The late Rabbi Shmuel HaKohen Weingarten was a well known rabbinic scholar and author who wrote in four languages: Hebrew, Yiddish, Hungarian and German. Brought up in Hungary, where he was active in the Mizrachi,, he settled in Jerusalem in 1929. He worked in a bank, devoting his free time to study, research and writing. His many publications included: Histories of the Jewish Communities of Pressburg and Munkacz; Rabbi Moshe Sofer and his Students and their Attitudes to the Land of Israel; and the Yeshivot of Hungary.
In the 1950s he was chosen as chairman of the Religous Council of Jerusalem. He died in 1987 at the age of 88.
I knew him very well, and whenever we met we engaged in long conversations.
I record here a story about Yitzchok Ben Zvi the second president of Israel which I heard from Weingarten.
Every Sabbath morning, Ben Zvi used to attend a Talmud class, which was held at a private home in Rehavia, Jerusalem, not far from his own residence. One Sabbath morning, as he was returning from the Talmud class, carrying his Gemara, he was approached by a tourist who didn’t recognize him. The man asked Ben Zvi for directions. The President stopped and explained to the man in great detail how to reach the street he had asked about. Passers by halted to watch the scene. Having received the desired information the man thanked the President and left. As he looked around, he noticed that people had been staring at him. Enquiring about this, he was told that the man he had asked for the street information was none other than the President of Israel. He immediately ran back to the President and apologized profusely for the inconvenience he had caused him.
“There is nothing to apologize for,” the President explained. “I have been chosen President of the State. My task is to guide the people to show them the way. I have just done this for you.”
Rabbi Weingarten also related that once, when he visited Ben Zvi at his home he found him and his father– Zvi Shimshi (Shimshelowitz)– putting on Tefillin. Many years after I heared this from Rabbi Weingarten, I read the following in “Footprints on the Sands of Time”, which was authored by Bernard Homa, a well known London physician and communal leader.
Homa relates that in the summer of 1948 he visited Israel. He stayed in a boarding house called “Malon Amerikai” which was run by a kind and capable American lady.
“One day, when I returned for the evening meal, I was told that as a few special guests attending an important conference had to be accommodated, I would have to share my room with another person, and I would have to sleep on the floor,” Homa writes. “I protested and refused to sleep on the floor, so that the new arrival was asked to do so. I did not know who this man was, but I learned afterwards, that he was none other than Yitzchak Ben Zvi, later to become the second President of the State of Israel.
I can only record that he accepted the situation philosophically and slept on the floor while I occupied the bed. In the morning he rose early, put on his Tefillin, recited his morning prayers and then left quietly.
The Jewish Press, Friday, June 29, 2001