THE MEMORIAL BOOK OF PÁPA JEWRY - JewishGen

With his vast Jewish learning and faithful religious sentiment, he conquered the hearts of
Mexican Jews so much that at his funeral, addresses were given in Spanish, Hebrew and
Hungarian. The orators from different Jewish communities eulogized his tireless work for the
public. It was a great loss for the Jews of Pápa.
DR. MIKLÓS STERN
He was born in Tab, Somogy County. His father was an engineer who died young. His
mother married Lipót Buxbaum, who was a teacher and a school principal at Pápa. The young
boy found a real home in Pápa; Lipót Buxbaum gave him an excellent education and he was
adored by his new siblings, the Buxbaum children.
He attended the local Protestant High School and passed the matriculation exams there.
Then he became a student at the Rabbinical Seminary of Budapest, where he attracted great
attention by his talent as a young scholar of Eastern studies. In 1939 he made aliya and continued
his studies at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.
He became an orientalist and went to England. First he was a researcher in a college at
Oxford, and then he became a professor of eastern languages at Oxford University. He became
world-famous in scholarly circles in 1948 on account of a debate he held with the Arab delegates
at a Paris conference. He defeated the Arabs by proving on the basis of a verse in the Quran, that
the Al-Aqsa mosque cannot have been in Jerusalem. It must have been in the city of Medina, near
Mecca. The Arab delegates from the Middle-East created a scandal, but Muslim scholars from
more distant countries congratulated him in private.
He is considered among the best orientalists. Unfortunately, the great scholar died young,
in 1969.
If you want to get acquainted with real talmidei hachamim from Pápa, you should meet
REV KIVE SCHREIBER,
who was an outstanding Talmudic scholar.
He was the son of the Krakkower rebbe and the grandson of the Chatam Sofer, and dealt
with leather. He did not have a shop, his flat was his storehouse. He spoke of it somewhat
bitterly, pointing out the rooms in his apartment:
"This is the place where I sleep. This is where my family sleeps. And this is where my
business sleeps."
It was recorded that he received a dowry that was considered unusually large in those
days, 5000 gold pieces. On the day of his wedding, he distributed one tenth of it among the poor.
When his father-in-law found out, he became angry and questioned him, saying that it was his
fortune that Kive dissipated. The chatan's uncle Ktav Sofer was there; he tried to calm him down,
saying "Don't worry about our Kive, he will die a rich man." Later on when he became the owner
of a cookware factory and had serious problems because of the bad economic situation, his
friends could not see any outward signs of his worries.
On one occasion he was asked by his friend Horovitz (the soap manufacturer he used to
study Talmud with in the evenings), how come he gave no signs of worries concerning his
serious business difficulties. "I believe in the words of my uncle who said I would not die poor",
replied Kive. Indeed, the encouraging prediction of the great rabbi came true: he left a huge
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