Full Version: My Grandmother...
Please say tehillim for Malka Raizel B-Miriam Esther. She is my strength. She is hanging on to life and I can't be with her right now. But I can pray.
Update: My Grandmother was nifteres last Thursday, Av 2nd. Thank you for your prayers.
QUOTE(Ahavah @ Aug 3 2006, 08:58 PM) [snapback]620132[/snapback]
Update: My Grandmother was nifteres last Thursday, Av 2nd. Thank you for your prayers.
BDE.
BDE.
"The first seven days are for weeping; the first thirty days are for eulogy..."
A paragraph, an essay, a 100 page research report could not do my grandmother or her incredible life justice...
She was born in 1925, in a Polish shtetl. Her stories of life in Poland were always so negative that I wondered how anyone could romanticize the place. There were no antibiotics, only the strongest children survived. There was never enough heat at school, and she had to walk all the way there...
Her father, a Gerrer chosid, Reb. Yitzchok Issac Czarny, dreamed of a greater life in Palestine. He travelled there and helped build up a city called Bnei Brak...unfortunately, he returned to Poland with turberculosis. But he built something in his oldest daughter as well, a life-long love of eretz Yisrael that manifested itself in charity work. My Bobby was a lifelong member of Emunah, a women's organization that helps build and keep up social networks in Eretz Yisrael by maintaining orphanages, group homes and schools.
My grandmother was only 13 years old when her shtetl was bombed. Her father was killed in the bombing and her mother from illness shortly thereafter. That left her as the caretaker of all her younger siblings. They were forced to live in a ghetto, with the zchus of getting the "least desirable" residence on the outskirts. This enable my grandmother and her aunt Tante Fella (who was 10 years older but as close as a sister) to avoid deportation untill the end of the war, at which point they were put to work as slave laborers in factories near Auschwitz. My mother proudly recounted to me how my grandmother would sleep under the tables there during the night shift!
After the war, Bobby and Tante Fella were displaced in Italy for 2 years. Bobby completed high school at a Polish-launguage institution there.
A passion for education burned in her for her entire life. Upon reaching America, she returned to school to learn English, and after many years of distracting work necessary to support her family, she returned to school--- in her 60's!---to get a college degree. She sent all her 3 children to college, one to grad school and one to med school. She set aside money so that me, my siblings and my cousins could go to school, and was always willing to support our goals towards getting a decent education. She was the typical Jewish grandmother, pushing us not only to "eat, eat" but to "learn, learn"!
I spent a lot of days and nights in her house, listening to her sing lullabies in English, Yiddish and Italian, hearing her views on politics and current events, going to shull and shiurim with her on Shabbos and observing how careful she always was with the mitzvos of caring for others.
She took care of my grandfather untill she was no longer able to. Fiercely independant and intellegent, she insisted on preparing and serving him meals, arranging doctor appointments and Daf Yomi shiurs. My grandfather loved to learn Torah, and my grandmother took great pride in his scholarship.
My father's parents passed before I was born and my mother's mother was the only Grandmother I had the zchus to know. She was a gem in my life, a source of unconditional love and comfort....
and no amount of words can quantify that...
A paragraph, an essay, a 100 page research report could not do my grandmother or her incredible life justice...
She was born in 1925, in a Polish shtetl. Her stories of life in Poland were always so negative that I wondered how anyone could romanticize the place. There were no antibiotics, only the strongest children survived. There was never enough heat at school, and she had to walk all the way there...
Her father, a Gerrer chosid, Reb. Yitzchok Issac Czarny, dreamed of a greater life in Palestine. He travelled there and helped build up a city called Bnei Brak...unfortunately, he returned to Poland with turberculosis. But he built something in his oldest daughter as well, a life-long love of eretz Yisrael that manifested itself in charity work. My Bobby was a lifelong member of Emunah, a women's organization that helps build and keep up social networks in Eretz Yisrael by maintaining orphanages, group homes and schools.
My grandmother was only 13 years old when her shtetl was bombed. Her father was killed in the bombing and her mother from illness shortly thereafter. That left her as the caretaker of all her younger siblings. They were forced to live in a ghetto, with the zchus of getting the "least desirable" residence on the outskirts. This enable my grandmother and her aunt Tante Fella (who was 10 years older but as close as a sister) to avoid deportation untill the end of the war, at which point they were put to work as slave laborers in factories near Auschwitz. My mother proudly recounted to me how my grandmother would sleep under the tables there during the night shift!
After the war, Bobby and Tante Fella were displaced in Italy for 2 years. Bobby completed high school at a Polish-launguage institution there.
A passion for education burned in her for her entire life. Upon reaching America, she returned to school to learn English, and after many years of distracting work necessary to support her family, she returned to school--- in her 60's!---to get a college degree. She sent all her 3 children to college, one to grad school and one to med school. She set aside money so that me, my siblings and my cousins could go to school, and was always willing to support our goals towards getting a decent education. She was the typical Jewish grandmother, pushing us not only to "eat, eat" but to "learn, learn"!
I spent a lot of days and nights in her house, listening to her sing lullabies in English, Yiddish and Italian, hearing her views on politics and current events, going to shull and shiurim with her on Shabbos and observing how careful she always was with the mitzvos of caring for others.
She took care of my grandfather untill she was no longer able to. Fiercely independant and intellegent, she insisted on preparing and serving him meals, arranging doctor appointments and Daf Yomi shiurs. My grandfather loved to learn Torah, and my grandmother took great pride in his scholarship.
My father's parents passed before I was born and my mother's mother was the only Grandmother I had the zchus to know. She was a gem in my life, a source of unconditional love and comfort....
and no amount of words can quantify that...
Wow, she sounds like an incredible women.
That was beautiful.
Y'know, I just saw this thread for the first time, said tehillim, and then saw the follow-up post. Oh well. BDE.
mosheshmeal
.
mosheshmeal
.
QUOTE(mosheshmeal @ Aug 14 2006, 06:29 PM) [snapback]626805[/snapback]
Y'know, I just saw this thread for the first time, said tehillim, and then saw the follow-up post. Oh well. BDE.
mosheshmeal
.
Me too.
So sorry Ahava, BDE.
BDE
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