It so happened that this week, two people from the community came to our Shabbos Minyan to say Kaddish after the passing of their mothers. W.K. lost his mother this week, the burial was on Friday. Y.C.’s mother passed away in Israel only ten days ago.
We asked them to each share at lunchtime some memories of their mothers:
W.K.: My mother was American-born, and was raised a little less traditionally than my father’s family. Yet she was a big part of the Yiddishkeit I was raised with and that stuck with me. I was born in Brownsville, Brooklyn, which was at that time a very strong Jewish community. We attended an Orthodox synagogue, and I went to the Cheder there. My father was the provider, he worked hard, but my mother was always there for me, especially when I was younger and she helped me out with things as I was growing up. She wanted me to do the best I could. If I came home with a 90 on a test, she wasn’t satisfied and pushed me to do better. I credit much of my success to her encouragement. She died this week at age 96. I know that she’s now up there with my dad, and she’s in a happier place, because ever since she had some hip surgeries things went downhill and it wasn’t the same. Even though she lived a long full life, I miss her.
Y.C.: My mother’s family originally came from a Chassidic family in Poland, but a long time ago the family moved to Germany. As soon as Hitler came to power, my grandmother (without a husband at the time) knew she had to get the family out of there, so she took her children and went to Israel, then Palestine. My mother was the oldest of the children and she had many responsibilities, in a new land, with a new language. In 1948 she married a young immigrant to Israel from Eastern Europe, but sadly he was killed in Israel’s War of Independence just a short while after their marriage. My mother was devastated and soon after moved to the United States. She was a talented and capable woman. Later she became the secretary of Abba Eban, Israel’s ambassador to the United States. In fact, she was the one who wrote the famous letter to Albert Einstein asking him to become President of Israel. Not only that, she signed it! Abba Eban was out of town at the time, so she signed for him.