodate them. If a Jew wants to eat kosher, one must certainly help him to do so. But the Turkish cooks don’t like to be bothered, they get irritated at the constant change in the number of kosher diners, and it take a lot of patience and diplomacy on the part of Rabbi Weiss to persuade them to prepare kosher food for more persons than were originally registered.
Weiss speaks a fluent Turkish. It is a very difficult language to master, and he picked it up during his service on Turkish boats. He speaks also Hebrew, Yiddish, Hungarian, Rumanian and German and this makes him the perfect interpreter for the ship’s crew. When the boat calls at Constanza, the Turkish captain communicates with the Rumanian authorities with the aid of his “rabbi.”
Tall and distinguished looking in his officer’s uniform, Rabbi Weiss is always bubbling over with energy. He is not a youngster anymore. He was born fifty-nine years ago in Rumania. He attended Yeshiva and after his marriage at the age of 25, went with his wife as a Halutz to Palestine. He worked at a variety of jobs and served with the Israel Defense Forces during the War of Independence in 1948.
It is now six years that he is a ship rabbi. He has crossed many seas many a time and is at home in many ports.
Over a cup of Turkish coffee, he related to me some of his experiences. He is particularly proud of his work on boats which carried North African Jewish immigrants from France to Israel. “Almost every Sabbath we celebrated a Bar Mitzvah on board. On behalf of the immigration department of the Jewish Agency, I presented every boy with a pair of Tefillin, a small Tallith, a siddur and a skull cap.”
Weiss is a Hasid of the Rebbe of Viznitz. One of his three sons is a student at the Rebbe’s Kollel in Haifa.
Once in a fortnight the S.S. Izmir docks at Haifa. During the short shore leave, Weiss purchases provisions for the boat’s kosher kitchen. The little free time left to him he spends with his family and with his Rebbe.
The Jewish Press, Friday November 14, 1969.