By
Rabbi Joseph Shulam Visit www.netivyah.org,
or write to: Roeh Yisrael; Yashpe
Street 16/2; Mevasseret Tzion 90805 Israel © 2000 |
THE first record of Jews in Sofia, Bulgaria, is from 811 A.D. Before that time the center of Jewish life, which has a continuing existence in Bulgaria since the early days of the Roman Empire, was in the city of Viddin. Jews came to Sofia with the return of Krum, the victorious king, who brought to Sofia some 30,000 prisoners, among whom there were also many Jews from Asia Minor. To these Jews were added also Jews who ran away from the persecution in Hungary and Austria.
When
King Muad I conquered Sofia in 1389, he found four
synagogues active in the city. There was a synagogue
named, "Kehal de los Griegos,"
which was used by the Jews which came to Sofia from Greece and the Greek Islands.
There was also an Ashkenazi synagogue, a “Frankish” synagogue, and the forth
synagogue was for the local Jews who worshiped in Bulgarian and Hebrew. When
Pope Nickolai the Fifth persecuted the Jews in Bavaria,
many of these Jews come to Sofia and mixed with the local Jews and the Greek
Jews who spoke Ladino. This Bulgarian Jewish community developed strong connections
with the large Sephardic community in Thessalonica, Greece.
In
Thessalonica there was a large Jewish community, which had a Yeshiva (Rabbinical
School). Thessalonica was a center and it had all the Jewish institutions,
which were missing in Sofia at that time.
When Bulgaria was liberated from Turkish domination in
the year 1880, Prince Alexander of Bulgaria nominated Rabbi Gavriel
Almoslino to be the chief Rabbi of Sofia, and
Bulgaria. After the Balkan War, 1912, many thousands of Jews immigrated
into Bulgaria and the community grew and there was need for more rabbis.
In 1918, a
message went from Sofia to Thessalonica to send rabbis. The head of the Yeshiva
in Thessalonica sent his young son, Daniel, to serve the community in Sofia.
Rabbi Daniel Zion served the community and was elected to be the Chief Rabbi of
Bulgaria. Rabbi Daniel Zion's major
accomplishment was his activity during the war years.
With the
beginning of the World War II began also the problems for the Jews. On Jan. 23rd,
1941, the Law for the Protection of the Nation was published in the official
paper. This law was nothing more than a Bulgarian adaptation of the Nuremberg
laws. The purpose of this law was to separate the Jewish community from the
rest of the Bulgarian people and to limit the freedom of the Jews. On 1st
of March, 1941, the Bulgarian government an-nounced that they were joining the Axis Powers. On the same
day German Nazi forces entered Bulgaria without firing a single shot.
It was stated officially that the Germans came into Bulgaria to protect it from a possible attack of the Allied forces from the East. On the same day an edict was published that every male Jew between 20 and 40 years old must report to Work Brigades. In reality these Work Brigades were forced labor camps.
On 12th
of July 1941, King Boris III signed a law, which ordered every Jew to pay
"a Contribution Tax." In the
same month, on the 29th day, a second law was passed that limited
the financial resources of the Jews in Bulgaria. This law prohibited Jews from
being such things as Pharmacists, Engineers, Architects, Lawyers, etc. In Sept.
30th, 1942, a special commission for Jewish
affairs was appointed, and headed by one well-known anti-Semite, Alexander Balev. These developments were in preparation for the extermination
of Bulgarian Jews, and they all knew it.
The Jews of
Bulgaria, and specially Sofia, stood at the edge of Hell twice in the year
1943. The government of Bulgaria made a decision under the German pressure to
send the Jews outside of Bulgaria. On May 23rd Rabbi Daniel Zion
gathered all the Jews in the central synagogue of Sofia, which is the second
largest synagogue in all of Europe. Every Jew in the city came to the synagogue
to pray for the evil decision to be reversed.
Rabbi
Daniel said publicly to all the community, “It is better for us to die here
than in Poland.” When the Jews came out of the synagogue, the police attacked
the multitude with truncheons and arrested about 250 men. The people continued
to march toward the Holy Synod and demanded to see the Metropolite
Stephen, who was respected by the Jewish community because of his friendly
attitude toward them. The Metropolite Stephen promised
the Jewish community that he would meet with the King and the ministers and attempt
to influence them to change their attitude and stop the persecution of the
Jews. However, on May 25th, 1943, the expulsion of the Jews from
Sofia began. The Commission for Jewish affairs took 10,153 Jews from Sofia and
3500 men from the provincial cities into the labor camps.
In
Sofia remained only 2,300 Jews. The Bulgarian Orthodox Church was one of the
major stumbling blocks in the way of the Bulgarian Government to send the Jews
to Auschwitz. The Church continued to intercede with the King and the rest of
the cabinet for the Jews.
The question
is asked, ‘Why was the Orthodox Church of Bulgaria so amicable to the Jews?’
The real reason lays in the special relationship that the Metropolite
Stephen and Rabbi Daniel Zion shared with one another.
Rabbi
Daniel Zion was invited in the early 1930's to visit Dunnov,
who was a teacher of mystic type Christianity. Dunnov
was mixing mysticism and Christianity with vegetarianism and some Yoga type
exercise. Rabbi Daniel was impressed with the life style of this Dunnov, and started to implement some of the teachings of
this mystic. There were three things which Rabbi Daniel Zion appropriated from Dunnov: vegetarianism, getting up early in the morning and
starting the day with prayer looking at the sunrise, and daily physical exercise
each day. Dunnov did speak of Jesus as the Messiah
and Savior. He also spoke of the simple life style of the early disciples of
Jesus. These subjects were eye openers
for Rabbi Daniel. He started to think in
what could be called from a Jewish viewpoint as un-orthodox,
or at least unusual subjects for a Rabbi to think about.
But,
according to Rabbi Daniel Zion, the major change came into his life when as he
was praying, a vision of Yeshua appeared to him. He did not know what this
vision meant. So he asked some of the other rabbis what he should do about
it. After the third time that the same
vision reappeared, Rabbi Daniel turned toward the figure and spoke to him. The
figure was scintillating right out from the sun, and the impression that Rabbi
Daniel received from this figure is that it spoke back to him identifying
himself as Yeshua. It is no small thing for a Rabbi to receive a vision of
Yeshua the Messiah. But, Rabbi Daniel Zion was well versed with the teaching,
“Receive the truth by whomever it might come.” He understood that there is
something very special in this person who appeared to him. It was not regular
message that was delivered to him. The bizarre nature of this vision forced the
Rabbi to investigate and try to understand what God was positioning before
him.
Rabbi
Daniel Zion knew that he had to find a source of information that would help
him deal with this vision and discern its meaning. At this point Rabbi Daniel went to the patriarchate
of the Greek Orthodox Church in Sofia and befriended the Archimandrite Stephen
with whom they had a close friendship and a frank exchange of ideas on a
variety of spiritual subjects including Jesus and the early church. The
Patriarch, who was well versed in the delicate relationship between Jews and
Christians, encouraged the Rabbi to forget about Christianity and concentrate
on Yeshua himself.
Although Rabbi Daniel never converted to Christianity, he started to believe in Yeshua and remained faithful to the Torah-keeping life style. A song that Rabbi Daniel wrote about his faith can probably best express his attitude toward Yeshua the Messiah:
No not I, No not I, only you are
Yeshua in me!
Only you bring me before the God of
my fathers,
Only you can heal me from every evil
illness,
No not I, No not I, only you are
Yeshua in me!
Only you teach me to love all
creation,
Only you teach me to love even the
enemy,
No not I, No not I, only you are
Yeshua in me!
For this reason I will stay in your
love,
Forever will I be within your will,
No not I, No not I, only you are
Yeshua in me!
RABBI DANIEL started to collect a very select small group of Jewish people to study the New Testament each Saturday afternoon in his house. Among these Jews were some of the leading members of the Jewish community in Sofia.
Rabbi Daniel's faith in Yeshua the Messiah became a well-known secret in the Jewish community of Bulgaria. However his position was so honored and his services so highly esteemed that none of the Jewish functionaries in Sofia could openly criticize the Rabbi. And because he remained well within the framework of the Jewish community in Bulgaria and did not stop living as an Orthodox Jew in all the rigor of the strictest observance of the Torah, there was little that his opponents could point to as heresy. In the background, the leadership of the Jewish community started to isolate him slowly.
When Nazi
Germany occupied Bulgaria without shooting one shot, Rabbi Daniel Zion as the
spiritual leader of the Jewish community became the object of persecution and
ridicule. He was taken and publicly flogged in front of the Great Synagogue of
Sofia. During these times Rabbi Daniel walked upright before the fascists and
his only reaction was to call upon God. My own mother and sister were present
in at least two of these occasions and they retold this story many times. The
sentiments which they felt years later from this experience gave them the
feeling that they are proud to be Jews. When there was talk of shipping the
Jews to Germany, Rabbi Daniel and his secretary A.A. Anski
wrote a letter to the King of Bulgaria. In this letter Rabbi Daniel begged the
King in the name of Yeshua not to allow the Jews to be taken out of Bulgaria.
Rabbi Daniel wrote in this letter that in a vision that he had seen, Yeshua
told him to warn the King from delivering the Jews to the Nazis.
After a
long ordeal of waiting many hours at the door of the King's palace in Sofia,
the Rabbi and his secretary were able to deliver this letter to the King's
secretary. On the next day the King was going to Germany for a meeting with the
Nazi Government and Hitler himself. King Boris of Bulgaria stood his ground and
did not submit to the Nazi pressure to deliver the Jews from Bulgaria to the
death camps of Poland and Germany.
HERE are words from the sermon of Rabbi Daniel Zion on the Sabbath after he visited the King's palace and delivered the letter:
“Fear not, my dear brothers and sisters! Put your faith in the Holy Rock of our Salvation. . . Yesterday, I have been informed that the Metropolite Stephen has agreed to see me immediately and discuss about his conversation with the King of Bulgaria. When I went to see the Metropolite Stephen, he told me, 'Tell your people that the King has promised that the Bulgarian Jews will not leave outside the boarders of Bulgaria'... I explained to the Metropolite that thousands of Jews are waiting for me in the synagogue to hear this good news. When I returned to the synagogue, there was full silence in the large crowd that was gathered waiting to hear the results of my meeting with Stephen. As I walked in my announcement was, ‘Yes my brothers God has heard our prayers. . .’”
On the 9th
of September 1944, the fascist Government of Bulgaria fell to the Communists,
under the patronage of Russia. Rabbi Daniel Zion remained the leader and the Chief
Rabbi of Bulgaria until 1949 when he with most of the Bulgarian Jewish
community immigrated to Israel.
In Israel Rabbi Daniel was immediately accepted as the Rabbi of the Bulgarian Jews. In 1954 Rabbi Samuel Toledano became the Chief Rabbi of Israel. He invited Rabbi Daniel Zion to be a judge in the Rabbinical court of Jerusalem. When the rumors started to fly that Rabbi Daniel Zion believed in Yeshua, Rabbi Toledano invited Rabbi Zion to his office and asked him personally about these rumors. Rabbi Daniel explained to Toledano his position. He explained that he accepted Yeshua as the Messiah and that he did not accept Christianity as the true expression of the teaching and person of Yeshua the Messiah. Rabbi Toledano said to him that he can live with this position as long as Rabbi Daniel will keep it to himself. When Rabbi Daniel said that he did not think that such a message can be kept a secret, Toledano was forced to take Rabbi Daniel to the Rabbinic court, and allow the other Rabbis to decide what should be done.
In the
court, the evidence of Rabbi Daniel's faith in Yeshua the Messiah was presented
in the form of four books that Rabbi Daniel had written in Bulgarian about the
Yeshua. The right to speak was given to Rabbi Daniel. Here are the words which
Rabbi Daniel Zion spoke in his own defense:
“I am poor
and feeble, persecuted and vulnerable. Yeshua conquered me, and with the New
Man he honored me, He delivered me from the poverty-stricken self. With his
great love, he cherishes me. Every day when the canny devil aspires to grab my
faith, I hold on to my encourager, and chase the devil away. I stand here alone
in my faith; the whole world is against me. I give up all the
earthly honor for the sake of the Messiah, my mate.”
The Rabbinical Court stripped Rabbi Daniel from his Rabbinical title, but the Bulgarian Jews continued to honor Rabbi Daniel as their Rabbi. A Russian Jew who was one of the early Zionist settlers in Rishon LeZion, and had become a believer, had given Rabbi Daniel Zion a building on Yeffet Street in the heart of Jaffa for a synagogue. In that synagogue, Rabbi Daniel officiated until the 6th of October 1973. In this synagogue Rabbi Daniel Zion did not often speak of Yeshua openly, but many times he brought stories and parables from the New Testament. However, each Sabbath after the synagogue services, Rabbi Daniel would bring home a group of his fellow worshipers from the synagogue and they would study about Yeshua and from the New Testament all the Sabbath afternoon until they would go back to the Synagogue to say the evening prayers.
Many
missions, missionaries, and Christian societies visited Rabbi Daniel Zion in
his Jaffa home. They wrote many articles about him,
and at rare occasions would even offer him large amounts of money for the use
of his name in their ministries. In every case Rabbi Daniel rejected their
offers. He did not want to destroy his witness with the people of Israel for a
handful of dollars. If any one would give him some free-will offering without
any strings attached the Rabbi would accept it and pass it on to charitable
organizations of the blind, or to orphans and widows. He himself lived in
abject poverty. There was nothing in his own house that was of value and he
would never lock his home.
Rabbi Daniel Zion wrote hundreds of songs about Yeshua the Messiah, Sabbath, and the good life. He also wrote books on the subject of vegetarianism, health food, and natural living. Rabbi Daniel's major contribution to Messianic Judaism is his personal example. He lived a 100% Jewish life style, and was a 100% follower of the Messiah Yeshua. He did not compromise faith for neither money from the Christian missions, nor did he succumb to the pressures of the chief rabbinate. Yeshua was his savior and friend and until the last days of his life Rabbi Daniel Zion lived up to the Hebrew poem that he wrote with the acrostic of his name, Daniel Zion the Servant of God.
The (Daver) Word of God is my path,
The (Ner) Lamp of God is my guide,
The (Ira’at) Fear of God is the beginning of Wisdom,
The (Ahavat) Love of God is my Life,
The (La’asoth) Doing the will of God is my aspiration.
(Zedek) Righteousness and Justice are my goals,
His (Isurim) Suffering is my atonement,
He will (Oyagen) protect you
in all your ways,
The (Nezah) Eternal one of Israel is my comforter.
In 1979 Rabbi Daniel Zion departed to be with the Lord at the ripe old age of 96 years. The Bulgarian Jewish community of Israel gave him full military and state honors. His bier stood in the center of Jaffa with a military guard and at noon was carried by men all the way to the Holon Cemetery on foot. He was buried as the Chief Rabbi of Bulgarian Jews who saved them from the Nazi holocaust. He was 100% Jewish, and a 100% follower and disciple of Yeshua the Messiah.
Rabbi Simcha Pearlmutter [1] shared the following comments about Rabbi Tzion in 1992:
Bulgarian
Jews told me (Simcha Pearlmutter)
how their rabbi (Daniel Tzion) took the stripes that
were intended for all Bulgarian Jews. They remembered the cattle cars packed
with Jews from Thessalonica and Greece traveling through Bulgaria en route to
death camps. The Bulgarian Jews sought to help their fellow Jews in any way
they could. They knew that their rabbi had spared them from a similar fate,
taking the punishment for them. What they didn’t know was the vision that Rabbi
Tzion had before he met with King Boris. As a result,
Rabbi Tzion received full credit for saving the Jews
of Bulgaria, for which he received many beatings.
(After the
war) Rabbi Tzion knew that there was no future for
the Jewish people in Bulgaria, even though the Bulgarian people bravely
defended the Bulgarian Jews. Rabbi Zion realized that the only place of
sanctuary for the redemption of the Jewish people was in Israel.
Rabbi Tzion organized the Jews of Bulgaria, who respected him as
the man who kept them alive during the Holocaust. Standing before them, he
said, “My brothers, my dear sisters, we are now going to make mass aliyah.
We are going to leave Europe and the Galut (Diaspora), and we are going
to come up to the Land of Israel. We are going to ascend to our destiny.” They
followed en masse. A community had been spared by a miracle, and followed their
dear rabbi happily to the Land of Israel.
Rabbi Tzion came to Israel as a hero. In Bulgaria, unlike the
tragedy that befell most European communities, the Jewish community remained
intact. Rabbi Tzion was established as the Chief
Rabbi of Yafo (Jaffa). He also had his congregation
in his own synagogue… They followed the rabbi who had saved their lives, who
made it possible for them to breathe the clean air of Israel… They were willing
to listen to their rabbi’s explanation that their lives had been saved by
Yeshua.
[1] Our friend Rabbi Pearlmutter died on 26 December 1999. He was a Messianic
Jewish pioneer. He founded a pro-Torah Messianic synagogue in Miami in the
early 1960s. In 1964, he made aliyah with many from his congregation. For over
3 decades, he was the rabbi of a Messianic Jewish kehilah in Ir Ovot, south of the Dead Sea in
Israel. R. Chaimberlin