Sefardi Chief Rabbi Rav Yitzchok Yosef said during his visit to Flatbush, Brooklyn, that his father gave him a gold emblem of the luchos habris a few weeks before his passing. It is understood that he will wear it if he meets the pope during the upcoming papal visit to Israel.
“A few weeks before his passing, my father called me to his bedroom, opened a drawer, and gave me a gift, something more precious than pure gold,” Rav Yosef said. “What was it? When they appointed my father as Rishon L’Tzion and chief rabbi of Israel 41 years ago in 1973, he received a gift from the Turkish community, a gold plate with the luchos habris on a chain.”
Rav Yosef said that when he was invited to attend an interfaith meeting of Christians and Moslems where priests were vaunting crosses, he came with the luchos habris his father gave him. It is expected that Rav Lau will attend the meeting with a similar item.
{Matzav.com Israel News Bureau}
B’ra Kar’a d’avuhah! Ya’arich yomim al mamlachto!
What’s pshat with the chain? What is the mikor?
the rounded version of luchos has non jewish sentiments and does not coincide with the gemara in Bava Basra. (even though it has crept in the yiddishe velt).
Interesting!
There was a chashuver Sefardi individual who came to collect for his Kollel and his daily Shacharis he davened in our Shul. Very quiet and unassuming but you saw right through his veil! (He wore two pairs of teffilin simultaneously- something that only the real chashuvim wear.)
He wore a ring – a wedding band – and once I mustered the courage yo ask him about the ring to which he replied that he wears it as a sh’mira when he travels away from home!
The pope can bring the ??? – which the Gemorah tells us that one of the Tana’aim said that he saw it in Rome!