My Bubbe's 7th Yohrtzeit

(My elter-zeide and Bubbe in 1902.)

My grandmother's Yohrtzeit was on 27 Adar, this past Shabbos. With this week being Shabbos Mevorchim, and Chof Zayin Adar to boot, maybe it didn't get the attention it deserved from me.

My Bubbe was born on 27 Adar 5674 (1914) in the town of Sajoszenpeter, Hungary, just outside Miskolc. Her father, pictured above in Tzilinder, frock, and white gloves, was a Talmid of the Shevet Sofer in Pressburg, and received Semichah from him. Her parents married in 1902, and this is the picture they took for that occassion. They traveled to Miskolc, and had their picture taken looking like a royal couple. He was Niftar in 1924, when the Bubbe was only 9 years old. Four years later, after suffering for years, her mother also passed away, and the Bubbe was left alone with her sisters and brother. In other places a Kaylichdige Ye'someh would have found consolation in the movements of the time, or even would have left Yiddishkeit for good, but not her. The Bubbe was raised by her sister, not in Bais Yaakov or Bais Rivkah, attending state schools her whole life, but she put any of today's girls to shame.

She married my Zeide, a local man, in 1942. The Zeide was soon after "inducted" into forced labor for the Hungarian army, and was taken as far as Vitebsk, Belarus, which is where the connection to Chabad probably started. (kidding.) During the war the Bubbe and her husband's sister were taken deep into Poland and were put to work making bombs for the Germans in Leiptzig, among other places. They were prime targets, as allied bombers bombed the dickens out of the German war machine. Miraculously they survived. After the war the Bubbe went to the Tziyun of Reb Levi Yitzchok in Berditchev to pray for the safe return of the Zeide. There she overheard some Jewish soldiers conversing in Hungarian, and asked one of them if he knows anything about other Jewish Hungarian soldiers who may have survived. he did better than that, he told her that her husband went back home, and that she should go there and meet him! My zeide and bubbe were the Unterfihrer for most couples rebuilding their lives after WW2.

Three years later they were on their way to America, first settling in upstate New York, as my zeide got his visa based on the fact that he was a farmer, and then two years later on to Chicago, where the bubbe had a brother living there. Despite her lack of Jewish education, and despite the fact that there many Chassidim and Yeshiva'leit from Europe's finest Yeshivos, there too, the bubbe was the only one who covered her hair at all times. There were others there who were bigger Talmidei Chachomim than the zeide, and who wore fur hats on Shabbos and Yom Tov, but their wives somehow weren't part of their Chassidishkeit. They looked like any other women on the street. I'm proud of that fact. I guess we need to chalk up that fact to her fine Ashkenezishe upbringing, with no Chochmes, just the basics.

Her devotion to G-d and Yiddishkeit never waned. After zeide passed away many years ago she moved to New York to be closer to the only family she had. That's where I saw what an emese Yiddene is like. She lived next door to a shul, and would daven with a minyan three times a day, that's more than I can say for myself. She cared for elderly women younger than her who were disabled by disease, caring for them like she would for her own mother. She fasted on every Yohrtzeit of every single family member, including her parents and her sisters, who perished at Auschwitz, until her dying day, no matter the time of year. Every spare moment was spent uttering words of Tehillim, and reading Tze'enah U'Re'enah (in Hungarian of course :-). The Eybershter was Memaleh her years, and she passed away on her 86th birthday, BeMisas Neshikah on her den couch, waiting for her supper to cook. She was healthy and strong to her last breath. We miss you terribly באבי, even after all these years.

(more to come on the occassion of the zeide's Yohrtzeit, iy"h.)