With India’s Messiah - Schlomith Flaum and Mahatma Gandhi

- Shimon Lev

The Hebrew Kindergarten teacher Schlomith Frieda Flaum (1893-1963) was born in Kaunas (Kovna), Lithuania, on 18 March 1893 and died in Israel on 2 January 1963 at the age of seventy, lonely, miserable, penniless, and forgotten.¹

Her exceptional and remarkable life story appears at first glance to be unreliable and even invented, but research and closer examination reveal that everything she describes is entirely true. This fact further emphasizes the tragic, almost unbelievable contrast between her extensive travels and meetings with prominent personalities, intellectuals and educators all over the world, and her lonely, forgotten life and death.

Flaum visited Europe, the Middle East, North America, South Africa and Asia. In most places she stayed for long periods, trying to experience that place as well as she could and travel around. As an educator, she focused mainly on new methods of teaching. However, she also met many important and exceptional personalities and was able to establish warm, personal contact with most of them. Flaum immigrated from Lithuania to Eretz Israel (Palestine) in 1911 and worked as a kindergarten educator in the Jerusalem. She began her travels in 1920, which focused on studying modern pedagogical methods and meeting famous educationists. These travels were certainly exceptional for an unmarried (Jewish) woman at that time. From what we know Flaum left Palestine in 1920 for Rome to study the Montessori Method of education. In February 1920, Flaum sailed from Rome to New York and probably stayed there until the summer of 1921. In New York, Flaum attended the Teachers’ Training course at Columbia University.

East and West was the subject of a lecture Tagore delivered at a Jewish synagogue in New York during his third visit to the United States, sometime between October 1920 and March 1921. He gave the lecture in a synagogue (perhaps for the first time in his life) at the invitation of Rabbi Stephen Wise.² Flaum attended the lecture and heard Tagore for the first time. She later wrote: “He stood and spoke like one uttering gold coins. His voice was melancholic — almost the voice of a woman.” She then realized that “there are other worlds that we have not yet seen.” This first meeting with Tagore would change her life.

After Tagore’s above mentioned lecture, she went with two classmates from the pedagogical course at Columbia University to visit Tagore in his hotel. Flaum recounted:

One afternoon, the three of us went to his hotel in New York. With warm handshakes did he greet us. [...] Tagore’s words flowed, and we listened. It was hard to believe that beyond these walls, within which we were enclosed, lay the busy city of New York [...] Thus did the conversation turn to the topic of education and his school in the village of Santiniketan (abode of peace). A school for boys and girls... elementary school and high school... from all over the world visitors come to see it... you, too, come... please. Only a year later did I begin to act towards realizing my heartfelt desire to go to his school in the “abode of peace”... to observe the poet as an educator and work there as a teacher. I summoned up the courage and proposed to Tagore my wish to be a pupil and a teacher in his school, and was accepted.³

Tagore answered positively and Flaum rushed back to Palestine. After a few weeks of arranging her travel, she sailed for Bombay. Flaum arrived at Santiniketan to be a teacher of both early childhood education and the German language for Indian students preparing to study in Germany, as well as a student at Visva Bharati International University. Her two-year stay in India from 1922-1924 was the climax of all her travels. Everything she did later in her life was connected to, or resulted from, her meeting with her guru, Tagore.

Flaum did not want to leave India before meeting Gandhi who was just released from Jail. In the following section she recounts her meeting with Gandhi whom she described as “India’s Messiah.” In the following years Flaum published extensively in the Jewish press in Palestine about Tagore and Gandhi.⁴ Flaum was only one of the people who acted to acquaint the growing Jewish population <(em>Yishuv) in Palestine with India and its culture and in her numerous articles and lectures throughout the country.

I hope this first-ever publication of Flaum’s account on Gandhi in English will serve the purpose of restoring her forgotten name as the key person who contributed to knowledge about Gandhi in the small Jewish population in Palestine in her time.

With India's Messiah

“Don't tell me about holy water and stone idols - these purify, if at all, only after a long time, but the holy man purifies us by his appearance alone,” says a Sanskrit proverb.⁵

When I arrived in India in 1922, Mahatma Gandhi was in jail. But his name was on everyone's lips. Wherever I went in the two years I spent in India, I heard people talking about the Mahatma with reverence and devoted enthusiasm. When I was at Tagore’s school, two remembrance days were celebrated in honour of the Mahatma: the day he had visited the school and the day of his imprisonment. And how was he remembered? On these days, no classes were held at school and the students fasted in honour of the Mahatma and gave their food to the children of the adjacent villages. Each student made an artifact that was useful, something Gandhi demanded from all his disciples with no exception. In the evening, everybody assembled to listen to speeches of appreciation. On Gandhi Day, held throughout the entire country, nobody would work, they would fast and hold public meetings.⁶

My only desire before leaving India was to meet the Mahatma in person. And this desire was fulfilled. My visit to Gandhi lives on in me; it resembled a pilgrimage. In the evening, I arrived at Palm Bun [Bungalow on Juhu Beach] in Bombay, where Gandhi was staying. He needed to recuperate after the difficult operation he had when he was in jail.

One of the Mahatma’s disciples went to inform him of my arrival. I waited for his response in the garden in front of the house, by the sea, with the sun setting into it and dripping onto its waters the glory of its magnificence. After a few minutes, I was summoned to the house. It was hard for me to go up the stairs - I was so excited. This was a great festive day in my life. I can still feel the emotion I experienced when I saw Gandhi sitting on a chair, gaunt and weak. I bowed to him, according to an Indian custom. He proffered his hand to me. I was drawn to him as if by magic strings.

When I spoke about Tagore’s school in Santiniketan, Gandhi said a few things about it. He asked me questions and was glad to hear that the Tagore house was the same house in which he, too, had lived. “Oh,” I said. “Now I know whence all the good thoughts and lofty heartfelt emotions I had there come from.”

“No,” answered Gandhi. “You should rather say that we both, you and I, stayed under the poet's roof.” And a benevolent smile illuminated his face.

As he spoke to me about his home, the Sabarmati Ashram in Ahmedabad, his face had a completely different expression, and his eyes sparkled. He spoke a lot about his place of peace.

He asked me about the situation in the Land of Israel and was glad to hear about our movement and agricultural settlements. He also told me some nice things about his Jewish friends in South Africa who, they alone, came to his aid and fulfilled the commandment of hospitality to him.⁷ He also told me about one Jew, called [Henry] Polak, his faithful assistant in his political struggle, who was imprisoned a number of times for this reason.⁸

Mr. Polak’s honesty drew me to him strongly. As soon as we were acquainted, we became loyal friends. We immediately discovered that we have the same views on all basic issues. He liked the simple way of life and had the amazing ability to put his ideas into practice. He was the editor of the monthly journal Critic. Later, Polak joined me in a settlement I founded called “Tolstoy Farm.”⁹ After he had left the board of editors of his newspaper, with his friendliness and social spirit, he quickly earned the love of all the members [of Phoenix Farm] and immediately became an integral part of our family. The simple and natural way of life in the settlement was completely to his taste. There was never the impression that he was looking at life ahead as something extraordinary. As a matter of fact, he felt like a fish in water in the village.

Gandhi's right hand and closest friend was Mr. [Hermann] Kallenbach, a German Jew, an architect, who worked together with him on Tolstoy Farm and was busy solving the school’s problems and running it on Gandhi's behalf.¹⁰ Gandhi also spoke about a Russian Jewish woman who was his secretary for a long time and stood by him with complete devotion during his most difficult times. She was Mrs. [Sonja] Schlesin, who is now the headmistress of a girls’ school in the Transvaal.¹¹ He said:

She was about seventeen years old when she came to us, and she had all kinds of strange ideas. She came to us not in order to work as a stenotypist, but more in order to gain experience. Any prejudice about race and colour was totally foreign to her. A person older or more experienced than her did not generate in her any sense of admiration. She never hesitated to offend someone so long as she told him to his face what she thought of him. Her boldness would sometimes embarrass me or put me in an awkward situation. But her honesty and good faith would abate my anger before it arose. Her devotion was great. For a long time she did not get more than six pounds for her monthly pay, and after that, she never agreed to accept more than ten. When I tried to persuade her to take more, she would scold me vehemently, saying: “I am not here for the money. I am here because I like working for you and your ideas please me.” And she was as courageous as she was devoted. She was one of the few women in whom I found a character as pure as crystal and courage that would put a warrior to shame. She was never tired of working for our ideas ~ day and night. She would go alone on propaganda journeys in the darkness of night and would reject any offer of accompaniment. Thousands of Indians who were always ready for battle looked to her as their leader. In the days of civil disobedience, when almost all the leaders were in prison, she ran the entire movement by herself. She took care of thousands of people, organized the accumulating correspondence in piles, and edited the Indian Opinion newspaper. All this filled her hands with work, but she never knew fatigue. The time I spent with this young woman will always remain a sacred memory to me.
In South Africa, the Europeans called us by the derogatory name of “coolies.” In India, this word simply implies suffering, but in South Africa this word resembled the Indian term “pariah,” which means impure and untouchable. The neighbourhoods in South Africa where the Indians lived were called Coolie Neighbourhoods. There was also such a neighbourhood in Johannesburg.

In the Middle Ages, Jews were similarly disparaged. It was also forbidden to have any contact with them and their designated neighbourhoods were called “ghettos.” Here this fate became the fate of the Indians in South Africa, in the midst of the Modern Era.

Gandhi's wife, Kasturba, is small and thin, like a child. When she greeted me, she interlocked her little hands and raised them to her smiling mouth. With this gesture, she expressed the very same young, and pure spirit that shines from all her husband’s movements, as well as the infinite kindness inherent in his childish face. She examined my sari, made of handspun – Swadeshi – khaddar, and seemed to like it. I explained to her that in the Land of Israel, too, we have the same problem in our fight to exist, and what is called “Swadeshi” in India, we call “Made in the Land.” I parted from Gandhi and his wife. His big brown eyes illuminated his bronze face with the love of mankind and a good heart.

And here is what he wrote in my album:

“Satya” — truth, “Ahimsa” — non-violence — love, two faces of the same coin that buys you all you need for the soul. I [communicate /commend?] it to my Jewish friends. M. K. Gandhi. Palmbun 25.3.24.

My second meeting with Gandhi took place in December 1932 [1931] in Switzerland. Gandhi came to Villeneuve to visit his friend, Romain Rolland.¹²

He was sitting in a small room, into which daylight entered from three windows, usually gray murky light on those rainy days, but sometimes also bright and clear. He was sitting on a rug, his legs crossed under him, and his back leaning on a low sofa. Friends came in at will while he wrote. Between chapters he raised his head and smiled, and answered questions in brief, but nothing escaped his eyes, even when his fingers twirled the silent rollers of his portable spindle. This collapsible spindle accompanied him on all his journeys and could be dismantled easily. Gandhi used his powers of invention to improve its design during the long months of his imprisonment, before ordering one from his Ashram’s carpenter. He received guests during his mealtimes as well — not for a moment was he idle. He ate simple meals: goat's milk, fruit, and raw vegetables. His pocket-watch was always on his belt or on the ground, reminding him of the flight of time. A man of incessant activity but not feverish. One felt that this man had great power-of-resistance but was, at the same time, very gentle, a result of long-term physical and moral training alike.

For over two months, Gandhi had been negotiating with the English, which exhausted his strength. Despite the burden of the Round Table Conference, he made contact and spoke with the residents of the London suburbs, workers and employers in Lancashire, students and professors in Oxford and Cambridge, young communists, Indians who were banished from their homeland by royal decree, and many other groups. All wanted to discuss with him important questions about the Empire and the world. He influenced some public opinion in England, which would be useful to him later, when he returned to India to continue his struggle. After a few hours of rest in Villeneuve, he was awake and smiling again. He regained his strength completely. When the sun rises, his thin naked legs walk with quick steps, too fast for those who accompany him, along the lanes of Byron Park and on the outskirts of Villeneuve.

Every morning, except for those days on which he attends meetings in Geneva, he crosses the park that separates him from Villa Olga. There he holds polite and lengthy discussions with Romain Rolland. The two talk with complete candour about social and spiritual issues. Gandhi's two secretaries, both educated and intelligent young, Indian men, are always ready to learn and enhance their knowledge, write his words down quietly. Both of them have sacrificed their entire future and social position in order to serve Gandhi and work for his idea. Together with him, and because of him, they have suffered; they were imprisoned and participated in a hunger strike.

Then Gandhi returns to his visitors and guests [in his residence]. People of every type and age, of every status and origin come to see him. Some came merely out of curiosity, but most of them really yearn to see and hear this unique person, the only such man in his generation, who transforms his beliefs to actions and draws millions of people to follow him in the path of peace and non-violence. At one corner, I see a German painter who devours Gandhi with his eyes before starting to paint him. In the opposite corner, I see a black-haired Japanese kneading a lump of clay with his hands in order to imprint Gandhi's head on it.

Children come with flowers in their hands — workers’ children and rich people's children. Gandhi greets them joyously and stands up to have his photograph taken with them. Then, like a secret flock of sparrows, Villeneuve’s schoolchildren break out in patriotic song near his window... And a simple woman brings five francs in an envelope, on which is written, “For the poor women in India from a Swiss working woman.”

On the only day on which Gandhi was free, he did something he had been longing to do for a long time. He went to a mountain village, where an old woman lived, an acquaintance of Miss Slade, Gandhi’s English secretary.¹³ This old woman, over eighty, was a weaver.

Gandhi found her sitting and working. She was happy to see him and without any embarrassment led him to an inner room which served as a bedroom. Proudly she showed him her spindle and explained how it worked. Gandhi had not been so overjoyed in a long time! The spindle was almost completely identical to that of the poor villagers in India! Before he left, Gandhi wanted to see the cowshed, where two beautiful cows ruminated and two fat sheep lay down shamelessly.

From here, he reached Lausanne in ten minutes, where he visited sick students at the international university sanatorium and offered them words of encouragement.

Every evening, at seven o'clock, he devoted fifteen to twenty minutes to prayer (morning prayers were held at sunrise). He prayed in his room or in the guest-hall of Villa Olga, and everyone, regardless of religion, could attend, as long as they focused their heart on silent meditation. In Lausanne and in Geneva, as well as in his writings, Gandhi explained numerous times that in his view, truth is the divinity, and that the heretic who worships truth is equal to the believer who worships his God.

On 11 December, a multitude of people crowded into the Villeneuve airport. Gandhi was leaving. He was travelling via Italy, and would stay one day at a friend’s house in Rome, and then from Brindisi¹⁴ travel to Bombay by ship. There were those who were afraid that he might meet II Duce. But those who heard him express, unequivocally and publicly, his resentment of every dictatorship and tyranny did not worry at all about such a meeting. Gandhi preferred to see people face to face, even those whose views and methods were foreign to him. His ardent belief gave him faith in the power of one word uttered from a candid heart, to overcome hypocrisy, and his soul knew not fear nor falsehood. The crowd surrounded him. We showered our blessings on him, and our thoughts turned to India, the country from which, perhaps, will come the redemption of the world. How many times did he tell us in those days: “I can only help Europe by freeing India, because skeptical and materialistic Europe requires a tangible example. If it comes to pass that India is freed by non-violence, the revolution will be peaceful all over the world.”

His appearance infused the visitor with calm and vigor; small talk with him was akin to peacefully sitting on the beach after being tossed about for a long time in a stormy sea. Each period had its own personalities, who created action from within. Each one of us is at the centre or on the circumference of some circle, be it large or small.

My second meeting with Gandhi brought me special joy. Simplicity and good heartedness is embodied in his entire essence and appearance. He resembled the lotus, which powerfully roots itself in the land of the people of India, while at the same time spreading its upper parts all over the universe. There is a Sanskrit saying: “Nahi Karna Ksiata” (what is done is never lost).

Notes and References

This article is based on my new book titled: From Lithuania to Santinketan, Schlomith Flaum and Rabindranath Tagore published by the Lithuanian Embassy in New Delhi, March, 2108. This publication contains the chapters of Flatim’s accounts about Tagore and Gandhi translated into English from her first book: Schlomith F. Flaum, The Wandering of a Daughter of Israel... Memories, Journeys and Meetings (Jerusalem: 1. L.Meit, 1935). The Hebrew title is Bat Israel Noddedt... Zicronot, Masaot, Vepgishot. With special thanks to Laimonas Talat-KelpSa, the Lithuanian Ambassador to India, and his wife Alina for supporting, encouraging and raising funds for this project. My special thanks to my sister the translator Dr. Esther Cohen from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and to the editors Debi Manor, Swati Mitra and Rena Ashkenazi for editing the English language of this book. The author, translator and editors have tried throughout to remain true to the original script (in Hebrew) written by Schlomith Flaum. However, the old-fashioned Hebrew language used in the original text does not always facilitate a smooth transfer into English. The author, translator and editors have, on the one hand, made all efforts to remain loyal to the original style, and, on the other hand, to make it readable for readers today.

Stephen Samuel Wise (1874 -1949) was an American Reform Rabbi and Zionist leader and a close friend of John Haynes Holmes (1879 -1964), a prominent Unitarian minister and pacifist and the main person responsible for spreading Gandhi's name in the United States. Holmes described Gandhi in his 10 April 1921 sermon as “the greatest man in the world.” Through his friendship with Holmes, Wise developed a deep interest in India, Tagore and Gandhi.

Flaum, The Wandering of, pp. 139-141.

In the following years, Flaum published few articles about Gandhi in the Jewish press in Palestine. Here is the list I was able to locate: “With Gandhi,” (1932) (Heb.) Moznaim 4, Vol. 17, pp. 11-12.”Spiritual Education by Gandhi,” part a. (14.10.1932) Doar Hayom 15, p. 4 (Translation of parts of the chapter: “Tolstoy Farm II” from Gandhi's second autobiography Satyagraha in South Africa.). “Spiritual Education by Gandhi,” part b. (16.10.1932) Doar Hayom 15, p. 3 (Translation of parts of the chapter: “Tolstoy Farm II” from Gandhi’s second autobiography Satyagraha in South Africa). “Mahatma Gandhi,” (Gandhi Fast on Behalf of the Harijans) (19.5.1933) Doar Hayom 15, p. 3. “Gandhi as a Worker,” (1933) Hapoel Hatzair 26, 13, p. 14.

Flaum does not give the source of this proverb. It might be based on punyasravanakirtana (S.B. 1.2.17): “When one drinks heavenly nectar he loses his piety, but when one hears k[cna-katha, he is freed from sin and his heart becomes purified.”

See M. K. Gandhi, Autobiography or The Story of My Experiments with Truth (England, Penguin, 1984), pp. 344-347. Gandhi sent the members of Phoenix Farm from South Africa to Santiniketan prior to his departure via England from South Africa. Gandhi arrived at Santiniketan for a one-month stay but left after a week, when he received a telegram announcing Gokhale’s death. The others stayed in Santiniketan until Gandhi established Sabarmati Ashram in May 1915.

During the Round Table Conference in 1931 Gandhi told a reporter from the London Jewish Chronicle, “I have a world of friends among the Jews. In South Africa I was surrounded by Jews.” (1 October 1931). Among Gandhi’s Jewish supporters to be noted here in addition to the names Gandhi mentioned to Flaum are the English Jew and founder of the Johannesburg Lodge of the Theosophical Society, Louis Walter Ritch (1868-1952) and the Theosophists Gabriel Isaac and the couple Vogel. On them see: Shimon Lev, Gandhi and his Jewish Theosophists Supporters in South Africa, in: Theosophical ‘Appropriations, Esotericism, Kabbalah and the Transformations of Traditions (eds. Julie Chajes and Boaz Huss), (Beer Sheva; Ben-Gurion University of the Negev Press, 2016), pp. 245-270.

Henry Salomon Leon Polak (1882-1959) and his wife Millie Graham Polak.

Flaum erred here. Polak and later on his wife, Millie Graham, joined Phoenix Farm near Durban.

Herman Kallenbach (1871-1945) was born in Rusn@, Lithuania and was a very important supporter of Gandhi in South Africa. See Shimon Lev, Soulmates: The Story of Mahatma Gandhi and Hermann Kallenbach (New Delhi: Orient BlackSwan, 2012). See also India & Lithuania: A Personal Bond (New Delhi-Vilnius, 2017).

Sonja Schlesin (1888-1956), Gandhi’s devoted Jewish secretary, who quickly became a key person in the Satyagraha struggle in South Africa. See: George Paxton, Sonia Schlesin: Gandhi's South Africa Secretary, (London: Pax Books, 2006). She was a teacher, not the school’s headmistress, and in later years she demanded that Gandhi correct this mistake in his autobiography.

Flaum erred here; Gandhi stayed in Rolland’s Villa in Villeneuve between 6-10 December 1931 and not 1932. See Gandhi (1931) CWMG 054, 335-288, When Flaum published her article about her two meetings with Gandhi, she claimed to be one of the translators in some of the discussions: “The two are discussing spiritual and social issues with full frankness. I am translating without eloquence but as accurately as I can.” (Flaum, 1932, “With Gandhi,” pp. 13-14). In this chapter, she decided to omit this fact. Neither Gandhi nor Rolland mention her name in their accounts of these meetings, but Rolland does mention that he [Rolland] had “a Russian friend,” although it is not clear to whom he is referring. See Gandhi (1931) “Romain Rolland’s Letter to an American Friend,” CWMG 54, 462. It must be noted that Rolland knew Flaum well, since she had accompanied Tagore “as a secretary” to the meeting with Rolland only one year earlier.

Madeleine Slade, known as Mirabehn (1892-1982). She was the daughter of the British Rear-Admiral Edmond Slade, who became a follower of Gandhi and one of his closest supporters and who participated in the movement for India’s independence.

A city in the region of Apulia in southern Italy. Gandhi left Europe on December 14, never to visit it again.

Courtesy: The article has been adapted from Gandhi Marg, Volume 40 Number 1&2, April-September 2018

SHIMON LEV (LOW) is an Israeli multidisciplinary artist, writer, photographer, curator and researcher in the fields of Indian Studies, art and literature, religion, and travel. He holds a Doctoral degree on the subject of the mutual influence of the Jewish and Indian cultures. Lev teaches at the Hadassah Academic College. Lev is the author of “Soulmates”, the story of Mahatma Gandhi and Hermann Kallenbach (Orient BlackSwan, 2012). | Email: shimonlev99@gmail.com