My Queen

My grandmother passed away this week. I’m so grateful I got to visit her this winter. Her health declined after my grandfather passed away – they were one unit after so many years of marriage – we saw this unfolding. I wish I could have spent more time with her in the last few years but COVID got in the way. I was so lucky to have been able to spend time with her when I was in seminary, and on many trips after, and those memories will last forever.

 

My grandmother lived an extraordinary life and I get a lot of comfort from that. She grew up in Casablanca, Morocco to a well-off family, and her life’s dream from childhood was to help the poor. She once told me that as a child she used to imagine buying a big mansion and using it for classes, meals, and activities for poor children. She would play out this daydream with her dolls.

 

My grandmother never talked about her accomplishments but before she got married at 28, she became a nurse and then a social worker. She received a scholarship from the National Council of Jewish Women in the 1940’s and went from Morocco to Tennessee to study social work. My grandmother gave lectures internationally on the state of Jewish poverty in Morocco.

 

My grandmother met my grandfather after the war when he was in Tangiers and was brought home by my grandmother’s brother. Their backgrounds could not have been more different. My grandfather was a war orphan from Vienna who had learned for years in yeshiva in London. My grandmother was an affluent, traditionally observant Moroccan. They were married for 67 years and as long as I knew them, I never questioned how they could have fit together. They were totally a unit.

 

My grandmother learned and grew her whole life. She was the first in her circle to cover her hair. My grandfather gave a Daf Yomi shiur for decades with her support. My grandmother didn’t have so much formal Jewish education, but she always wanted to learn. When she moved to Eretz Yisroel, my grandmother started going to a full morning of shiurim once a week, which she did for 10 years, and had great joy in repeating what she learned.

 

My grandmother worked as a social worker for decades, helping in all kinds of difficult situations involving poverty, neglect, immigration issues, and more. I was too young when she was still working to realize what she did for a living; she was a grandmother. Though she was idealistic, feisty, and visionary in her work life, she didn’t have loud opinions, and she didn’t think she was unusual. I only saw her elegance and formality: plating a slice of almond cake on china, arranging flowers, leaving a note for me in her lacey cursive.

 

The peaceful scene that I (and my friends who joined me) remember from visiting my grandparents’ apartment in Eretz Yisroel is my grandfather learning at the dining room table and my grandmother saying Tehillim. They loved to read, too — gedolim biographies, divrei Torah.

 

My grandmother spoke fluent French, Spanish, English, Arabic, and Hebrew. Her first language was French, and she used to call us granddaughters “ma reine” – my queen – as a term of endearment.

 

Over the past week I’ve tried to capture the little details, all the comforting moments I can in my journal. We knew this day would come, but it’s always too soon.

 

What I would give to visit my grandparents again. My indomitable, immortal grandparents.

 

I spent Shavuos in seminary with my grandparents. My grandmother stayed up later than usual to say Tehillim and she asked me if I was going to stay up to learn. (She was underratedly cool like that). This Shavuos I’ll be”H stay up late to say Tehillim l’ilui nishmasa, and to say thank You for having my grandmother for so long.

 

Thank you so much for reading my tribute to my grandmother a”h, and I wish you a beautiful, meaningful Y”T.