Rabbi Samuel M. Kaufman

Chaplain U.S. Army - Lieutenant Colonel

About Rabbi Samuel M. Kaufman

This tribute is written by son, Gary Kaufman.

American Chaplain Extraordinaire

Every well-lived and well-loved life is a summation, indeed, a tenacious unity of parts, and none perhaps more so than that of Chaplain Samuel M. Kaufman. His was a journey into the heart of compassion, a single-minded focus on offering solace and succor to traumatized communities in desperate need of a kind word, a sustaining smile, and a helping hand. In the fierce, all-consuming fire of the Holocaust, he brought a soothing balm of concern, gentleness and courtesy, serving as a spiritual rescuer, in effect, who made all the difference between life and death.

Beginning in the teeming neighborhood of New York’s Lower East Side, the young Samuel Kaufman sat steeped in study, in the piety and learning of Jewish tradition, culminating in his entry into the rabbinate. He took the moral ballast of Judaism across the seas to combat the genocidal spread of Nazism during the most terrifying chapter of modern history. In Casablanca, he brought spiritual uplift and ethical direction to an anguished Jewish community living on the brink of Nazi invasion and Vichy collaboration. Moving in tandem with the conquering American forces across Algeria, Tunisia, Sicily and then along the spine of Italian peninsula, he assumed spiritual stewardship of the Jewish community of Pisa in late 1944, shattered by the recent murder of its civic leader, Guisseppe Pardo Roques, killed on August 1 by a squadron of German soldiers. With the arrival of American troops a month later, Chaplain Kaufman took the rabbinic reins of a horrified Jewish community, hanging on by sheer hopeless stoicism. His persistent purpose and his ingrained belief in the resiliency of the sovereign soul stood as a bulwark against personal despair and communal disintegration. Pisan Jewry recovered as it rode on the salvational arc of Chaplain Kaufman’s chosen words in late 1944 and 1945.

Back in the states, in 1948, Chaplain Kaufman married the love of his life, Edith Silverman, on the Lower East Side.** Chaplain Kaufman spent the next five decades nursing and nurturing the spirit and body of military veterans in New York. Exemplifying interfaith amity, he became the Chaplain of Choice at the Manhattan Veterans Medical Center. His welcoming open-heartedness and disarming charm graced the lives of men and women who sought to emerge from the darkness of trauma into the light of day. In every sector of civilian life and in every theatre of war, Chaplain Kaufman brought incandescent hope to illuminate the deepest wellsprings of life, no matter how deeply tinctured they may have become by the pain and sadness of loss.

Chaplain Kaufman was also a passionate Hebraist who taught Modern Hebrew part-time in the Adult Education Department of Washington Irving High School.

** Edith was born in 1920 in Tsfat, Israel to Rabbi Nachum and Eve Silverman. Rabbi Silverman served as Rabbi and Preacher in Metula from 1915-1927. The family emigrated to the United States in 1929 at the time of the horrific Hebron massacres. Edith graduated from Hunter College in 1941 majoring in French. She was multi-lingual, speaking fluent Hebrew, French, Yiddish and English and frequently quoted scripture and world literature. She was a gifted writer, While serving as Executive Secretary of Harvest Lodge Bnai Brith from 1958- her passing in 1990, she authored the popular monthly Chutzpah column in the Lodge’s newsletter. She would insightfully comment on world events from a Judaic perspective exposing the chutzpah of political figures and celebrities. Chaplain and Mrs. Kaufman were a grand team, collaborating on sermons, articles and planning festive and meaningful Jewish holiday celebrations for the Lodge.

Worthy Descendant of the Noda Beyehuda -
A Tower of Talmudic Erudition and Communal Leadership

The Noda Beyehuda (1713-1793), a leading eighteenth century Talmudic scholar and decisor, Chief Rabbi of Prague, and notable reconciler of Jewish disputes, traced his family roots back to Rashi, the pre-eminent medieval commentator of the Hebrew Bible. The high consanguinity linking these two giants of Jewish scholarship and textual interpretation across the span of centuries speaks volumes of the centrality of learning in the Jewish tradition.

Born in the Polish city of Opatow, an important religious center in the eighteenth century, Yehezkel ben Yehuda Halevi Landau, the future Noda Beyehuda, was educated by his wealthy father.  After marriage at the age of eighteen, he entered the elite Brody Kloyz, a house of Jewish religious study that at the time had become a nodal point of kabbalah in Poland. He went on to establish connections with many notable scholars and mystics, although he himself proved largely skeptical of the ardors and excesses of Jewish kabbalists.

Central to his early acclaim was his “Igeret ha-Shalom” (Letter of Peace), Rabbi Landau’s effort to mediate the harsh, divisive Emden-Eybeshutz controversy. This was a bitter dispute that arose when Rabbi Yaacov Emden a severe critic of kabbalah, accused Rabbi Yonatan Eybeschutz of crypto-Sabbateanism, based on the amulets the latter had written. Rabbi Yehezkel Landau’s judicious compromise proclaimed Eybeschut’s innocence but demanded the amulets be removed.

On the strength and wisdom of his well-received diplomatic gambit, Rabbi Landau was appointed Chief Rabbi of Prague, in effect becoming the spiritual steward of a city then boasting one of the largest Jewish populations in the world. He thus became the leader of Bohemian Jewry and, in effect, a giant of European Jewry. His position allowed him to strongly defend tradition against the zealotry of Jewish mysticism, as well as the looming secularization brought on by the rise of the Haskalah (Jewish Enlightenment) and the unwelcome reforms imposed by the royal Hapsburgs. His gentle yet firm persuasiveness mitigated threats from within and without.

The acme of Rabbi Landau’s scholarship–more than 850 responsa addressing nearly every facet of Jewish law–was published in a monumental two-volume collection entitled “Noda Beyehuda. ” As was customary among Talmudic luminaries who penned works of widely acknowledged scholarly excellence, Rabbi Yehezkel was then commonly referred to by this eminent title.

Ever the loyal son, Rabbi Landau picked book titles that commemorated his parents. His widely acclaimed Talmudic commentary, “Tsiyun le nefsh Chaya” (A Memorial for the Spirit of Chaya) was named for his mother, the devout, saintly daughter of the Chief Rabbi of Dubnow. His magnum opus, “Noda Beyehuda” (Known in Yehuda) was named for his illustrious father.

In acknowledgment and, indeed, praise of bloodlines, it can be fairly said that Rabbi Landau’s twentieth century descendant, Rabbi Samuel M. Kaufman, inherited Noda Beyehuda’s famed tactfulness, moral suasion and sensitivity, richly evidenced by the latter’s assumption of the spiritual leadership of Pisan Jewry following the brutal, murderous Nazi occupation. In post-war America, Rabbi Kaufman, taking a leaf from his forebear’s notable mastery of diplomacy, became the favorite, much-sought-after Chaplain at the Manhattan’s Veteran Hospital.

In the end, the wheel came full circle and the blessing of Rabbi Landau’s wise benevolence leaped centuries, taking deep contemporary root in the life and times of Rabbi Samuel M. Kaufman.

Samuel Kaufman at his desk
Rabbi Samuel M Kaufman

About Edith Kaufman

A Woman of Valor and Vivacity

Educator, columnist, and multilinguist, Edith (Hadassah) Kaufman, much like her husband, Chaplain Samuel Kaufman, was a descendant of a distinguished, multi-branched genealogical tree. She, and her sister Pearl and brother Dave, were born in mystically-saturated Safed in 1920, one of the Four Holy Cities of Judaism, a major center of Jewish life after the Ottoman conquest of Palestine, in line with Jerusalem, Hebron and Tiberias. Safed is also the birthplace of epoch-defining Lurianic Kabbalah. The daughter of Rabbi Nachum Silverman, the spiritual leader of the synagogue of northern city Metula, situated in the upper Galilee, from 1915-1927 while it was still part of the rapidly declining Ottoman Empire, Edith inherited a rich tradition of learning and scholarship that stood her in good stead in her lifetime of educational pursuit.

The Silverman line of rabbinic achievement begins with Rabbi Mordechai, the Rav of Uman, the Ukrainian city dating back to the Middle Ages. Uman,  once owned by the famed Potocki family of Polish magnates and a once thriving center of Jewish life, today is a magnet for throngs of thousands of Breslover Hasidim who visit it from abroad every year during the High Holiday season. Rabbi Mordechai’s son, the Gaon Rabbi Raphael Zilberman (1839-1918), made aliyah to Eretz Yisrael (the Land of Israel) in 1850 with his parents at the age of 11. A notable scholar himself, he succeeded his father as the Rabbi of Safed in 1872 and served as its spiritual mentor for fifty years until his death.

Indeed, for over 200 years, the Silverman family (named Zilberman in Israel) has lived continuously in Safed, first arriving in 1823 from Uman, Ukraine. See below for links in the golden chain of this notable rabbinic family for whom the pre-eminent dignity of study and leadership remained steady and steadfast.

Edith was uprooted from her home at the age of nine when Safed’s Jews were attacked in an Arab riot in 1929. This was followed by the horrific Hebron massacre of the same year, the killing of nearly seventy Jews and the wounding and maiming of scores of others by Arabs incited by anti-Jewish rumors and canards propagated by Haj Amin al-Husseini, the bellicose and bloodthirsty mufti of Jerusalem. The massacre effectively brought the centuries-old Jewish presence in the ancient city of Hebron to an end. It also instigated the departure of Edith, the beleaguered child, and her family to seek haven in the United States. At the tender age of nine, she entered New York’s public school system and graduated from Seward Park High School, as well as Beit Sefer Ha’Leumi. A bright, vivacious and ever-curious pupil, she soon enrolled in and then graduated from Hunter College with a major in French, whose legato and luster stayed with her for a lifetime. She brought elegance, erudition and an invincible Gallic spirit to teaching New York students the art and flair of speaking French a bon ton.

In 1948, she married Chaplain Kaufman, the love of her life, in the bustling Lower East Side, the immigrant capital of Jewish America at the turn of the 20th century. Together, they built a life of tireless dedication to helping others in need, to the expansion of community, and unflagging devotion to Judaism. Edith served as Executive Secretary to the President of Harvest Lodge B’nai Brith {the Food Industry} from 1958 until her untimely passing in 1990. She authored the popular Chutzpah column in the Lodge’s monthly newsletter, the Harvester, insightfully commenting on world events from a Judaic perspective, often exposing the follies, foibles and sheer effrontery of public officials and world leaders.

On her passing, Harvest Lodge dedicated a special issue of the Harvester to her memory. The President, Irving Mendelson, penned a glowing tribute to “Ms. Harvest Lodge.” Read it here.

Together, Chaplain and Mrs. Kaufman were a grand, winning team, collaborating on sermons, articles and planning festive and meaningful Jewish holiday celebrations for the B’nai Brith Lodge and the V.A. Medical Center in Manhattan. In unison, they raised Gary, their gifted son, imbuing him with the breath and extension of a life, a sturdy sense of Jewish identity and peoplehood, an uncompromising moral scrupulosity, and a zeal for learning and achievement. Gary Kaufman walks proudly today in their noble and spacious footsteps.

Edith and Samuel Kaufman

Peace be upon him