Roots Before Branches

My grandfather was niftar this week. I don’t usually share details about my family but I would like to share a bit about his life.

 

My grandfather was orphaned of his father at age 6 and his mother a few years later when he was whisked away from Vienna on the Kindertransport. My great-grandmother hy”d, who I am named after, was killed at Maly Trostinec, near Minsk, Belarus. My grandfather spent the next few years of his life in an English country town where he was fostered by a non-Jewish family during the evacuation from London. He had his bar mitzvah there, wearing a pair of tefillin his older sister had sent from London. His sister, who was 20 years older than him and had escaped Vienna (after completing a doctorate in English literature at the University of Vienna), became a mother figure to him and ultimately a grandmother figure to my father and his siblings.

 

At about 15, my grandfather’s sister brought him back to London to learn in Rav Schneider’s yeshiva. He learned there until he was in his twenties, a contemporary of the generation’s future gedolim. For the rest of his life, my grandfather spoke as if his life began in yeshiva. It was the foundation of his identity and the source of his strength. My grandfather (a cleanshaven businessman) became a tremendous talmid chochom who gave a Daf Yomi shiur for over 50 years and completed Shas many times.

 

In my grandfather’s twenties, he was sent by his rosh yeshiva to open a yeshiva in Tangiers, Morocco, an international city that swelled with Jewish refugees in the years after the war. In Tangiers he met my great-uncle, my grandmother’s brother from Casablanca, who brought him home to marry my grandmother ybchl”ch. She was two years older than him and a hopelessly “older single” by the standards of her culture. She was also progressive, highly educated and one of the first social workers in Morocco. Their wedding was in the yeshiva in Tangiers. The wedding invitation, which was written in French (the language in which my grandparents usually spoke to each other, although they were fluent in many languages) named my grandmother’s parents on her side and my grandfather’s sister and brother-in-law on his as “parents” of the chosson.

 

After their wedding, my grandparents left Morocco for the United States. They lived in New York for several decades and raised a large and beautiful family (my grandmother had her first child at 31). Eventually they bought an apartment in Yerushalayim where they spent more and more of the year, ultimately selling their house in New York and officially moving to Eretz Yisroel. There they lived for many years, and there my grandmother continues to live ad meah v’esrim. I became much closer with my grandparents after spending a lot of time with them in seminary and visiting them in Eretz Yisroel many times. The last time I was there was the summer before COVID. Each time I left, I knew it might be goodbye, and as it turned out that time really was goodbye to my grandfather.

 

My grandfather was the youngest of four siblings. One brother hy”d was killed in Auschwitz. One brother survived and never married. His sister married and never had children. My grandfather was the family’s continuation. He left behind a large family of his own, children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren. A fine, wonderful, beautiful family (if I may say so).

 

On Tu B’Shvat I listened to a shiur about seeds by Rabbi Moshe Weinberger, which I mentioned here. He spoke about Holocaust survivors. He said that a seed goes to a dark place and disintegrates before it starts to grow. When my grandfather was put on that train out of Vienna, he was a seed being buried in the dirt. A child. An orphan. Many, many years later, at a family simcha, he finally spoke about the pain of never having had the opportunity to do kibud av v’eim.

 

His incredible lifetime is a mussar and a chizuk. It speaks for itself, no need to enumerate the lessons. And I hope that it brings some encouragement to you and lifts up your heart. I know writing this did for me.

 

His holy neshama should have an aliya and we should see techiyas hameisim very soon.