A Yiddish Sermon of Rebuke from the Warsaw Ghetto (January 1942)

he details of the preacher and text are as follows:

Yitzhak (Icchak) Katz

“Things I Intended to Say . . .”,

Conference of Jewish Social Self–Help

(Zydowska Samapomoc Spolczna, ZSS), Warsaw Ghetto

January 5, 1942[2]

In To Live With Honor, to Die With Honor, ed. and annotated by Joseph Kermish, pp. 355–57

Translated from the Yiddish (translater unidentified)

Yad Vashem Archives ARG I-423

There has been very little discussion of this sermon text in the scholarly literature. I find it to be especially interesting because of the organization listed (Jewish Self-Help), in which the author was apparently an official delegate, and the genre of rebuke, fiercely critical of the behavior of the wealthy Jews who are said to ignore the starving children whom they see in the streets. It is also noteworthy that while the texts of Rabbi Shapira’s sermons were delivered in Yiddish but written in Hebrew (as is the case for most of the east European Jewish sermons of the period), here the text preserved is in the language in which the preacher either delivered it or would have wanted to deliver it. I therefore believe it will fit well into the session based on Rabbi Shapira.