Jerusalem -The kidnapping of Yossele Schumacher is being turned into a movie by directors Erez Tadmor and Guy Nattiv.
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The Schumacher affair gripped the nation in the early 1960s when the 9-year-old’s ultra-Orthodox grandfather refused to return him to his nonreligious parents, and prime minister David Ben-Gurion even asked the Mossad to find the child.
The film will be financed by the producer of “La Vie en Rose,” Alain Goldman. The project is in the final development stages, and filming is expected to begin this spring. Last year another movie targeting an ultra-Orthodox audience, “Where is Yossele?” was released about the affair.
Schumacher came to Israel from the Soviet Union with his parents and sister, and his parents asked his grandfather to care for the children. In 1959 they decided to take their children back, but the grandfather refused, saying he did not want to destroy the child’s religious education, and hid him. The court ordered the grandfather to reveal Yossele’s location, but he refused, and was jailed in 1962.
The case strained tensions between the ultra-Orthodox and nonreligious at the time.
Yossele was smuggled out of the country disguised as a girl, and was eventually found by the FBI and the Mossad, living with a Satmar Hassidic family in Brooklyn.
He was returned to Israel, where he still lives today.
is he frum now! whats the ending to this famous story?
Ruth Bloi was a real Tzedayke.
In the Hebrew mishpacha a while back they had a write-up about him and an interveiw with him. From what I understood he isn’t religious. They also interviewed the son from the family in Williamsburg who hid him for a few months. If I’m not mistaken their family name is Gertner.
Ruth Blau, the geyores who was the second wife of Rav Amrom Blau smuggeled him out of Israel dressed as a girl. Rav Lau’s father-in-law Harav Frankel was involved in trying to come to a compromise between the grandfather R’ Nachman who was a Breslaver chossid and his daughter and son-in-law who beleived in the communist ideology. They came to an agreement that the grandfather would continue to raise Yossele and the young couple would return to Russia with their daughter, but by then the grandfather had no idea where Yossele was hiding and couldn’t keep his part of the deal to bring him back so the whole thing fell thru.
Will they also add in the film that the Zionist Mossad agents were pulled from the case of Josef Mengele ym”s to search for the other Josef, Yossele Shumacher, who might G-d forbid become religious?
#5 FAMILY NAME IS GERTNER ASSOCIATED WITH THE FAMOUS CHOLOV YISROEL “GOLDEN FLOW” COMPANY
reb moshe solevtchik ztl
from zurich switzerland was also involved with this affair
is this going to be about more “schmutz” on the chasidic jews?
Thanks To The Mossad and FBI He Has A Long Reputation Of Drug Trafficking In Israel, And Has Been Jailed Many Times.
will this be another film to stir antifrumkeit
all of you have to get a life….the boy was kidnapped and no one had any right to do that! nothing you say can change the fact it was wrong, illegal and a disgusting act.
The grandfather was right to do what he did. We must at all expense try to save the life of another Jew. You see what happened now that he was returned and raised to be a secular zionist? Very Sad! Too bad they found him…
Lubavitch too was involved. Nachman Shtroks’ children are Lubavitchers, living in London. At one point, Mossad came to 770 & met with Rav Chadakov (the Rebbe’s top secretary) for a long meeting. When they came out, they said that it was the first time that they came out of a meeting more confused than when they went in.
I found this story in the yated june 07. Here is some of it. “The police arrested Reb Nachman and tortured him, but he refused to say where the child was hiding. The media began to hound the chareidim, taunting them with the battle cry, “Eifoh Yossele?”
As you can tell it was a major battle between frum and secular Jews.
This is cannon fodder for the secular zionists in Israel who are losing power and influence in the medinah. They want to relive the good old glory days where they had won a battle. But as time unfolds reality is that they will LOSE THE WAR!
To the secular zionists Yossele was a captured child but to the Frum he was a captured child under the auspices of his secular parents. I think we can see here so clearly the difference between the physical and the spiritual. How can we expect those who are tinok shenisba themselves to understand that what the Breslov CHassidim did was try to free Yossele? This story shows just how far apart the two worlds are…
it is wrong to kidnap a child from his parents. PERIOD. end of story.
Keep in mind that Yessele’s parents were hardened communists. When they arrived in Israel, they had now time to waste raising their 2 children. They wanted to invest all their energy in working the soil and establishing a communist utopia in Israel. So they put their daughter in a boarding school and gave their son to his erliche grandfather to be raised. The boy happened to excel in his learning and it was believed that he had the potential to grow up a big talmud chochom. Then the parents were egged on by their anti-relegious friends to take him back and prevent him from growing up ehrlich. The grandfather, having invested so much in his einikel and sacrificed so much, couldnt see all the effort go to waste. He realized that the parent’s motives were purely ideological. So he got into a ‘custody battle’ with the child’s parents which ended up with the child being ‘kidnapped’. But this is surely not a simple malicious kidnapping. What ended up with yosselle? I remeber that when he was in the army he was consantly getting into trouble, then when he was your he was jailed for various crimes. Way to go Mossad!
SEPERATING A CHILD FROM ANY FATHER IS NOT ACCEPTBALE
To get a good historical perspective on the Yossele affair (mixed with some great literary content) you must read TEN LOST, a new book available in most Jewish Book Stores. It has an entire section devoted to this event!
A child belongs with his parents. Doesn’t matter what level of religion. They had no right to kidnap him.
It is not in my place to decide if he should have been taken away from his parents or not, but the secular zionists are the last ones to have the gall to open their mouths and say anything on the matter. Let us not forget the horrific stories from yaldei Teheran who were forced to give up Torah and mitzvos against their will, and the Teimanei children that were stolen from their parents and given away or SOLD to other people, sometimes to goyim.
Just to throw out a thought. I know this will tick many of you off. But what is more important, one’s Eternal Olam Habah or one’s happiness in this temporary lobby-world?
If a child is being raised to be anti-frum, and is kidnapped and raised frum. The kidnapper may be a criminal to most of you, but he has saved the boy’s ETERNAL LIFE.
If saving one’s temporary life is the most important chiyuv one has, and it overrides almost ALL halachos and/or laws of any country, so much more to save one’s Eternal Life.
We are not talking about raising him in a mean world, but in a loving world with a loving family, where he would have most likely lived happily ever after, AND kept his Neshama intact.
I know there are counter arguments, I could give them also. But, I am just throwing out a thought.
The Gertners are a wonderful, loving family.
I’m not familiar with the story – I believe I’m not alone in my ignorance. But I have to wonder about the other forces at work at that time. The parents wished to return to communist Soviet Union. The relations between Israel and the Soviet Union were terrible at that time, in the mid-60s. Identifying Jews were suffering. For the Israeli government to sit by and not act to reunite these “good Soviet citizens” with their child would have been politically absurd. How do we know what was going on behind the scenes? Do we know that by the Israeli governments actions, perhaps the Soviet government went a little easier on some refusniks? I expect that the child was a pawn of both governments and I’d like to think that the Israeli government acted so that not just this child would be reunited with his own parents, but other Jews who were behind the Iron Curtain would be given some hope.
So let me get this straight. The heilige zeidy decided to play the role of the Ribbono Shel Olam and rationalized through his obviously warped mind (and by extension his warped Torah values) that kidnapping would be justified for the sake of the child’s frumkeit. Sounds like a good plan, except for the fact that old zeidy ain’t G-d. And the achrayis is on the parents, and they too were given bechirah chofshi. This boy’s frumkeit or lack thereof is immaterial. The zeidy is chayiv on all counts.
I was a child, living in Williamsburg at the time…. I remember Penn St was full of police and newspaper repoters. It was a sight to behold. I wonder if the movie will be in English or Yiddish. I’d love to see it.
Even in the goyisha world if child services see a child abused by parents dont they intervene and take the child? yes. If they see parents addicted to drugs do they get involved? yes. So why is it hard to understand that the grandfather saw his grandson was going to be raised in an environment that was unhealthy for his yiddisha neshamah. It is NOT a healthy environment for any child to be raised in a secular house!
Furthermore, this was the childs zayde NOT a stranger who took yosele. Dont you think he knew well what was going on? Remember the secular zionist parents are the ones who wanted to take Yossele BACK from the grandfather. So the parents all of a sudden had a change of heart after they realized their son ( again the one they gave to the grandfather) would be raised Torah observant. Think about what I am saying!
#26 , I cannot agree more! What hypocrisy on the part of the secular Israeli government!
my uncle was in Yeshiva in Switzerland at the time and distinctly remembers playing with Yossele. They didn’t know it was him though, bc he was dressed as a little girl. They only found out afterwards that that little girl was really Yossele.
Can you imagine the confusion for that little kid? The whole story is sad. The parents are not so innocent here, but you can’t deny them their kid…crazy story.
‘Efoh Yossele’?
he is my first cousin once removed
my grandfather is Sholom Schtraks who played a part in the kidnapping
he sat in prison for it
and English parliament past a law to extradite him from England to Israel
because at the time Jerusalem was not part of a state of Israel and he came from Jerusalem and there was no law in place so the law lords had to pass in the houses of parliament (you can look it up on google)
I HATE THE ZIONIST MORE AND MORE AS I read how they ran around for 2 years the mossad looking for yossele instead of focusing on arab enemies. To them to destroy one frum kid is more important than there own safety. The idiots in gush katif learnth who the zionist are the hard way and lost their homes. I would never help the mossad even if I got hold of information that could hurt them.They dont deserve our support. They are the enemies of all true religious jews.