Speech
Eulogy for Joseph Warburg (2005)
When the Biblical Joseph died, the Torah describes in three words what happened shortly after that: ״ויישם בארון במצרים״’ he was placed in a coffin in Egypt. The Zohar was intrigued by the spelling of ויישם; having the two letters yod in a row is not at all common in the Torah. The Zohar was probably also motivated by the fact that this letter is often the symbol for God or Godliness, since it is th e first letter of שם הוי׳, the Tetragrammaton. It therefore concluded that each of the two letters yod stands for a different covenant: תרי יודי״ן דנטר בריתא דלעילא ודנטר בריתא לתתא, one yod stands for conforming with the covenant of man with the Above, i.e., the רבונו של עולם, and the other represents abiding by the covenant Below, i.e., amongst human beings.That interpretation by the Zohar of the uniqueness of Joseph who lived up to the two covenants, also defined our Joseph, Joe Warburg. He was a two-covenant man, one who was loyal to his Maker and gracious to his fellowman. To use the Yiddish (and probably German as well), he was equally ״צו גאט און צו לייט״, covenanted to God and to man.Joe was true to his בריתא דלעילא — he rarely missed the daily מנין, and who forced himself to attend Shabbat services even when in pain or disabled by weakness. He was genuinely pious, a שומר מצוות כהלכה. He and lisa raised their children, Joan and Ronnie and David, to be highly educated in Torah and in worldly careers. Almost all their children and grandchildren studied at Yeshiva University.Jo was a leader in this community, and his form of leadership was not by exercising his power, but by using his vast influence as a role model for an Orthodox Jew. For he was by all means gentle, soft-spoken, polite- a marvelous representative of the best of German Jewry— a classical case of a German-Jewish gentleman: mature, knowledgeable, elegant, dignified, respectable. He was an advocate of Torah Umadda or more likely its German-Jewish, Hirschian version , Torah im Derech Eretz. He certainl…
