Moses Rosen - His Election As Chief Rabbi of Romanian Jewry - 1948

1948

In December 1947 the much esteemed Chief Rabbi in office of Romania, Dr Alexandru Şafran, was deported from Romania by the new Communist leadership of the country, which was installed under the pressure of the Soviet occupation force. Rabbi Alexandru Şafran was considered too close to the Royal family and to the old "bourgeois" leadership of the Romanian Jews (the Union of Romanian Jews, dr Wilhelm Filderman, the Zionist representatives and others) which was hated by the new government. He was ordered to leave Romania within 2–3 hours. The Communist party, which meanwhile changed its name to "Romanian Workers Party" (Partidul Muncitoresc Român) imposed on the Jews a new ethnic organization called "The Jewish Democratic Committee", somehow an imitation of the former Yevsektsiya from Soviet Russia. Under the supervision of the Jewish Democratic Committee, the rabbis and the communities representatives from all around Romania met in Bucharest on June 16, 1948 and elected by secret vote Dr Moses Rosen as the new Chief Rabbi instead of Alexandru Şafran who was accused as a traitor who "abandoned" his "sheep and goats".

The rival of Moses Rosen in this election was Dr David Şafran, a nephew of the former chief rabbi, known as fervent Zionist activist. Following the item written on the scrap of paper he had pulled out, David Şafran had to give a sample of sermon about the fight for peace on basis of a week pericope from the Torah. At his turn, following the same procedure, Moses Rosen was demanded to preach at the inauguration of a craftsmen cooperative on basis of other pericope. On 20 June 1948 Moses Rosen, as winner of the contest, was installed as "Rav Kolel of the Moses' cult" in Romania, at a ceremony in the Choral Temple, in the presence of many officialities, among them the vicepresident of the Great National Assembly (the Romanian parliament under the communist regime), Ştefan Voitec and the minister of cults, Stanciu Stoian. The rabbi David Şafran was in the next years to be victim of the Communist terror, persecuted and imprisoned for several years for his Zionist convictions. After his liberation, he was allowed in the end to emigrate to Israel, where he wrote many books, in many of them giving a very negative opinion about Moses Rosen, the "Red rabbi" ("Rabinul roşu").