Chapter Four: The son of Helena and Salomon Mucznik
The Rav who came from Paris and the judge who wandered from Warsaw;
Papaito who came from Tangiers
A few delegates of the Lisbon community set out to find another Rav/Hazan and they were captivated by the voice of Hazan Shmuel Mucznik, which they heard in the Rue Cadet synagogue, in the 9th quarter, Paris. Though he learned the Ashkenazi mode, he had also studied in the Rabanut Course, the Sefaradi mode which had been adopted by the Lisbon community. Unlike other European communities, this community embraced both Sefaradi and Ashkenazi Jews, who lived peacefully together. However, the Sefaradim were the majority and they considered themselves as “nobility”, and thus the Sefaradi mode was the one adopted in the synagogue. They asked the Rav if he agreed to move to Lisbon with his wife and he agreed.
Shmuel Mucznik was born in the town Braclow, in Vinnytsia district, Ukraine, and traveled to Frankfurt, to study Rabanut. After finishing his studies, he married Ethel Weisnicht, from the city of Brodi, in the Lvov, Ukraine province, an important center of Hasidism. Shmuel and Ethel’s children, Salomon and Georgette, were born in Brodi. The family moved to Paris when Shmuel was contracted to work there and where Fanny was born, and sometime later they moved to Lisbon. Their youngest daughter, Esther, was later born there. Shmuel Mucznik was not only the Rav and the Hazan of the Lisbon community , but also their Mohel (the man who performs the circumcision) and the Shochet (the man who kills the animals to be eaten) he also directed the community’s activities and kept a diary where he recorded them, and also mentioned the times when Shabbat and the Hagim (holidays) began and ended.
Moshe Goldreich also traveled with his family to Lisbon, not because of his work, but for different motives. Mainly because of the antisemitism which was spreading in Warsaw, the city where he lived and worked as a judge. He took his wife Liba and their three children, Helena, Alice and Inacio, by train to Antwerp and then on to Lisbon. From there he was planning to get on a ship to Argentina, but his wife fell ill and died, so he decided to stay in Lisbon, where she was buried. He had to search for work in a country whose language he didn’t know. The community gave him a job – to go from door to door and collect fees from community members.
Helena and Alice, the beautiful daughters of Moshe Goldreich, dazzled the men in the“Shaarei Tiqva” Synagogue , with their blond hair and blue eyes. When Salomon Mucznik, the eldest son of Shmuel Mucznik, saw the beautiful Helena Goldreich praying in the women’s section, he couldn’t take his eyes off her. Shortly after, in 1929, when Helena was only 18 years old, they were married.
The young couple lived at first in the home of Salomon’s parents. Nathan, their eldest child was born at this home on 23 of March, 1930. Isaac, their second son, was already born in their own apartment, on October 28, 1931. The grandfather Shmuel, performed the Brit Milah (circumcision) of both his grandchildren. As a young boy, Nathan fell ill with rheumatism, which attacked his heart. Their Russian doctor told his mother nothing could be done to save him, but a young Jewish pediatrician, a woman doctor, Sara Ben-Uliel, did not give up and she saved him. From then on, the parents took great care of Nathan, and told Isaac he should not annoy his older brother.
But this was unnecessary, because the two brothers got along very well then and ever since, they never had a fight nor a disagreement. Two girls, Liba and Esther, completed the Mucznik family; Esther, the youngest was born 15 years after Nathan.
Avraham Baruch-el, known as “Papaito” (small father), also lived in the house of Salomon and Helena Mucznik. He came to them by chance, but became an important and significant part of the family. “Papaito,” a religious Jew came to Lisbon from Tangiers, Morocco. The family knew his story: his marriage had been prearranged and after he was married, he discovered that his bride was insane and had to be placed in an establishment. When Papaito came to Lisbon, he looked for a kosher restaurant, but at that time there were none, so someone told him to ask at the house of Salomon and Helena Mucznik, who kept a strictly kosher home. He rented a room at their house and thus became part of the family.
“Papaito became a very significant person in our childhood,” Isaac said tenderly: “he taught us everything: religion, mathematics, geography, history, French and English. When young he had been a diplomat, the British representative in Belgium, so once a year a member of the British consulate in Lisbon would come and visit him. For this occasion, he would dress up, and also ask that Nathan and Isaac do the same, and together with Papaito we would receive the British diplomat. We loved Papaito very much.”
No wonder: Papaito would defend the boys whenever their mother was too strict with them. When she insisted that they finish the food on their plates, he would tell her in his kind voice: “Perdonales, hijita, que tienen la garganta estrecha –forgive them, my child, because they have a narrow throat.” Many years later, in the new land, Nathan preserved Papaito’s memory, honouring him as he deserved, by having 100 trees planted in his memory in the Yatir forest.
Salomon Mucznik had a shop of music instruments (inherited from his father Shmuel M), and all his children were educated with a love of music; Salomon would take them to hear opera, whenever great singers came to Lisbon. Their mother had taught them how to read musical notes and play music: Nathan played and later studied piano with the well-known teacher, Mrs. Petchnik, who had come from Poland, and who also taught a young girl, Sonia Halpern, whose lives would soon cross. The youngest daughter of Shmuel, Esther fell in love and married Ernest Aberlé, who had come from Belgium and played the piano marvelously. People would come into the shop just to hear his beautiful playing, but even so, there were not enough sales.
Shmuel Mucznik was the first one in the family to emigrate in 1932 to Eretz Israel together with his wife Ethel and their youngest daughter Esther. An announcement in the newspaper “Doar Hayom” in 25.4.1932 refers to his “Aliyah”: “the Hazan Mr. Shmuel Zvi Mucznik of Portugal, has arrived in Jerusalem, to settle there. It seems that on Shabbat of Chol Hamoed of Pesach, accompanied by the chorus of the synagogue, he stood before the ‘Tevah’ of the synagogue and sang The Song of Israel.” It seems that the newspaper was not quite accurate, because Shmuel lived in Tel Aviv, on Rotschild street. Every Friday he would walk with his daughter to visit his friend, Chaim Nachman Bialik, the “National Poet,” who was then already known as one of the greatest Jewish poets. On 15.9.1933, when he was only 48 years old, Shmuel passed away having suffered from a heart condition. He is buried in the Trumpeldor Cemetery in Tel Aviv, not far from the grave of his friend Bialik.
The Jewish community of Lisbon remembered and missed Shmuel Mucznik for years; Isaac his grandson, recalls that someone told him they could send him to London to study Rabanut, because he had a voice that resembled his grandfather’s, and he could then become their Hazan. But Isaac Mucznik had different plans: his grandfather had sent him a postcard, where he predicted that he would be the first one to bring all the family to Israel. In 1955 he came on Aliyah and met Gila, who had come from Brazil, married her and together they created their family.
His brother Nathan and his family joined them 12 years later.
