Joseph Herman Hertz's passionate love of rabbis was poignantly conveyed in a story told after his death in 1946. It related back to his 1920 pastoral tour of Jewish countries in the British Commonwealth, a tour undertaken in the same year in which he officially launched the writing of the Pentateuch.
On his return journey from Bulawayo, just as the train was about to leave the railway station...a man of Jewish appearance passed and repassed his window. When Dr. Hertz approached him with the traditional Shalom Aleichem the man told him how he and three other Jewish families from Que Que had traveled some ten hours by train on the road from Bulawayo to Salisbury, hoping to see him. But though he was so anxious to hear of there Jewish life of that miniature Kehilla Que Que, he did not manage to do so because the train was already beginning to move ahead and he had only time to ask: "Is there are Shass (a complete set of the talmud) in Que Que?" "Two sets (zwei Shassin)," he answered. "Then you are safe even without the visit of the Chief Rabbi," was his farewell word.
Surround yourself with the word of God.
On his return journey from Bulawayo, just as the train was about to leave the railway station...a man of Jewish appearance passed and repassed his window. When Dr. Hertz approached him with the traditional Shalom Aleichem the man told him how he and three other Jewish families from Que Que had traveled some ten hours by train on the road from Bulawayo to Salisbury, hoping to see him. But though he was so anxious to hear of there Jewish life of that miniature Kehilla Que Que, he did not manage to do so because the train was already beginning to move ahead and he had only time to ask: "Is there are Shass (a complete set of the talmud) in Que Que?" "Two sets (zwei Shassin)," he answered. "Then you are safe even without the visit of the Chief Rabbi," was his farewell word.
Surround yourself with the word of God.
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