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Reflections of our Mothers is a labour of love. It is a project that I have thought about for many years, inspired by my

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REFLECTIONS OF OUR MOTHERS

Preface REFLECTIONS OF OUR MOTHERS Reflections of our Mothers is a labour of love. It is a project that I have thought about for many years, inspired by my mother’s life. She had a profound influence on me, my sister, our friends and the many people she touched over the years, especially those involved in the Yiddish theatre. Her story is the last one in this collection. As the years passed, I began to reflect on my life with my mother and my friends’ relationships with their mothers and this is what contributed to my desire to share the stories of these complex, brave and interesting women. Each person who contributed to this project, opened a door - some just a crack and some wide-open… some broke down the door and others stood at the threshold; but in the end we each went through the door and shared a segment of our past. There are many adages telling us to “leave the past and look to the future” and “only to live in the present and close the door on the past”, but a quote in the book Found Treasures (stories by Yiddish writers) says it for us: “Without remembrance there is no continuity!” And so … we remember and we share. E.W.G. 2021

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Preface Names of Contributors A.E. Lily Bomer Degen Alan Degen Rachel Goldberg Marilyn Lyons Anna Fishman Gonshor & Raizel Fishman Candib Chana Broder Simy Pepe Abe Hering Karen Hering Gigi Finkel Dina Gurfinkel Segal Yechiam Vaddai Fred J Mahs Jr. Faigie Stubina Phil Stubina Edna Janco Honey Stollman Moishe Rosenfeld Nurit Grossman Recia Kolker Gordon Saralynn Greenblatt Leah Krolik Goldstein Sandra Van Rompaey Charlotte Trepman Roz Horovitch Cohen Reisha Singerman Forshpan Mette Hvid Harriet Resnick Pearson Ella & Bryna Wasserman Domy Reiter Soifer

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My Mother

By A.E.

The ominous silence about my family’s whereabout during WWII was deliberate. “We will not be defined by the Holocaust” – this was the mantra with which my parents started their new lives in Canada. No signs of depression, anger, grief, longing, outbursts … a happy loving home in a new country, Canada. I was clueless to the horrendous facts of what happened to the families of my mother and father – to the point where it wasn’t until I was a young teenager learning about the Holocaust in a history class, when I came home in disbelief and asked my parents if they knew that in Europe there was a demonic, horrendous war that is called the Holocaust. And the reply was, “Yes, we know.” We never discussed it, I knew and I know to this day almost nothing of what happened to their families. Since it was my parents’ wish, I respected this then as I do now. We had a happy and wonderful life, even though my mother suffered health problems all her life, from what I understood was the result of hiding in damp basement cellars. The doctors didn’t give her many years to live, but she was determined to be around and watch her daughter grow up. Definitely a lioness! One summer in a country camp, on Visitors’ Day, my father, grandmother and aunt came to visit me with parcels and goodies and a letter from my mother… “And why didn’t Mom come?” I asked. My father replied, “She wasn’t feeling well!” And that was that. We had a wonderful time together and not until camp was over and I returned home did I find out that my mother was in the hospital all this time. And that is where she remained until a few months later she passed way z”l. There was no way they were going to ruin “Visitors’ Day for their child! A whole thesaurus would not be enough to describe my mother, a true heroine! Words like loving, devoted, doting, warm-hearted, caring passionate, tender, compassionate, benevolent, loyal – not enough! And with all that they went through, they created a warm, loving Jewish home… and three generations continue their heritage.

My Mother Gittel

By Lily Bomer Degen

My mother Gittel was born in 1918, in Parisaw, Poland, a small town about 50 miles from Warsaw. She was the youngest of 5 children. Her father, Eliezer had two daughters from a previous marriage, Zlata and Bluma and together with my grandmother, Rachel, he had three more children, Moshe, Fraida, and Gittel, my mother. As the youngest child, she was unconditionally loved by all, a factor I believe contributed to her survival during the Holocaust. She was the sole survivor of her biological family The story of my mother’s escape from Warsaw to the Russian occupied zone of Poland, is the stuff of novels. One of the highlights of that escape: The Germans stopped the train and the passengers got off and started running every which way with the Germans shooting in all directions! My mother ran into a field of very dense corn stalks which were taller than her height, and thus her life was saved. Afterwards she wondered, where did these corn stalks come from in the middle of nowhere? This was one of many miracles of how she survived. The other miracles involved people. When my mother was most destitute, people stepped forward to offer their help. She called this ‘mazal’, but also had questions regarding why help always seemed to arrive. My mother was a short, energetic woman, always ready to go and do. She filled her life with people, enjoying their company and their jokes. Her laughter was strong and vibrant and her love for her family was deep and passionate. She immigrated to Canada with our father Noach in 1948; a couple poor in material assets and rich in ambition for their two daughters. During each stage of her life my mother experienced many obstacles, yet somehow found her own way of getting through these difficult times. She struggled, suffered and then decided on a course of action. Once set on this course, she prevailed and eventually overcame most difficulties. Along the way she made friends, had many happy evenings at our house and laughed a lot. Both my sister and I inherited her joy in life and in laughing. It is a gift - a way of accepting what comes and being able to laugh at ourselves. She was always ready to hear a good joke. My mother was a good-natured woman. She usually came home from work in a good mood regardless of how tired she was. She would cook dinner every evening and never expected my sister or me to help with the cooking. As we got older, we would help with the dishes. That was our only task. My sister and I went to a private Hebrew day school, and my mother went to speak to the principal every September in order to ask for a discount for her two daughters. We studied Hebrew half a day and English half a day. Most of the children in the school came from families that were quite well off and my sister and I were part of the minority of immigrant children. My parents were not religious but they were very traditional. We had Friday night dinners together; my mother lit the candles and my father always made Kiddush. My parents bought seats in the synagogue in order to pray during the High Holidays and when my sister and I grew older, they bought seats for us as well. On Pesach, my parents cleaned the house thoroughly, we changed our dishes and the Pesach food order stood by the front door until my mother had made the kitchen kosher for Pesach. My mother worked all night in the kitchen and in the morning, she would cook all the traditional dishes. We grew up in a home filled with love and respect for our Jewish values. We felt that we were the most important people in our parents’ lives - they did it all for us. The shoah cast a dark shadow on our existence throwing us off balance through the terrible losses our parents had endured. However, there was also a lot of joy and laughter. We grew up in a family that nurtured us and gave us a strong base on which to build our young lives.

I was a timid and fearful child, often calling out in the middle of the night, till my mother patiently came to calm my fears and sleep with me till the morning. She did not see this as a problem. I remember dark winter evenings, after my parents had returned from a long day’s work and a long bus ride home, sitting with me at the kitchen table, in order to listen to my complaints about my social life. They always “had my back” and it was only much later that I could recognize the vast reservoirs of love I had been given, enough to contain me for the journey of my life. We learned many things growing up with our mother and thus were able to incorporate into our own homes the Jewish values which included celebrating the holidays, having a kosher home, the value of family life and being interested in each other’s lives. We also learned how to be overanxious, and how to worry obsessively. We also realized that it’s never too late to learn something new - my mother learned to drive and swim when she was seventy. I grew up in a home where I was given unconditional love and acceptance. I left home at the age of 24, never to return, except for visits. Together with my husband Alan, we left for Israel, me pregnant with our first son Yaniv - my parents’ first grandchild. The anger and guilt surrounding this separation (or feeling of betrayal) accompanied us for many years. However, I never could have committed an act of such courage, had I not been standing on the platform of their love and devotion. May their memory be blessed.

My Mother - Sara-Laya

By Allan Degen

My mother, Sara-Laya was born May 15, 1920 in Zamosc, Poland, the fifth child and first daughter to Avraham and Chuma Rozenblat. All told, there were 10 children. Her father owned a butcher shop, which supported the family, but he died at a young age when my mother was under 10 years old. His death forced my grandmother into the business and my mother into the role of raising the younger children. The stories of her early years always mentioned having at least one of her siblings on her hip. My impressions were that life was hard, with never-ending tasks, but that there was usually enough to eat. My mother was engaged and married in 1937 at the early age of 17 through a shiddach that was arranged by her older brothers. She was considered very beautiful at the time – that is zaftic – to the point where my father agreed to marry her without receiving the traditional dowry. With the outbreak of war in 1939, my parents and their entire families moved over to the Russian side of occupied Poland to escape the Germans. From there, they were sent to Siberia to work in labour camps. My mother travelled with her family and my father with his on separate trains. In the last station before Siberia, my mother left the train with her family to wait for my father. Had they not met at this point, it is unlikely that they would have met in Siberia. Siberia was very challenging but it saved their lives. My father worked as a logger and was able to support my mother’s family. One of the stories was that he delivered wood to the bakery and managed to steal breads by hiding them under his coat. This was of utmost importance as bread and potatoes were central to their diets. My mother would take the money/goods my father earned and walk to town – a 10 kilometer walk in sub-zero weather– to the market and barter for food and other items, even when she was pregnant with my sister. Rose was born on a cold day in March 1940. From Siberia, the family migrated to Kazakhstan, where they lived in Jambool. My father traded in horses, and his work took him to Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan as well. The environmental conditions were less harsh than in Siberia and survival was easier. However, a very sad event occurred at this time. My mother gave birth to a son, Moishe, who died during his first year from apparent ‘cradle cap’ that could not be cured. This was very difficult for my mother and the loss was never mentioned as I was growing up. I was told about this tragedy when I was about 15 years old. My mother was pregnant when the family left Kazakhstan to Poland in 1945. I was born in Wroclaw in July 1946, and a little later that year we travelled to Wels, a Displaced Persons refugee camp (lager) in Austria. We lived in long wooden barracks with each family provided with a room. I remember a little green mountain nearby and my family taking walks along a dirt paved road lined with large chestnut trees on each side. My father managed to earn a fair amount of money as a security guard and my mother managed all aspects of the household, especially the financial arrangements. My father trusted my mother fully, called her a ‘baleboste’ and deferred to her in all family decisions. He always boasted about my mother’s beauty, resourcefulness and her cooking. This devotion for my mother started early in their relationship and continued till the end of their lives together.

We arrived in Halifax, Canada, in December 15, 1951 after a long, extremely arduous ship voyage on the SS Nelly from Europe. From there, we travelled by train to Montreal, and were boarders on St. Urbain Street. The owners did not realize that two children were included and demanded that we leave as soon as possible. We moved to St. Cuthbert Street two weeks later. My mother found employment at Tucker’s Live Chickens in Rachel’s Market and continued to work there for some 20 years. Her job was mainly to prepare chickens after feathers were removed. She worked long 12-hour days, standing on her feet under difficult conditions. Chickens became our major dietary item and were prepared in many ways – boiled, chicken burgers, schnitzels, stuffed chicken, stuffed chicken necks (helzel), chopped chicken livers, unhatched eggs and grieben. My father was a seasonal construction worker and worked long hours when work was available. Both had no time for socializing. We moved to Waverly Street in 1955 and then bought our first home, a triplex, at 747A Champagneur Avenue for $13,000 in 1958. We lived in the middle floor and rented out the bottom and top floors. My mother continued working at Tucker’s, but the store moved to Roy Street. Street. It was at this time that my parents sponsored two of my mother’s brothers to immigrate from Poland. Elias came first and then Yoel, each with a wife, son and daughter. They each stayed 2-3 months at our house until they found housing. It was also at this time that my sister got married and then gave birth to my mother’s first grandchild. Rhonda became a very special person in my mother’s life. My mother kept working at Tucker’s and her big outings were on the weekend, when she and my father would spend some time in Val Morin on 15th Avenue. At this time, social life was limited but my mother started meeting with some Zamosc friends. I bought my first car so I was able to pick her up from work whenever possible and also drive her up north. This was important as she would shlep tons of food. My mother was renowned for her culinary skills, and I can still taste her kreplach, gefilte fish, herring, mohn kichelech and 12-egg sponge cake. Delicious meals were served every Sunday during the winter. Lily and I made aliyah in November 1971 and our two sons, Yaniv and Doron, were born in Israel shortly afterwards. My parents visited us in Israel several times, coming for 2-3 months each time, and Lily and I and our sons travelled to Montreal each year, but the separation and long-distance relationship was difficult for my mother. My sister gave birth to three more children, Bryan, Jeffery and Debra, and they gave my mother much pleasure. In 1985, my parents bought a duplex on Kent Avenue, living on the bottom floor, renting out the top floor to a couple, who were also good friends. Sundays were traditionally spent with my mother preparing lunch for my sister, grandchildren and great grandchildren. This gave my mother great joy.

In 1992, my mother was diagnosed with stomach cancer. She underwent surgery and struggled valiantly, but died at home on January 5, 1995 at age 74. My father insisted that my mother remain at home and took care of her till the end. I phoned on the day she died and as I was talking to my father he said, ich mein zee iz shoin nist doo. My mother was tremendously devoted to the family – very supportive, protective and proud. Children, grandchildren and great grandchildren were always first – that is the way I remember her. What a wonderful person she was and how lucky I was that she was my mother.

Mother, Mummy, Judith

by Rachael Hornstein Goldberg writing as Julia Rohatyn with Harriet Hornstein Arnoldi, writing as Jerusha Korim

“Once their mama had gone to the market, Sorele and Mulele went into the woods...” So began the favorite lullaby of our childhood and of our children’s childhood and so we retold and sang it to our grandchildren. (Harriet even sang it to her godchild whose family came from Mexico). Our mother was a storyteller. How can it be so hard to tell a tale about a storyteller? The imagined mixes into the factual, leaving Rachael, a writer, wordless. Our mother, Yudis Korim, grew up in a small shtetl in Lithuania. Dabeik held communities of Jews and Christians who mixed mostly in commerce and drinking and our mother’s family was right in the middle of it. Our grandparents owned a store which sometimes served as a tavern. Yudis was one of nine children, seven of whom ended up in Massachusetts. Two, the original ‘Sorele and Mulele’ aka Sara and Shmuel, immigrated to Palestine, but that’s another story, or as Judith would say, an andere mayse. Storytelling time was the best. Tales of the heifer who was a frequent runaway and loved to slide down the snowbanks with the laughing children. Stories of the local drunk who left his horse and sleigh tied up next to the tavern only to be stolen by the children for a winter sleigh ride. They returned to find the owner had emerged earlier than expected, drunk and raving mad. The children scattered and hid, frightened that he would kill them. Dark mystery stories of the priest’s housekeeper who became pregnant and never had a baby. A relative, Dina di Shlumper (Dina the Slob) lived near the Christian cemetery. She told Yudis, that one night, unable to sleep, she had peeped through the window after she heard the sounds of a procession walking slowly on the gravel path that led to the graveyard. The priest led the procession and he carried a small bundle in his arms. The oldest sisters left the country, one for Israel and one for America. Yudis and her sister, twenty and nineteen years old, followed alone. They traveled by horse and wagon and then by rail to Hamburg and from there, they embarked on the ship that would take them to Boston. There, young Khyene became Jean (who told us on her hundred-and-first birthday that she planned to make big parties only on the round years). Yudis became Julia (a name some of her sisters, nieces and nephews still use; the name Rachael uses as her nom de plume). That was a name that lasted until she came to Palestine in 1936 and met Jacob Hornstein, the young halutz whom she married. Our father called her Judith, the proper English translation of the Hebrew Y’hudit (Y’hudis in Yiddish). Our mother abandoned the name she’d chosen but reclaimed the name of her beautiful, brave (and fierce) biblical namesake. We always thought that it suited her. Judith was more than a storyteller. She studied accounting at the Harvard night school, was our Dad’s partner in their real-estate business, raised three children, and was the hostess at the center of a wide range of friends and family. She, more than anyone else, kept it all together. She always knew what to do, whether if it was removing mustard stains from a baby’s white shirt, knitting the same sweater featured in a magazine, cooking gourmet meals, or convincing us that we could be anyone we wanted to be. Even later, in the depths of Alzheimer’s fear and rage, when there were guests, she mustered up the grace of proper warm hospitality for people that she could not remember. That was our mother. --

My Mum

By Marilyn Lyons

I’ve been asked to write about my mother A sort of biography, So Instead of an essay, or something else, A poem I’ve written - ‘alphabetically’ A is for Adorable B is for Beauty C is for Clever, Courageous and a Cutie D is for Divine, Diligent and Dear, E for Elegant in the clothes she did wear. F is for Flower, Lily was her name, though known as Lilian, the meaning’s the same. G is for Grandchildren, Hannah and Esther made her proud, ‘Such beautiful Girls’ she would tell us out loud. a Grandmother filled with Goodness, Grace and Genuine, H a Heart of gold she is my Heroine. I for Israel her favorite location. As my mother I’m Indebted, she was my Inspiration. J as in Joyful, and a Jewish mother,🤷‍♀‍ K for Kindness which she taught us to have for one another. L is for London where mum was born and raised, M is for Musician her talents did amaze. Music was her passion she taught me all I knew, she also loved to shop, Marks and Spencer to name a few! And of course, M is for Mother, my role Model was Lilian, to all those who knew her she was one in a Million. N is for Nurture, and P is for Peter, her Partner in life since the day he did meet her And P is for Poetry, mum could compose and recite, to her I dedicate this Poem which I hope she would like. Q is for none other than her majesty the Queen she sent my folks a card, the likes you’ve never seen. Hand written by her and delivered in a carriage, for celebrating 65 years of very happy marriage🥂 R for Radiant and Really my Rock. There are things I never asked her - wish I could turn back the clock S is for Simon, my brother and mum’s son. He takes after her, and I take after the other one! He got her character; intelligence and eyes I got dad’s temperament and - and mum’s tuchus and thighs!!!🦵 And then there is Sally, her daughter-in-law; more like a daughter who mum couldn’t love more T for Travel she loved this the most. We did a USA Road Trip from coast to coast.

Mother and daughter Travelling Two months Together An experience I’ll remember for ever and ever. U as in Understanding V Versed in so many things, W A Wonderful Woman, I’m sure she had Wings🧚 Full of Wisdom and Witty, a credit to her sex, Wow now I’ve to think of a word beginning with X Y for Youthful, which brings me to Zee A difficult letter, which won’t get the better of me. Z a Zionist and Zealous, she lived life with such Zest. To me, her Zany daughter, my mum was the best🥇

A POEM BY LILIAN LYONS THE OLD YEAR IS OVER, A NEW YEAR BEGINS, TIME TO REFLECT UPON MY PAST SINS HAVE I ALWAYS BEEN KIND TO THOSE WHO I LOVE HAVE I BEEN CHARITABLE, GIVEN ENOUGH? HAVE I TOLD AN UNNCESSARY LIE, LOST MY TEMPER, NO REASON WHY HAVE I SINCERELY ALWAYS TRIED TO BE COMPLETELY HONEST, NOTHING TO HIDE HAVE I CAUSED ANOTHER’S HEART TO ACHE OVER PROMISES I MADE BUT WAS BOUND TO BREAK? GUILTY TO ALL, AND MANY MORE I FEAR BUT NOW I’VE ATONED AND MY CONSCIENCE IS CLEAR I VOW TO DO BETTER … WHAT MORE COULD I DO SO THIS YEAR I’LL BE …… JUST TOO GOOD TO BE TRUE!! ALTERNATIVE (SERIOUS) I RESOLVE TO DO BETTER THE WHOLE YEAR THROUGH BUT CANNOT OH LORD WITHOUT HELP FROM YOU.

Yentl Rubin Rozenberg Fishman 1912-1984

By Anna Fishman Gonshor & Raizel Fishman Candib

Our Mother, Yentl, was born in Vilna, (Russia, later Poland) to Raizel and Benyomen Rubin on the fifth candle of khanike. She was the youngest of five and the only girl. Her parents were economically well situated and Yentl grew up with a maid in the house. Our grandmother Raizel owned and operated a hardware store and our grandfather, Benyomen was there when he was not “learning”. According to our father, Mordkhe Hersh Fishman, Benyomen had his own kloyz. He was a pious man, but influenced by the Jewish Enlightenment, Haskalah, and provided all his children with a modern education, including post-secondary professional education. Yentl went to one of the acclaimed modern Yiddish schools in Vilna, Di Sonye Gurevitch Shul for girls and later to the world-renowned Yiddish Teachers’ Seminary. By the outbreak of World War 2, our mother had trained as a teacher, had gone to Vienna and received certification in the Montessori Method, as well as having studied to become an RN in the Jewish hospital in Warsaw. There she worked in the operating room. But her real love always was and remained, children. Before the war she also served as an educator in the famous Medem Sanatorium and later became the director of one of the children’s homes (kinder heym) sponsored by the Jewish Labour Bund. She survived the war in Soviet Russia as a “guest” in Stalin’s prisons and then worked as a nurse in the Far East. Our mother loved children and saw herself always as a teacher. We were told by those that knew her then, that as a young child, she would gather the children of the courtyard and organize a “school”. As a young teen, she did the same for the children of families summering at their dachas. In addition, she learned from her mother that being privileged came with responsibilities to those that had less. She grew up in a home that was open to family and others, who could come for food, help and comfort. Years later, in Montreal, Yentl’s own home became the open door to widows, orphans and others less fortunate or lonely, even when we did not have our own home ... Yentl, we were told, would as a child, give away her own new clothes to people on the street. It is not surprising then, that as she got older, her ideals and political sympathies found their home in the Jewish Labour Bund. She remained devoted to those ideals of social justice and a better tomorrow with a firm commitment to modern Jewish identity, through Yiddish language and culture. She brought all of this with her into the classroom and anyone who was privileged to have her as a teacher, whether in Europe or in Di Yidishe Pertz Shul, in Montreal, remembered her all their life. At her funeral, the people spilled out onto the street and the letters we received from around the world, comforted us as we learned more about the incredible person and educator she was. But Yentl was our mother. She was also our teacher, when we were in kindergarten, but for us she was our mother. Yentl was also a very beautiful woman; educated, cultured, intelligent and genteel. She had immaculate taste. She was ahead of her time in being “liberated”, going on her own to conferences, concerts, movies and travel. (Our father adored and respected her, supporting her in every way, picking up parenting duties, food shopping and helping with the housework). Like every survivor, she had a story. Hers is one of incredible heroism, decency, love, loss, great resilience. In fact, it would make a great feature film. How does one see one’s own mother, being a mother oneself? With hindsight, one can criticize or commend, admire or denigrate. Did we, as children, realize how beautiful she was? Did we as children understand how important she was to so many people? Did we know the many loves she had and losses and suffering she endured? Did we appreciate or understand that we were sharing her with so many people? Our mother was a strikingly beautiful woman. The few photos we are lucky enough to have of her as a younger woman, testify to that. She remained beautiful to the end.

I think that my sister and I have, with time, acquired ever more respect and admiration for the person our mother was, even while admitting that some of her parenting left us, as children, sometimes wanting more. She taught us how to embroider, how to mend, how to take responsibility for household tasks, how to take responsibility for each other, but most of all she taught us by example and by word about decency, humanity and compassion. She taught us about being responsible members of family and of society. She taught us about self-respect, dignity and honesty. She taught us about sharing whatever gifts we were given and whatever good fortune we might have. She taught us never, ever, to take anyone or anything for granted. She taught us about beauty and aesthetics. She taught us how to turn a simple wooden shack into a beautiful home. She taught us how to sing when our hearts were not so inclined, and she taught us the importance of telling stories, real and imagined. Was she gushy? Was she a fabulous cook and baker? None of these…, but she was the consummate hostess, the most generous neighbor and friend, opening her home to intelligentsia and plain folk, to close friends and strangers. She insisted on celebrating every birthday and every occasion with a party even if we didn’t necessarily want to. She could turn any day of the week into a holiday. No one entertained like our mother! No one gave of themselves like she did. Why else would there have been people pouring onto the street at her funeral? Why else did we receive letters and phone calls from around the world as news spread of her death? Why else do we still hear from people, who knew her, about how she impacted their lives? Did we ever feel neglected or not loved? NEVER!!!! We knew we were loved every day of our lives. We also knew what was expected of us, and I dare say, that most of the time, we rose to the occasion. Yentl Rubin Rozenberg Fishman, our mother, was a gift. We know it now. We knew it then, but wish we could have recognized it better while she was with us. She left us far too early, at the age of 72 in 1984, with dignity, the way she lived her life. It was Erev Sukkes, she sent us home from her hospital bed in the ICU with a smile and “a gut yontev” and a few hours later, closed her eyes forever. The weather was beautiful all week and we knew that the heavens were rejoicing to receiver her. We miss her more and more as time goes by, as we recognize more and more how extraordinary she was in every way. She lives in us; we recognize some of her in our children. We only regret is that she did not live long enough to see her grandchildren grow and have the naches of each of their accomplishments. In countless ways…her life was a blessing as is her memory.

My Mother – Racjel Lisogurski

By Chana Broder

My mother was a remarkable woman. She was born in Grodzisk, a village in Poland. The nearest town was Siemiatycze, which the Jews called Semiatich. My mother went to a Polish school in the village and a private tutor taught her and her 3 sisters to read Hebrew and to pray. When she grew up, she married my father, who was born in Semiatich, and moved to the town. She was concerned that the young women of the town looked down on her as a country girl. When we escaped from the ghetto the night of November 2, 1942, it was largely due to my mother’s urging. The adults got word that the ghetto was being liquidated the next morning. My mother did not believe the Germans who said that the Jews were being sent to work. She had read Hitler’s book “Mein Kamf” and she knew what his plan for the Jews was. She had argued with her sister-in-law, who said that whatever happens to all the Jews would happen to her and her two daughters. “You will be shot,” she warned my mother. Ï would rather be shot in the back, running away than have a wall behind me,” my mother answered. Because she had been born and raised in the village of Grodzisk, she knew a lot of people in the area and she hoped that one of them would shelter her and her family. The problem was that she did not know where these people lived. We wandered around for several weeks until we found a farmer who was willing to take us into the loft of his barn. It was largely due to my mother’s courage and drive, as well as my uncle’s help, and a good measure of luck that we survived the Holocaust. In 1948 we came to Canada, and my mother worked in a coat factory, sewing by hand those parts of the coat which could not be sewn by machine. She was paid by the piece, so she tried to work as quickly as possible, eating her sandwiches at her work station so as not to waste time going to the lunchroom. Both my parents worked hard and saved every cent. They did not go to restaurants; they did not go away on vacations. Eventually they were able to buy a little house. Material things were very important to them, having lost everything during the war. When I got married and moved out of the house, I urged my mother to stop working. She said, “When you have a baby, I’ll stop working and help you take care of your child.” And so she did. When my daughter, Pnina, was born, my mother took care of Pnina for half a day while I went back to teaching. My mother was a very clever woman with a determined character. She decided to write the story of our life during the Holocaust. She told us that she was taking private lessons in English, but neither my father nor I knew that she was writing her memoirs of the war years as homework for these lessons. Then she took typing lessons so she could type up her manuscript. My family and I moved to Israel in 1972. On one of my parents’ visits, my mother said to me, “You know, I wrote a book”, and she presented me with a stack of typed pages. I was totally flabbergasted. Eventually, we had the memoir published privately and we sent the booklet to universities, schools and libraries. We also gave the book to all our relatives and friends. I wrote about my life after the Holocaust and recently, the Azrieli Foundation published my mother’s memoir and mine in one volume. I wish my mother could have lived to see this. For many years I tried to get my parents to come on Aliya, but I did not succeed. My father became nearly blind as a result of diabetes. Eventually, they bought a condo in Tel Aviv, quite close to my house. The plan was for my parents to retire to Israel, but my father died suddenly of a heart attack. Three years later, my mother came to Israel. She lived in her condo and met a group of women of her age who played cards twice a week. My mother was not interested in the cards, but she enjoyed the company. She lived another 13 years in Israel.

My mother and I had a very close relationship. During the 13 years that I lived in Israel and she lived in Canada, two letters crossed the Atlantic every week. One letter went from Montreal to Tel Aviv and the other one from Tel Aviv to Montreal, both of them in Yiddish. My children and I spent almost every summer in my parents’ house in Montreal and Tashie, my husband, came for his vacation. My mother loved entertaining. Her freezer was always full of home-baked cookies, so if anyone should drop in, she had what to serve. In Montreal, she belonged to a group in Pioneer Women (today Naámat) and she enjoyed hosting meetings and teas. That was aside from her sisters and brothers who came over in the evenings and partook of her goodies. She was a devoted mother and a loving grandmother. I remind myself frequently of the things she used to say. I think of her often and I miss her.

My Mami

By Simy Peppi

After a week thinking about this project, I came to the conclusion that it’s impossible in one page of words to tell about my mom! All mothers are specials and they all have different stories witch each one of their children. A short introduction: My mother “my mami” had me when she was 19 years old in Be’er Sheva, my parents were living in a Kibbutz nearby. When I was 6 months I had polio (the epidemic of 53/54) and after living in Ramat Gan for 6 years we moved to Brazil so my father could make “a lot of money” for my care and all the family. Before I get to the stories, I must mention that the first time I heard the word disabled was when I arrived in Israel at age 24. So let’s tell some … I was 8 years old and had many friends (I always had a lot) who went to ballet school and of course I wanted to go also. Not a problem for my mother. I was enrolled right away and on the day of “the presentation” I was the perfect “pole” for my friends to lean on my arm. My mother had me “training” every day to be able to stand for 10 minutes and offer my arm for my friends to do their Plié. I was a success! When I was 12 years old, I finally got to go to a two-day “Carnival ball” for children ages between 8 and 13 and of course I went dressed up as Cinderella (my mother told me I was named princess Esther ...) wearing a half mask so nobody could recognize me! Of course I asked my mother, “How come they recognized me the moment I arrived?” And my mother said it was a very easy explanation - because of my smile (it’s true that I always smiled a lot). So, on the second day she offered to have a box done to cover my face but then I wouldn’t need to use her makeup. No way I was going to let the opportunity of wearing my mon’s make up pass - so this was not an option. The other suggestion was that I shouldn’t smile until later ...Of course it was out of question! I could never stop smiling. And that was it. Everybody knew me as soon I got anywhere because of my smile and all was well. At my sweet sixteen party I was finely kissed by my boyfriend (remember we are talking some 50 years ago) and at the end of the party I went over to my mami and told her that it was disgusting and I never wanted to be kissed by another boy. I remember her smile when she told me that I would experience many more “disgusting” things in the future but it was ok for me not to repeat the “bad experience” again for now ... Thinking about it later she must have been happy that her girl wasn’t going around kissing boys at 16! Just to be clear I wasn’t stupid and by then I knew I had polio (I had many operations, treatments, etc.) and couldn’t run or do many things but in the grand scheme of things I was a girl like all the others. And yes, she was always my best friend and beautiful and all my friends were in love with her because she was not like their mothers - she was young and they had a blast with her and would even invite her to our parties because shea danced the rock n’ roll and the twist like no other. At that time I would not let her, of course). Until the day she passed away all my friends loved her and took care of her even with me being in Israel and she in Brazil. She came very often to Israel to visit my sister and me and needless to say, all my Israeli friends fell in love with her!

She was not Superwoman - she didn’t like to cook (but her food was wonderful and my father never agreed to hire a cook because he only ate what she made) but she was the most smiling and funny and intelligent mom ever. I could write a book of our stories after the 18th birthday until my 60th, one and all of them would show what a strong and loving mon she was and I am sure you all had also the best moms ever. Miss her!

Dora Hering nee Mincer

By Abe Hering

My children’s generation who grew up in Edmonton, Canada cannot imagine the kind of lifestyle our parents experienced in the early days living in a small shtetl in Poland. In my mother’s town, Tomaszow Lubelski, out of a population of 5000 there were 4000 Jewish people. And yet, separation of Jews and Catholic Poles was very significant. Overt antisemitism that was experienced by all, etched scars in every human. My mother was one of the lucky ones who left the town at a young age and about 1933, when she was around 19 years old she moved to Israel, then Palestine. She spoke Yiddish, Polish and German. In the 1930’s there was frequent interaction with the Arab population and she acquired a good knowledge of Arabic as well as Hebrew. There is a worldly wisdom acquired by growing up in antisemitic Poland (and subsequently by hostile Arab neighbours). However, she was a risk taker and confident in her manners and interaction with others and always stood up for herself. She once told me of an incident about what happened in their home town in Poland: She was with her father when a police officer stopped them and was being hostile towards her father (which was not unusual in those days). She stood up to him and brashly rebuked him for his behaviour and he retorted: “You’re a very brass, brave little girl, aren’t you!” to which she replied, “Well, how would YOU react if someone was being rude to your father?” The struggles of poverty and the realities of survival in Poland as well as life during the early days of Israel’s liberation during 1947-1948 era including the War, framed parts of her personality that are so difficult to explain. She was independent and tough and I used to say she ate nails for breakfast. She was a very dominant woman who did not keep friends for a long time and could only sustain a union with a very meek man- my dad! Whenever my father and others would shy away from a confrontation she would say in Yiddish “zai nisht a goiles Yid). To the Israelis the Jew of the Diaspora was weak and that is what she was accusing him of - she would accuse others of being weak. In the early 1950’s, life was very difficult in Israel and my father’s sister in Montreal, who survived the war in Russia, convinced them to come to Canada. So, with two children in tow, they packed up their bags and once again the struggle for survival continued, with the need to adapt to a new place, a foreign language, economy, etc. We lived in a rented flat and to make ends meet, we took in four renters who occupied two rooms in our apartment – So we were eight people with one bathroom and sharing the kitchen including the fridge (each having a shelf to keep their own food). To provide for the family my mother joined the “work forces in the sweat shops”! Working in the clothing industry in Montreal when she was in her 40’s with 4 mouths to feed was a challenging task. However, my mother and I would spend hours talking late into the night as she cooked and sewed and her wisdom of the world slowly penetrated my soul through her stories, thoughts and ideas that were etched in her personality as a result of the various difficulties she experienced. I was starting to understand. Our whole world consisted of the remnants of the survivors of the Holocaust who were starting a new life carrying with them the psychological and emotional baggage of their earlier lives. She constantly put pressure on all of us to appreciate the plentifulness that was deprived to her in her youth – the opportunities, the food, the clothes, the safety, the peace which she and others never had and which we took for granted. Being able to make your child a sandwich for lunch with real butter was a conscious process; being able to buy her child a pair of shoes was a joy to her which is impossible to describe. These memories of her emotional and psychological strength in confronting all situations will be with me forever. When she was 76 years old, unknown to me, the building where she lived burnt down! Although I talked to her each week, she never told me about the catastrophe. One day a friend from Montreal called me and asked how was my mother doing since her placed burned down!? I was shocked and called her immediately at which point she admitted to living with a friend but assured me I didn’t have to worry; she’ll have the placed fixed up in no time.

Needless to say, I immediately flew to Montreal only to discover an uninhabitable building which needed to be bulldozed to the ground. I packed her whole life up in about 10 boxes and moved her to Edmonton. So here she was at 76, starting all over again. We set her up in a lovely flat which I furnished to her taste… and once again she had to adjust to a new environment and meeting new people. She was nevertheless as independent as one could imagine, dealing with anything and all without disclosing her struggles to me or ever asking for help, but did find the peace and quiet she never had before. She did the best she could, carrying her burdens with her till the end. Still living on her own in her own apartment, when she was 94 years old, she fell and was badly bruised so that she could not be independent and thus needed help. One day I called to see how she was doing and there was no answer. I rushed to her apartment, the door was double locked and we had to break down the door… She had taken over 100 sleeping pills! We rushed her to the hospital where she slept for three days and woke up extremely annoyed why we “saved her”. She did not want to live unless she could be independent. She passed away peacefully three months short of her 95th birthday.

Sara Uretsky Nee Sheckter

By Karen Hering

My mother was a mediator – unlike many of the members in her family, she was never ‘broiges’ with anyone (except maybe her mother-in-law). She was born in Vegreville Alberta, the 4th of 10 children, to parents who had arrived to Canada from eastern Europe, each on their own, when they were a mere 14-15 years old. My mother, one of 4 sisters, was considered the hearty one and was required to work in the family bakery before school each morning and often after school. The other sisters were either too young, too feminine or otherwise occupied. My mother was an athlete and loved to play basketball when she was young. Her father did not allow her to play with the Edmonton Grads as that required travel and regular practices, but when she could, she would often practice with them. She later coached my brothers’ Jewish basketball team in St. Catharines before becoming unwell. I do remember once being on the floor with her while she challenged me to copy gymnastic poses she did. Sara was a nurturer, a go-getter and very down-to-earth. My uncles told stories of her saving some money and taking her 3 or 4 youngest siblings to Seba Beach for a week one summer, the first vacation they’d ever had. She made friends with people from all walks of life and I never knew growing up, who I might find visiting her, or, on which neighbour’s front porch she might be sitting, when I arrived home from school. She never put on airs and mixed in many circles. Both she and my brother collected stamps, so a regular family activity initiated by my mother, was to drive to the Welland Canal, call out to the sailors on the foreign ships in the locks and ask them for the stamps off their mail from home. When the sailors were responsive and had time, we would often take one in our car and drive to Niagara Falls to show them one of the Seven Wonders of the World. Sometimes she would even give them our address and they would mail postcards from along the way or when they got home. Every 2nd or 3rd summer, we would take the train to Edmonton to visit our extended family for a month or so. My brothers would stay with my grandmother Uretsky and the girls would stay at my mother’s parents’ house on 88th Street. My father would come for the last week or two and join my brothers. A few summers, it included time at Radium Hot springs, either in a fifty-foot trailer or at the Lido Motel. Family was very important to my mother, as were friends and I think it was very hard for her to be several thousand miles from her family. It was during these times that my mother’s smile, laughter and sense of humour would shine through. Among some good memories from St. Catharines, are the picnics of egg, tuna and salmon sandwiches with carrot and celery sticks she packed where we (along with 3-4 other families) would spend an afternoon at Queenston Heights or Niagara-on-the-lake; the costumed Hallowe’en parties she made for my birthday replete with fancy cakes she decorated herself, hand-made icing roses, leaves and all; allowing me to set up her mahjong table, put out the candies and watch the first few games. And the wonderful big seders and festival dinners she would prepare filled with guests and laughter - an annual event was bringing the huge barrel filled with Passover dishes up from the basement after which we would all take part in washing and drying them, covering the counters with newspapers and preparing for Passover. She was extremely hospitable and made sure stray people were invited to our table for holidays. Friday night was pretty traditional at our house – it always began with my mother preparing a Shabbat meal: chicken soup, chicken, brisket, kugel, roast potatoes, helzel, apple and lemon meringue pie. On holidays she added gefilte fish and chopped liver, white radish and mashed egg as a forshpies. Every Friday afternoon she wrote a letter in Yiddish to her parents in Edmonton, then she lit candles and Shabbat began.

We were not allowed to do any more work which meant no writing, cutting, cooking, doing homework, or driving unless necessary. We all became good cribbage and solitaire players as we could keep score without writing. Saturday lunch was always leftovers from Friday night after a morning at shul. As my mother’s health declined and my father commuted to Toronto for work, more responsibility fell on me, as the oldest daughter and my brother – the more obedient son. Staying up late to help her kosher the meat, clean chickens and chicken feet, make helzel, peel apples for pie, make chocolate chip cookies, or stir the lemon curd for meringue pie, were considered a treat; as was helping her can pickles, peaches and cherries for our cold room. My brother was charged with grass cutting, hedge clipping and grocery shopping. When she couldn’t do much physically, her attention turned to making dozens and dozens of aprons for the Hadassah bazaar – each one unique with a little cross-stitch design, embroidery or applique to decorate them. She also made many of our clothes and even my high school graduation dress years later. But we never knew when a heart attack might put her in the hospital and she could be there for a month or more at a time. Life in our household was walking on eggshells – we were afraid to upset her lest she have a heart attack and land in hospital. Yet my mother was a very dutiful daughter and many a winter my grandfather insisted she come for a month or two to Florida or Elsinore to “have a vacation” (which we later found out, was to cook and clean for her parents); she went, unlike her sisters, whose husbands refused to allow it. Her health continued to decline and, as the frustration with her inability to do much increased, she became very demanding. I think in many ways she tried to live vicariously through us, though I was not mature enough to understood this when I was young. She was something of a perfectionist, never satisfied if we came second in school standings or in sports. Why did we lose 3 marks or let someone in the city championships beat us? She once was adamant that my sister continues to compete in the school track meet with one arm hanging askew, only later to go to the doctor, find it broken and have it casted. But there would be the occasional glimpse of the vitality and warmth of her old self, like when our university repertory company of 18-20 dancers came to Vancouver for several shows – she had mattresses and beds made up for every dancer along with a deli feast awaiting us when we arrived. Or when we moved to Vancouver just before my 16th birthday and “found” friends for me to have a small sweet sixteen party. But the exertion was often too much for her and she would spend many a day not moving from the couch. My mother died when she was fifty-two and I was twenty, and unfortunately, I never had the opportunity to have adult conversations with her, understand her pain and frustration, establish a real friendship with her or express my gratitude for the hard work ethic, love of family and family gatherings, love of Judaism and Israel, and acceptance of others, that she fostered in me.

My Mother

By Gigi Finkel

One of my mother’s favorite mantras, which she seemed to enjoy throwing at people’s face, often left them stunned: “A mother? You can buy one on the street!”. Nobody knew that her own mother had never been much of a mother, or a grandmother for that matter. This Yiddish-speaking grandmother, the only one I knew (the other one was sent back from Paris to Poland and exterminated at Maidanek in 1943), arrived in Paris in 1926 from Krashnik in Eastern Poland with her 7-year old daughter after crossing a large part of Europe. She was planning to reach the goldeneh medineh where her elder sister was living, but by then America had closed its gates. Her younger sister had already settled in Paris, and no sooner had she arrived than she dropped off her daughter at her place. My mother was brought up by her aunt, who worshipped her son and cared much less about her own daughter, never mind her niece. To spite her, she didn’t hesitate and went to live with my father after he came back from Germany where he had survived the war as a French prisoner. Her aunt’s warning: “he will make you pregnant and leave you!” didn’t stop her. Ironically, she didn’t know that she would need treatment to become pregnant a few years later. Only when I was three years old, and my mother was pregnant with my brother, did my parents officially get married. She became a real balebuste, getting up early to bring us fresh baguette from the bakery across the street for breakfast every day, going to the market 5 mornings a week to make sure a freshly cooked lunch was ready the minute my brother and I came in from school and my father from work for our mid-day break, and managed an impeccable home. From an early age I knew it wasn’t the life I wanted for myself. My mother made sure we would enjoy what she herself had been deprived of: swimming lessons at a young age, driving license at 18, a good education, all this accompanied by another mantra: “if you marry a goy, you won’t set foot in the house ever again”. We were a totally secular family, did not celebrate the Jewish holidays and did not fast on Yom Kippur, though we didn’t go to school on that day. My brother answered my parents’ expectations and married a proper Ashkenazi woman, in a typical Jewish wedding at a traditional synagogue, where women and men sat divided along the central aisle. When I decided to go and live in Israel at the age of 21, they gave me their full backing. In France dangers lurked: I could marry a goy or become a hippie or a leftist, like one of our neighbors. At least there I would marry a Jew! But time went by, with no husband in sight. On my 28th birthday my mother called to tell me that I had very little time left and I should seriously look for one, for even if I divorced at least somebody would have wanted me. Her words only added to my confusion. I never formally came out to her. But when I became a militant feminist, she watched my transformation, and noticed that men had disappeared from my life. She expressed her disapproval by constantly throwing critical remarks about my looks, my hair, my clothes, my friends. Frozen and unable to react, I remained silent most of the time. The distance between us kept growing. It reached its peak shortly before my 40th birthday, when I fell in love with M., a woman from Quebec. A professor of sociology, M. was not Jewish but had always dreamt of volunteering on a kibbutz. She took advantage of a sabbatical year to fulfill her dream and came to Israel for a few months from France, her base during that year. It was lust at first sight. After she spent time with me in Tel Aviv, we decided we would meet in Paris. For the first time I did not stay at my parents’ but we stayed in the empty studio of a friend of mine. When I called my mother to ask her when my friend and I could visit, she, who always bragged about her permanently open door, suddenly made all kinds of excuses: “I am busy, I won’t be home, I have things to do”. In shock I understood she refused to see her. M. was putting pressure on me, adding to my frustration: “tell her to go to hell”. I went to see my parents without her. My brother and sister-in-law welcomed us warmly. On the day I flew back to Tel Aviv, the whole family drove me to the airport, where I met one of my closest friends from Tel Aviv, who was booked on the same flight. During our stay in Paris, we hadn’t had a chance to have a private conversation. Her mother, and mine whenever I used the phone at my parents’, would listen to our conversations and interfere without any inhibitions. We were almost 40 and were treated like little girls. During the flight, we had plenty of time to catch up and she could finally tell me about a phone conversation she had had with my mother. I had given her the green light to answer her questions, a series of stereotypes:

Who is this woman? Exactly what you think. Is she Jewish? She’s probably after Gigi’s money. What money? As a university professor in Canada, she makes more money than her. I’ll never accept it. This conversation between us never took place. I’ll do what I want. My loyalty goes to Gigi. My friend stood up for me. Furious at my mother, I took my distance from her for a while, which was easy as my father was the one who wrote letters. About 12 years later, I noticed a change in her attitude but couldn’t put my finger on it. One day it dawned on me: she had stopped criticizing me. No more negative remarks about things I said or did. The last years of her life, my father already dead for some years, she struggled with health issues, and I spent more time with her, so that my brother could take a break from caring for her when he had time. The change took an unexpected positive turn, and she sent me messages through other people. One morning I heard her tell the nurse who came twice a day to check on her (for free, courtesy of the French health care system) about her support for her gay hairdresser in his dealing with his mother. When the openly gay mayor of Paris was stabbed by a homophobe, she declared that everyone had the right to live the way they wanted. I finally understood how difficult my coming out had been for her. It had been hard for me, how could I have expected it to be easy for her? In the end she accepted me. We had closed the circle, and when she died my heart was at peace.

My Mother

By Dina Gurfinkel Segal

My mother, Mina Schalminis Gurfinkel born in Latvia, was the middle of three children. She was educated in German since it was the working language there at that time. Her home life for the most part, was a comfortable one. In 1940, the Soviet Union annexed the Baltic states through a pact they had made with Germany. But life changed little for Mina. She still worked at a fine lady’s wear factory and lived with her beloved family. Mina’s work was much appreciated and so she was permitted to go on a short holiday. She determined to go near the end of June when the weather was best. Mina packed a small suitcase and bade her family goodbye, not realizing that she would never see or hear from any of her family again. By 1945 they had all been murdered by the Nazis, including brother, killed just six weeks before his group was liberated. Days after she arrived in the remote holiday town, the Nazis invaded Latvia, and on June 22, 1941, Mina’s life was irrevocably changed. She had planned just to leave her home and family for a month and now she was forced to rely on her own resources - escaping into a country where she knew no one and didn’t speak the language but Mina had a pleasant way about her and people were drawn to her. Luckily many offered different kinds of help to the tall, attractive young woman. Various dangerous adventures over the next few war years finally brought her across the continent to a Jewish community in Dzhambul, Kazakhstan, where she met and eventually married her lifelong partner-Chaim, my father. In 1945 everyone was trying to get out of the USSR and it was through Mina’s ingenuity that they were able to obtain exit visas without paying any high bribes. She claimed to be a German national and because of the way she spoke, they were able to go to the American zone in a Displaced Persons camp in Germany. There my brother was born in March of ‘47. Waiting to come to Canada until November of ‘48 was another test of her all resources. My parents were both sole survivors of their families. There were no relations to help or advise the immigrants in their new home in Montreal. Although they both spoke multiple languages, neither French nor English was among them. While Chaim worked all day as a designer in a factory, my mother was left to deal with all other aspects of our lives. Even though she was most probably dealing with depression at the loss of all of her family and everything she had known growing up, my mother constructed a warm nurturing home for us all. When my brother and I were little, there wasn’t any surplus money for luxuries like art classes for Mina, so she brought out her creative artistry in many tiny ways. I remember that when it was time to unwrap a new pound of butter, I would watch, enchanted as she drew onto a simple block of food, an engraving of a little house, complete with chimney. I also was the beneficiary of many beautiful crocheted, knitted and sewn clothing made by her talented hands. In fact, there were a number of friends with younger children who would ask her for my hand me downs. When I was five years old, my father became gravely ill with pleurisy, a serious lung infection which caused him to be hospitalized several months. Our family had been in Canada for only 5years and had not had the opportunity to amass much of a nest egg and now with my father sick and there was no money coming in. These were the days before unemployment insurance. Things were very difficult. Once again, it fell to Mina and her organizational skills to hold the family together. Even though it was quite expensive, my brother and I continued to go to the Jewish Peretz School because Jewish education was an extremely important value in our home.

I remember coming home one afternoon during these days and seeing an unfamiliar young woman in our kitchen, preparing some food. I was quite shocked seeing her until she explained that she would be our boarder. To make room for her, my mother had moved their bed into the living room and my brother and I were to share the master bedroom. It helped with the rent and the boarder was very pleasant. But the big bonus for me was that she brought home a cocker spaniel puppy. I was in heaven, but unfortunately the puppy wasn’t well and she had to let it go. Although Mina was familiar with many languages, English wasn’t initially one of them and because she had 2 young children, going to ESL classes were out of the question. Plus, most of the people in her world spoke Yiddish or a European language with her. She learned English by listening to the CBC radio and taught her self to read both fiction and non fiction books on such topics as on nutrition which was very Important to her. Because she had been starving during the war, Mina was very concerned with providing her family with healthy food. She was also fantastic cook who would make everything from scratch. Although she didn’t have a chance for formal education, Mina was very intelligent and she was welcomed in book clubs with women who had university educations. Mina was also instrumental in forming a Cancer Research chapter to honour one of her close friends who died of that terrible disease. Mina would write poems in Yiddish on the anniversary of that friend’s death and read it to the group. As the children grew older, Mina took the opportunity to join forces with a former occupational therapist who open a very high-end yarn store in her home in Cote St. Luc, not far from Mina’s place. Women would buy expensive yarn and receive instructions to make fancy dresses and then would bring the pieces back for finishing. Sometimes the client was a good knitter and the pieces would go together easily but often as not and the ‘finished’ pieces left a lot to be desired. Here it was that Mina’s magic came into play. She would piece together what she had to work with and with her amazing skill, she would produce a perfectly fitting garment that was a piece of art, time and time again. Her friends would refer to her as having “Goldened Hent” Golden Hands. Mina would also volunteer with the Golden Agers, a senior’s group in Montreal. She was a great believer in giving back. I remember that as well as having a Pooshke a JNF box, she would have a little jar under the kitchen sink and for years they would always drop a few coins into it and once or two a year she would send the proceeds to the Jewish Girls Orphans’ Home in Jerusalem. And they in turn would send us a Haggadah or a Jewish Calendar. It was also around this time that Mina joining the Saiyde Bronfman Centre in their art department. There she made sculptures in soapstone, and other media and experimented painting with oils and watercolours. It gave her a great deal of joy to finally have a chance to expand her artistic skills. A big decision had to be made in 1975. My husband and I had returned from living in England and settled in Toronto and my brother’s job was also transferring him there. Much as my parents regarded Montreal as their home since 1949 and their close friends as family, the pull of having children and future generations in the same city was too great to ignore. My father quickly found work in his field but the move was very hard on Mina. The loss of the friends of the past 20+ years were impossible to replace. She eagerly waited for Sunday, when the telephone rates were lower and she could connect with her ‘Montreal’ side. Eventually, through an old friend from back home, my parents developed a small circle that they enjoyed, but nothing replaced the group in Montreal.

Eventually, the grandchildren came along and Mina and her husband started vacationing in Florida in the winter where they would reconnect with old friends. As much as Mina enjoyed being creative in all forms, her greatest joy was having her family all together for holidays and Friday night suppers. Spending time with her grandchildren was also a thrill. Especially Janna, her only granddaughter and the only one for 6 years. They had a special bond. Janna was also endowed with artistic abilities and Mina was very proud of Janna’s achievements when she graduated with a bachelor’s in Fine Arts. Although Mina reached the old age of 90, her last 4 to 3 years consisted of a gradual decline both physically and sadly mentally. She lost my father, Chaim, in March of ‘92 and spent many years without him. She moved out of their apartment and into a Jewish retirement facility. Mina enjoyed living there until she started having lapses in her memory and asked me to find her alternate accommodation. I found a brand-new nursing home quite near to me. To help look after her, I hired a Russian Jewish lady to spend afternoons with her. Although many things that had just happened were gone from her mind, Mina had no trouble speaking Russian, a language that she spoke years ago, with her lady. Our family made a small 90th celebration for Mina. She couldn’t quite believe that she was that old, but she told my husband that she felt very tired. Five days later, with family around and while lying in my arms, on august 23, 2006, she slowly and gracefully slipped away from us.

Esther Rivlin Vaddai

By Yechiam Vaddai

Tracing their lineage back to the 1800’s in Austria, the Rivlin clan is scattered today throughout the world. The first Rivlin immigrated to Jerusalem in the early 1800’s and the Rivlin family is now one of the oldest and largest Ashkenazi families in Israel. With many prominent Rivlins living in Israel, the name conjures up an almost royal image!! Our mother, Esther Rivlin Vaddai is the 7th generation born in Jerusalem. The president of Israel, Reuven Rivlin is her 2nd cousin and as children they were very close whilst growing up in the Nachalot area of Jerusalem. Our mother, Esther, could have been the star of a real-life “West Side Story” having fallen in love with Yehuda Vaddai, a young, handsome, daredevil Yemenite immigrant. Because marriages between Ashkenazi and Sephardi were almost unheard of, the young loving couple planned to elope … but in the end the Rivlin family stood behind them and so Esther and Yehuda tied the knot in a small quiet ceremony. Although from two different worlds the Rivlins and Vaddais found a common language and respected each other. Esther was a strong-headed, feisty, young lady and very little changed as she got older… Age didn’t stop her from doing anything she wanted as the decades flew by. As a young mother, she had her hands full bringing up 3 boisterous children while fulfilling all the home-maker’s chores … doing laundry with a washer-woman, overnight baking the cholent in the community oven, preparing gefilte fish with the fish that swam in our bathtub for a week before (no baths for us children for that whole week!) or making specialty foods for all the holidays. Lest one think that there was no time for fun …. The young couple never missed out on any social event; including evenings of social dancing, card games and family outings. Our greatest thrill was touring throughout Israel with our father (who was one of the first private-car English-speaking guides!) Our mother loved Israel and she loved life. She was happy to donate any time she had as a volunteer with “older people” … as she never considered herself “OLD”! We were very fortunate that the grandchildren as well as great grandchildren had the opportunity to meet, chat and spend time with Esther… and we are so lucky to have vivid memories and great stories to share.

My Mom

By Fred J. Maahs, Jr

When I think about my mom, I can actually remember things all the way back to when I was really young - probably two or three years old. I remember driving in my mom’s car, an old '55 Ford at the time. She got it from my uncle. She would always play Motown on the radio, and my younger brother and I would be standing on the backseat, because there were no seatbelts back then, and dance to the music. That’s probably where my love of music, especially Oldies and Motown, started. I still love it to this day. My parents were young when they got married, just 18 years old, and I was born 2 years later. They didn’t have much money at the time and my mother was a stay-at-home mom taking care of my brother and I when he was born a year after me. But somehow, they always managed. When my brother and I were going to grade school, mom would take change out of her purse to give us milk money and would always make our lunches. All through school, my mom would always wake up early to prepare breakfast for my brother and me. She always made sure that we had something to eat before we went to school. The school bus came around seven in the morning which meant an early day for her, but she never complained. My brother and I played sports after school and mom usually picked us up after practice. And she still made sure they didn’t have them prepared. It was on the table by the time my dad got home from work as a builder. After I graduated high school, and just as before starting college, my family and I and some friends were enjoying the last vacation weekend of the summer before I left. During a boating outing, I dove for my dad‘s boat into water that was only a foot deep. I broke my neck and became paralyzed from the chest down. I was airlifted to a hospital in Philadelphia and my parents received a police escort to the hospital from the beach. My injury was especially hard on both parents and my mom kept praying for a miracle for me to walk again. The hospital was 45 minutes from where we lived and every day my parents would come to see me after my dad finished work. After three months of constant travel to the hospital, I told my parents I was OK and that they needed to take a break and I would be OK. The hospital where I was being treated allowed you to check yourself out for the day on the weekends. So, just about every weekend for six months, my parents would arrive early on a Saturday to pick me up to bring me home for the day and turn around and do it all over again on Sunday morning. Mom always made sure that I had really great homecooked meals on Saturday and Sunday, instead of the hospital food that was my staple for seven months. When I was finally discharged from the rehab center, my mom would spend time with me every day as I exercised and tried to maintain my strength. She made sure that I had the right meals and fussed over me even though I asked her not to. About 10 years later, my parents divorced and it was my turn to look out for my mom. Making sure that she was OK, inviting her over for dinner because I finally had my own home, and taking her groceries just to make sure she had food. It was really difficult for her living on her own after so many years of marriage so she started working at a local school with kids that had intellectual and developmental disabilities. In some ways I think she chose that work because of what happened to me. Perhaps it was her way of continuing to help someone with a disability. She always said that she loved those kids. As my mom got older, she lost her family and became more isolated. She did not want to do much, so we would insist that she come over for dinner or maybe just take a ride in the car just so she would get out of the house. When my mom was in the hospital and suffering from a condition that had no good ending, I was able to have some very serious and direct conversations with her. She faced death more bravely than I could have ever imagined, and once again my mother was the strong one for the family.

I often think of my mother and I know that she is at peace and is not suffering anymore. She’s in a better place for many reasons and somehow, I know that she is still watching over my brother and I. Probably smirking when we do something that she may not necessarily approve of, laughing when we do something funny, and hopefully helping us to make the right decisions and be as safe as possible. When I delivered her eulogy at her funeral, I referred to my mom as a superhero. In her own way, the cape she wore was always comforting to us when we got hurt, gave us advice when we needed it or not, and loved us. Fred

Rachel Markowitz Israel

By Faigie Stubina

My mother Rachel Markowitz was born in Lodz Poland, on November 20, 1922, the only daughter to Wolfe and Yehudith Silver. Mom was the middle child with 2 brothers. Both parents came from large families in Lodz. She was particularly close to an aunt who wasn’t much older than her. Mom learned to sew by watching her mother who was a seamstress. Rachel never used a pattern; she learned how to eye it and make it work perfectly. Especially my wedding gown many years later. Artistic talent was in her genes. Her father designed materials. Her older brother Meyer was at a design school when the family escaped to Russia with the help of a friend, who smuggled them across the Polish border. Unfortunately, Meyer never met up with them. She worked in Russia and received her meagre portion of food which she would share with Benjamin her younger brother. He was a growing teenager at the time and was always hungry. Maybe that was where she came up with the expression “ze feilt de nish zi”. You don’t need it. Food was always very incidental to her. She ate to live; she didn’t live to eat. Her boss told her about a blue-eyed blond young man and put her to work in the same area as him. Rachel met her soulmate Chaskel Israel who had also escaped to Russia with his family. Tragically he had also lost an older brother to the Germans. Similarly, his brother’s name was also Meyer Rachel and Chaskel married in 1945 after the war ended and travelled through Europe — definitely not on a leisurely honeymoon. The goal was to get to Israel which was still Palestine at the time. They went from one DP camp to another, had Faigie along the way and eventually arrived in Jaffa-Yaffo Israel in 1949. We lived with her parents and Benjamin who had arrived on their way to Palestine. Life was difficult at that time. There was rationing and housing was not readily available. When the flat in Yaffo was appropriated, while we waited for a house in Kiryat Ono, we were moved to one of many transit camps “ma’abarot” which in our case was a one room tin-roofed shack. Chaskel, a Zionist, loved being part of the new country, however the climate did not agree with Rachel, and so we joined the rest of the Israel family in Montreal in 1952. A year later my sister Zeldie was born and the family had roots. Rachel worked very hard alongside her beloved Chaskel. He would bring her homework every night - linings and coats to finish. They made friends and had a social circle. The extended Israel family would visit on Sunday afternoons My paternal grandparents lived with us for awhile and Rachel mastered certain culinary dishes - gefilte fish - kreplach - apple cake and her own version of roly poly. When I started grade one and brought home a reader, she sat with me and taught herself how to read English. English became her 4th language and she was a voracious reader. The librarians in Cote St Luc knew she would be in weekly to pick up several books. She continued reading throughout her life until the macular degeneration made it impossible to continue. She was the quiet one. He was the social one. They enjoyed life and the family grew. First when Faigie married Phil, then the grandchildren came Ericka & David. She kvelled with pride when they ate her pickle sandwiches on Friday nights before dinner. This was the only way she got them to eat a piece of boiled chicken … her culinary talents had not improved! Zeldie moved to Toronto and met Bernie (and his son Todd) … their children Elyse and Andrew came along and again the family grew. She wasn’t the typical Bubby. She was modern, she was vibrant and devoted to her Chaskel. When he retired, they were always together, on walks, on trips and in Florida for the winters

When he got sick, she kept him going for ten years. She was his nurse. She was his dietitian. They had a game going when she wasn’t looking he would sneak a snack if he could find something to nosh on in the apartment —again “ze feilt de nish zi” After Chaskel passed on, we were all very worried about her. How would she survive? How would she manage on her own in Montreal? Faigie and Phil & kids had moved to Ottawa. Zeldie and Bernie and kids were in Toronto She did survive! She became the arranger. She played cards with her old circle and also met new friends. She became a volunteer on Super Sunday at CJA and she went to the Shalom Club and got others involved. She continued going to Florida and was always ready to go anywhere. When I would call her and ask if she wanted to go shopping with me, she would be downstairs before I had even hung up the phone. For years mom yearned to go back to Israel to visit family and her parents’ gravesites. She would say her desire was to go back at least once. She managed to go six more times. And the smile - always the smile on her face when she saw her family. Mickey her nephew would take her on a date when he would visit and she would always check out his hand to see if he had the Markowitz thumb and she would laugh and say yes just like my brother’s and mine. She made the decision to move to Toronto on her own when she felt the time was right. Again, she was always ready to go at a moment’s notice. She enjoyed her new life at Constantine, a retirement home. She was always the first to sign up for excursions and shows. Many a night the staff would shoo the foursome playing cards to go to bed. This was at 11:30 pm. She continued going to Florida until she was 91, spending her days with Elizabeth her Florida caregiver, playing Rummy Cube during the day and gin rummy at night. This was her “happy place” Unfortunately, we noticed signs of forgetfulness. She knew how to cover up but the signs were there. She still had that marvellous smile that would light up her face. When we would come visit her with the great grandchildren it was a treat for all of us. We would love seeing her eyes light up when she saw Caryn, Taylor, Lucas and Benji. They were the jewels in her crown Rachel was the last survivor of her era in both the Markowitz and Israel families. She passed away on December 4, 2018. She had just celebrated her 96th birthday. She loved, was loved and left us with wonderful memories

Mom

By Phil Stubina

MOM (with love and affection) A warm beautiful smile, a heart of gold and always willing to help others. Mom was born in Montreal (1914) into a family with little means. There were seven girls (Dinah, Rose, Dorothy, Ruth, Mary, Lily (mom), Ida and two boys, Morris and Louis. As a teenager, while babysitting, there was a power failure. To find out what time to feed the baby, Lily dialed the wrong number. That is how Mom met Dad and so our story begins. Lily Silverman (Mom) married Wilfred Stubina (Dad) in 1930. She was 15 years old and he was 29 years old (1901). By the time Mom was 21, she had given birth to three children: Beatrice, Ethel and Harry. Despite having her tubes tied, seven years later two more children were born: Philip (me, 1942) and Fagie (1944). When first married, Mom went from being poor to being very poor. Mom and Dad lived down a laneway in what she described to us as a shack. At first, work was not always available for Dad. When Dad was able to work the hours were long. This left Mom to attend to the family on her own. As a stay-at-home mom (how else with five children to care for), Mom somehow managed to raise the five of us without additional outside help. My younger sister, Fagie, and I remember growing up in a warm and welcoming home with some amenities: a thirdfloor walk-up apartment with outside wooden stairs, one bathroom with a small window (why?), one toilet with a pull chain flush, a coal stove, an icebox, one wall telephone with a party line (which we would listen to when no one was around), floors covered with linoleum and a radio. In our younger years, Mom somehow managed without a fridge, air conditioning, microwave, washer, dryer, shower, television, automobile, mix-master or toaster oven! Mom washed the clothes with a scrub board and then hung the clothes outside on a clothesline to dry. Water for baths and showers was heated on the gas stove. Showers were simply heated water poured over our head from a shishel (the water was always too hot!) after the bath. All shopping was done walking in the neighbourhood with these exceptions: Milk and blocks of ice were delivered to our home by horse (Maggy) and wagon; coal for the stove was delivered in large sacks and stored in the coal bin on the back balcony; a farmer would deliver one or two large sacks of potatoes; another farmer delivered boxes of fresh farm eggs (some had double yolks). Mom was able to resell eggs to neighbours in order to earn some extra money. To save money, Mom knit wool gloves, darn socks, mend clothes - all by hand. Our older siblings had sugar sacks for diapers (as the story goes), washed by hand. Mom loved to cook. Mom prepared many foods with a hoch messer and a wooden bowl. In later years she would be sure to make each grandchild’s favourite food. When my wife, Faigie (not my sister, Faigie) would have her hair “done” on Saturday, I would babysit for our children, Ericka (1969) and David (1971). Mom would make bacon and let the children watch cartoons. All of the Yom Tovim were celebrated at our home (the smallest home of all the relatives). Space was at a premium; perhaps this added to the enjoyment. Uncle Harry would bring mom all of his largest live catch of fish from his fishing trips. The live fish went directly into the bathtub. This meant no baths until Mom cleaned and cooked the fish.

Mom always wore an apron. I loved to tease her by pulling on the apron strings. She would laugh each time and tell me not to do it again. Mom’s exceptional character was evident by making us believe that she did not like eating steak. It was only when we were older did we realize this little white lie was simply another money saver. Mom’s pastimes were listening to the radio and playing cards (solitaire, bridge, canasta and gin rummy). Travelling was generally to her married children and family where she would babysit and cook while Dad would fix things. Mom’s favourite treats were Chinese food, Dairy Queen banana splits and my wife’s party sandwiches. Faigie (my wife) and I visited Mom in the hospital on our way to a dinner dance. On June 3, 1978, Mom was sitting up in bed and we joked a little. She asked Faigie if she would make her some party sandwiches when she came home. Little did we know that this visit was our last goodbye to Mom. My mother’s love was always unconditional. Her struggles throughout her life were, unfortunately, abundant. Sadly, both her smoking and her death (much too soon) ended on June 4, 1978. Not since Mom’s passing have I given the time and recalled thoughts of how much Mom is missed. My sister and I shared our memories and I thank those who thought of this exercise. Phil Stubina

08/26/20

Malka Bercover Ginsberg

By Edna Ginsberg Janco

Where shall I start? My Ima, her name indicated exactly who she was. Malke – Malka, this is what she was named. One of 12 siblings, an amazing a family. Born in a cute picturesque shtetl, Jurburkas, Lithuania, not far from Kovno. They all lived in a large home, with a garden, “zigalachs” and chickens in abundance. We went to visit what was left of their home, this “legend” was the well, still painted in green and yellow. Like the other siblings, Ima attended Herzlia school. But different she was. She needed to create things with her hands and thus started to sew, yes, by hand, dance costumes for Yona, one of her sisters, aprons for her mother and sisters. This talent brought her to the ORT school in Kovno. I kept her archival patterns and notes till not long ago, when I decided that it was too precious to keep for myself, with her amazingly gorgeous handwriting, both in Lithuanian and Hebrew, all descriptions of step-by-step pattern making, sewing directions and more, so I donated this treasure, her portfolio, to the Head ORT Office in Tel Aviv. Being an athlete in Maccabi and a member of the Hashomer Hatzair the Zionist bug urged her to go and take part in the Maccabean Games, am not sure, 1932? Perhaps. And it was “just in time” that she, her 3 sisters and one brother went to Israe,l where she met my father, started a family, moving from one apartment to another, all in Tel Aviv. From a very young age, our home was like a beehive. Family and frienda always gathered in our home. Always an excuse to celebrate a holiday or any other event. Our home also turned into a shelter, both “living in” for family that arrived to Israel or neighbors that needed safety while Tel Aviv was bombed. Our corridor was the most secure in the building, I would assume. Needless to say, my Ima couldn’t just be idle. She found herself sewing and fashioning cloths for the most prestigious haute couture boutique in TA, at Lola Ber, if I’m not mistaken. Oh, my how creative she was. And of course, at the same time sewed for herself and needless to say for me. In fact, not until many years after I got married did I buy a dress or a skirt; even my wedding gown was made with her own two hands! Her claim to fame were her creations for the famous New Years Eve happenings. On January 1st, early in the morning as I was getting ready for school, she and my father would walk down the street to the tumultuous applause of our neighbors, as they made their way home after a night of merriment. I only wished I had a few samples of her unbelievable creations. Then, still another career, when a woman asked her to “adopt” her son, Tzvika, as she separated from her husband and needed to work. So, my ima became his as well. This, in fact, was a “profession” she ever so successfully dedicated her many years of child care here in Montreal. And………. yet another career in the offing. When my father was sent to Canada she took over their Radio store and oh my, with her ambition and business acumen, whence did it come from, we always wondered, that quiet little store, named S.O.S. became the beehive of busy and energetic vibes. We made so many new friends, new business acquaintances and attended so many new venues. Amazing! Life was good, but not easy, sad with only a a bit of news from her family back home. She knew that together with her sisters and brother in Israel, they had to find ways to send CARE packages to her family for their survival. They weren’t aware that most of her family was killed by the Lithuanians, but one sister miraculously survived in Siberia. Then, one beautiful and bright day, to our “shocking” surprise, there was a knock on our door and a voice from the other side of the door announce, “Here is your aunt”! But all my aunts are here! Do I need to describe that moment, when my aunt Ada, my Ima’s lost sister, whom we all thought had perished, appeared at our door? Yes, another whole chapter of this gift, of yet one more family member to join us. Naturally, she lived with us…oh, don’t remember how long. Yes, once more, all of us in 2 Day and Night shifted rooms. Yes, this was my Ima - Ima not only to me and my brother Shimoni, but to all of the families, to all of our friends. What a life. What upheavals. WWII, didn’t skip us, yes-in Palestine, life under the British Mandate! Then we lost 2 young neighbours in the War of Independence, a long a bitter war for a fledgling new country. Then came the Tzena years, (Austerity) - all this made our Ima, our security blanket, our fortress our model of a mentsch. Then a huge change - leaving her large, loving, close and devoted family for the unknown. This was a long chapter in her challenging life. Six weeks prior to arriving in Montreal, living in London, waiting for a visa, no language, no one to share her fear and responsibility for her 2 children and the huge unknown. But with grace, tenacity, perhaps with some humour, abundance of love and care to us, she carved herself a new life. Not easy, by any means!

Luckily, she discovered some “landsleit” which eased her way to yet another chapter - another path in her many careers. She started as “our Mrs. Ginsberg”, in another haute couture boutique, right next to Ogilvy’s. Was that ever a hub for the rich and famous. Lots and lots of stories that the “boutique” “girls” could share, but didn’t. Then when my father took off, yet again, she used her past “training” in the Tel Aviv store and took over the Radio and TV store on Decarie Blvd. in St. Laurent. Full of energy she loved it; loved the multi-nationalities she met, trained new workers in her store, restored radios and helped repair both radios and tv sets. More than amazing, much more when she began another career; when she became a baby nurse, baby sat when parents travelled, and more. We figured at the end of this chapter she cared for close to 800 children. Her name was synonymous with Love, Care, Devotion, Impeccable cleanliness. Did I mention that she sewed all of her Spic and Span white uniforms? “no one can make them the way I want and need”, and she needed many, changing ALL THE TIME!! And with all that, with all the energy she always invested in no matter what she did, still had time to be a superb “baleboste”. Yummy cooking, amazing baker, not to mention her challa baking. Do I remember when on a certain Friday, for Shabbat dinner, we invited the notably famous orchestra conductor, Igor Markevitch. As her fashion dictated, she set up a beautiful table in the dining room. Upon Igor’s arrival, sitting in the living room and seeing the set table he asked if it was alright for us to have our dinner in the kitchen. “Oh, in the kitchen?” my ima asked. With no hesitation and great admiration for my ima’s courteous style, he said, unabashedly, “I live such a noble life, married to a princess, always served by waiters in style, I LOVE feeling the kitchen and the workings of it.” And so we did, moved our whole Shabbat to the kitchen. Yes, this was my Ima. Tireless. Lovingly generous, with dignity and more and good humour to boot. How I miss her. How I wished my grandchildren would have had the privilege of having her dote over them, spoil them. Oh, how I wished… Yes, we all have special Imas, mine was MY SPECIAL IMA, my gift, my true, true friend, my inspiration… my everything. Yeeheye zichra baruch.

My Mother Dora Winifred Midman

By Honey Stollman

My Mother, Dora Winifred (Gamerman) Midman, was born on May 22, 1910. Her birth family called her Vechne, my dad called her Vechie and we, her children, called her Ma (or on occasion other choice names as she was the disciplinarian but always ending with a laugh and hug). How did a baby girl, born in Boston to immigrant parents come to the name Dora Winifred? She was born premature at a weight of 3 pounds and so was wrapped in cotton and incubated. Hard to believe when seeing the grown result and hearing the range of her voice. At about three years old she contracted Scarlet Fever. A rush for cure led to all sources, including a name change to take the evil spirits away. However, instead of changing the Yiddish or Hebrew name (Dvora or Vechne), they changed her English name to Winifred! Assuming they did this thinking they were changing Vechne to an Anglicized name. It worked! She thrived and we could always laugh about the name Winifred! “Voos fa a numin?” The only girl in a family of six, she was the 3rd child to be born after two boys and before three others. She had no choice but to learn to defend herself, stand up for her rights and have her voice heard. These qualities served her well throughout her life - there was no arguing with her! Right or wrong she was always right! She insisted that if the boys could learn so could she and she was much smarter than they were. She had spunk and was a born leader, a feminist before the word was known. At fifteen she lied about her age and got her first job working for Mr. Lebow at a carpet store. When one of the workers tried to get fresh with her, her hand was ready and felt! He was fired! She married at age 23 to the love of her life, the boy her older brother introduced her to at a club dance (she always told me she was 12 and Daddy was 13???). My father, an artist and teacher had the most sensitive of souls and our mother always said he taught her how to love and be loved. This was a union (wedding) of two different personalities that worked very, very well. Their marriage of 55 years, after being together inseparably for sixtynine, lasted until my Dad passed away in 1988 at age 79. My mother lived on for another 17 years, leaving us 2 months short of her 95th birthday. Always the healthy walker, doer, baker, talker, joiner, leader, climbing 91 stairs with pneumonia to enjoy a summer boat ride, she developed ALS, confirmed at the age of 93. With great strength she turned to my sister and asked “How am I going to die? Couldn’t I have died healthy at 93?” Both my parents accepted the fact that my mother was the better partner to handle the money matters. She was quick with numbers and knew how to save a penny. I grew up in a two-family house that we owned, sharing it with my two siblings and a grandfather. With five sons, my grandfather knew that the only place he could call home was with his daughter. I moved into this house when I was two years old and left when I married at age a twenty-one. My parents were ardent Zionists and the word Hadassah was one of the first words I learned. My mother was either president of her chapter or program chair of the chapter at any and all times, alternating these positions with her good friend and Hadassah loyal, Sadie. The daily calls would start with a “Whey…and hearty laugh and we would know they were planning another program. These two ladies would not only plan the activities, organize the collections, going house to house spreading the name of Hadassah and the needs of the fledging state called Israel, but they performed for audiences as well to huge acclaim. Together they wrote a script in Yiddish called the “Machatunim,” (The In-Laws), the meeting between the mother of the bride and the mother of the groom. They performed it several times and each time it was a smash hit.

My parents’ home was the center of family celebrations and holidays. The Passover meals (sederim) were at our house with Ma doing all the cooking and baking. I still see the wooden bowl and green handled chopper she used for chopping the “gefilte fish.” (I still see the fish swimming in the bathtub and smell the yuck)! I have tried to duplicate the success of her gefilte fish and delicious baked rogalach, but never quite succeeded in capturing the flavor or texture...so they remain in my memory. I can't say that all her dishes were exemplary but there was no telling her that the fish was dry or the soup too salty…. everything of hers had to be the best. Was it from insecurity or confidence? I grew up thinking that we too were special. It was shocking to find out that not all is as in the eyes of your mother!!! When my mother was 41, my younger sister was born. After this birth, my mother became completely deaf. …. She struggled with all kinds of hearing devices that were big, clumsy and inefficient. She endured several surgeries and tried to adapt to new devices as they improved or were brought to market. Without a hearing device, the world to her was a lonely and silent place. Complicating her disability was the medical error of the second surgery which caused tinnitus, which she endured for more than 50 years. Again, a statement of her fortitude. She would often say that “you could get used to a boil on your nose,” and alas, she did! All this did not deter her from going back to work at Hillel House at Boston University when my younger sister was but 7. She soon became a mother figure welcoming all the students, regardless of age or stage, who entered the door with encouragement, humor and a word ( or two) of advice. The favorite ones were invited to our home for Shabbat dinners. When someone new entered her office, she would tell them about her hearing difficulty and ask them to speak up! She was loved by students and professors alike. Her relationship with her boss, Rabbi Perlman, was not to be equaled. The Rabbi was a quiet soul, large ego and very, very, very soft voice. He learned quickly to look at her when he spoke and even more quickly learned who really was the “boss” at Hillel House. No one disagreed and no one objected. She gave him the grace he needed to minister and she the room to roost. Her family life always remained her priority. Accepting the job was with one condition, she would leave work by 3:30, when our father dutifully could and did shlep to pick her up and take her home. Having dinner on the table, nightly and on time, was a priority. Our father had five jobs, two were at night during the week and making sure he was well fed and cared for before leaving was her passion and purpose. Getting us to bed early was a close second! Though she had no formal education after high school and Hebrew high school, she never stopped wanting to learn and improve her Hebrew. She was also an avid reader. Although Israel was a very important part of her life, she was very distraught when we made Aliya with our three young children. But my parents came often and when we visited the States she would always introduce me as “my daughter from Israel.” (If I ever returned to the States I wondered how she would introduce me?) When they visited they would ride the buses and my mother would always find a local to sit next to in order to practice her Hebrew. When my Dad died she moved from the city of her birth to live in Washington, DC, near my sister, her husband and their newborn son - far from anything familiar but close to family to adore her and be near her. She purchased an apartment near my sister and immediately found the local Hadassah group, joined the local temple and became a known and an integral part of this new world. My sister, who wanted to take her junior year abroad in Israel many years earlier was emphatically told “No, we already have one there” and my sister made sure to make Ma a part of her social circles so in this new environment she made her presence wanted and felt. Ma’s presence continues to be felt and missed. How often I search for a Yiddish word, phrase or want to refresh a memory or story? She continues to be a presence, spirited indeed.

My Yiddishe Mame

By Moishe Rosenfeld

Her final moments in January 2003 were wrenching. My mother had been in the hospital for 4 months, suffering from a range of ailments and infections, some of which had been picked up in the hospital. It was clearly near the end. My brother Zalmen and I had been with her all day, and gone out to dinner before I returned for the night shift. I held her hand which responded with a tender squeeze, showing she was conscious. A big oxygen mask covered her mouth and nose. She wasn’t speaking or communicating in any way even though a day earlier she had been awake and alert, greeting her old friend Boruckh Spiegel - a hero of the Warsaw Ghetto uprising - and our friend Judy Lermer. But this night was ominous. I don’t remember what I said to her - only that I tried to tell her comforting things about the family, and how much she means to the community and how she’d been loved and appreciated throughout her life. I thought about her amazing final year before she was rushed to the Jewish General Hospital with symptoms of a heart attack. A year which included the marriage of her granddaughter Liora in Israel, the Bas Mitzvah of her granddaughter Felicia in New York, where she gave an unforgettable speech, a wonderful tribute to her by the Canadian Jewish Congress where she had worked for decades, and established their influential “Committee for Yiddish”, and the ultimate honor of having been awarded the Order of Canada, by the Governor General, which was the equivalent of being knighted by the Queen. She was a recipient in a year when the list included Joni Mitchell and Lorne Michaels of Saturday Night Live. She received the honor for having helped resurrect the Yiddish culture in Canda in the aftermath of the Holocaust and the murder of millions of Yiddish speakers, including her own parents, siblings, nieces and nephews. It was a well deserved honor, as she supported individuals and groups with initiatives and dreams to save this glorious language and culture. One of those she mentored, a young student named Aaron Lansky, enlisted her to help salvage thousands of Yiddish books that were being discarded by families of Yiddish speakers as they passed away. Together they found space in the garage of the Canadian Jewish Congress, and Aaron went about collecting these treasures throughout Montreal, and before long they had filled up the space to capacity. Aaron, the brilliant, energetic idealist that he was, went on to found the Yiddish Book Center in Amherst, Mass. which has become site of incredible achievement, with millions of books, now digitized, cultural events, academic programs, and a testament to what passionate people, devoted to a cause, can accomplish. For his part, Aaron received a MacArthur Fellowship for his brilliant leadership, and devoted several loving pages to my mother in his autobiography. And with her friend Hy Goldman she co-founded Klezkanada, an annual summer retreat for the Klezmer/Yiddish world in the Laurentians, where the drivers of the international revitalization of Yiddish culture gather to play, to sing and to plan. There is an annual Sara Rosenfeld Lecture at Klezkanada, and her name and memory are forever built in to the Klezkanada identity.. As my sister Fay and I sat in awe at the Museum of Canada, we heard the Governor General call up “Sara Rosenfeld, known as the doyenne of Yiddish in Canada, for her tireless work in preserving and perpetuating the language and culture of Yiddish in Canada” - or words to that effect. What a highlight in our lives! What a moment for our family, for those she’d lost, for Canadian Jewry, for Yiddish culture. As we went out to a reception in the Museum lobby, the various honorees were congratulating each other, and Lorne Michaels, the producer of Saturday Night Live, came over to us to congratulate my mother. I told her “Ma - this is Lorne Michaels, a producer of a very popular comedy TV show in the States...” She graciously shook his hand and said “My children never stop talking about you.” OMG - how embarrassing - “Ma...” I thought, ”You never even heard his name before ten seconds ago...” And at night she and Fay went to the banquet at the Governor General’s residence (only one guest per honoree.) The pride, the happiness was unmatched for any of us in our lives.

The love we received from her all of our lives, was the basis of our unending, limitless love for her. She never dwelt on the loss of her family, though their photographs were very present in our home. When I was 5 I would stare at a picture of two sad looking children dressed in poor looking clothes and head wraps. It had been taken in the Warsaw Ghetto. One of them was her beloved Libele, her sister Esther’s daughter, for whom my mother would cut school in order to go home to kiss her baby face all over... Libele and her cousin looked sad. They would soon die - who knows how? But my mother who loved them so deeply only had this photo to prove they had once lived. Her parents each had a portrait hanging on the bedroom wall. Her father - the melamed (teacher) Zalmen - had a beard and yarmulke. Both of their faces were soft and loving. And there was a picture of a wedding of my father’s sister in the early days of the Ghetto. My mother’s brother and mother were in the picture. How those pictures evoked thoughts and feelings throughout my own childhood. What did they evoke for her? She raised the three of us with the selflessness of a stereotypical Yiddishe Mama. She worked hard as a housewife and mother, as my father built his fur manufacturing business with his brother in downtown Montreal. She was the chairwoman of the Workmen’s Circle Choir which she started with her beloved Bundist friends, Anye, Chane, Yentl, Manye, Yachke with whom she spoke on the phone day and night. When my father died at age 58, she took the job at the Canadian Jewish Congress where she established the Committee for Yiddish and continued raising Fay who was only 10 at the time. Over the next 30 years, she was a devoted mother, got married and divorced, had affairs, did wonderful work for the community, translated plays for her friend Dora Wasserman from English to Yiddish, and wrote some beautiful poetry. She made a point of befriending people 30 years younger than she. Smart move. So we sat holding hands in the hospital, kind of knowing but not acknowledging what awaited. Suddenly her breathing became more labored, and I pushed the call button. A nurse came in to respond. “Please wait outside,” she said as she called a medical team - 5 or 6 people came in and crowded around her bed. Then one of the nurses came out and said “Come in. It’s time.” “Time for what?” I asked. “To say good bye.” I rushed over to her side. Sobbing and repeating “Ma. I love you so much. I love you forever. I’ll never forget you.....” Then the nurse said “She’s gone.” It was over. Her life was over. My mother, my life-giver, my sweet, funny, aggressive, embarrassing, iconic, nurturing, charismatic, brilliant mother was gone. I felt so empty, so devastated. I called Zalmen, who rushed to the hospital. I called Fay and Annette in New York. And sat with her wondering what the rest of my life would be like without her. Recently Zalmen told me that shortly before the end she and he had had a chat about the inevitable. She told him about death: “s’iz a shreklekhe zakh” (It’s a horrible thing) “Ober ikh hob nisht moyre.” (But I’m not afraid.) Koved ir likhtikn ondenk.

My Mother With A Smile-Genuine!

By Jean Alicia Nurit Grossman

I had always planned at some time and somewhere in my life to write about my mother, but more as a part of the whole family. Now that Ella is putting together a "My Mother" book, on second thoughts I think she surely deserves to be included. So here goes: Our family consisted of my father and mother, me and my sister who was 5 years older than I was. I was born at the beginning of the Second World War, and my father who was a Civil Servant (I wonder if the government also employed uncivil servants?) moved with his department to a quiet seaside resort in the North East coast of England, and in the almost certainly false belief that if no one knew we were Jewish, should Hitler cross the Channel which at that time seemed highly likely, We would evade the destiny of the Jews of Europe. I do remember our Sunday School Church teacher warning us that we should NEVER have anything to do with the Jews as they were responsible for EVERYTHING wrong. And how could you recognise Jews? Well, shhh!' they had horns hidden in their hair. Time passed, the war finally ended and we returned to London to the Jewish ghetto we lived in. And I remember the bombshell my mother dropped "Thank goodness we can go back to being Jewish!" Thank Goodness???? What was good about that? But, wait a minute, I could prove we were not Jewish! Remember how? Right. if we didn't have horns! A quick check of my head and yeh! no horns! Now for my mom! Yeh! she didn't have either! But for better or worse. my family was definitely Jewish, with or without the horns. Anyhow, this is supposed to be about my mother, but as with many Jewish families especially, we were all intertwined. My mother was born in London in the East End to a then wealthy family. My grandparents on my mother's side came from Russia/Poland (it kept changing) at the end of the 19th century when they were 18. My grandfather built a successful furniture business, and my grandmother had babies and was convinced she was a Russian princess to the end of her life, I think she was the personification of the remnants of Russian royalty! My grandfather built a beautiful Mary Poppins type house, with an upstairs and downstairs - modest but impressive, and my grandmother gave birth to 2 sets of twins and 3 more children. My father's family came to Scotland via Germany in the 1800s, and then to London. He and my mother wasted 5 years pretending they didn't like each other, but finally realised they couldn't survive without each other and had a wonderfully happy marriage right to my father's last days. My mother worked as an English and History teacher in the London School of Correspondence. My sister at that point was a nasty piece of work who kicked me out of bed most nights as I had gone over her imaginary line for her side of the bed, but eventually she improved and we became friends. My mother and her twin sister were inseparable. They were identical twins whose joy in life was to confuse the enemy (everyone who wasn't them) and we loved to hear their stories how they would come and go at school changing identities as it suited them. When asked how he told the difference! My dad replied airily that he never bothered! Now there's romance for you. I think my mother was truly a great lady. We were actually the poor part of the enlarged family. We didn't have a car, we didn't go on fancy holidays, we bought new clothes when necessary - I of course had pass me downs from my sister which was rather comical as she was plump and I was, well, really, really skinny! But we had fun! We had parents who played us music, took us to the library, argued about politics, and encouraged us to dream and follow it. Of course, it wasn't always so dreamy utopian! We celebrated Christmas customs (loved those crackers!), went carol singing for JNF, at 13 I considered myself an expert on Marx and Engels, walking around with huge copies of their books that I could hardly lift and explaining to my bemused parents why I was for the Revolution! Even though when questioned I wasn't sure which revolution! They were always there for us. This was a time of Mosely's brownshirts trying to start up the fascist movement in London, and my cousin being arrested for disturbing them and how proud we all were.

My parents were happy I had joined Hashomer Hatzair. After the horror with which I found out I was Jewish, they were thrilled to have me in the Zionist world, and were completely fair. When I became sad at going on aliya and leaving them, it was my father and mother who sat with me and encouraged me to go - better to go and decide it wasn't what I really wanted and come back, rather than not go and spend the rest of my life wondering if I had missed out on an opportunity. Eventually when my father died, my mother came to live with us in Israel, on the kibbutz. It was a huge effort for her, new country, new language, new people, new culture. But as I told you, my mother loved people and she found her niche as “the hostess with the moistest” for the volunteers who came for the Six Day War. Her room was the centre for all the young volunteers and she was in her element serving tea and toast and joining in on all the gossip should this girl sleep with that boy? Just ask my mother who suddenly became a hippy! One of the favourite stories in Galon to this day is how my mother would walk around the kibbutz with her umbrella against pouring rain and smiling sweetly at everyone she passed - "Isn't it a lovely day?" But here the story is not so good and I often ask myself how I, who had wonderful parents, could have in the last years left my mother alone in a nursing home in Montreal where we had been on sent on a mission (Shlichut) for 3 years and it was time to return to Galon. Should we move my mom again or would it be too much for her? Although the doctors convinced us that the change again would not be good, I made the wrong decision almost certainly putting first what would be more convenient for me. My mother died at the age of 98 and not a day goes by that I don't apologise to her. She deserved so much more. .

My Bubbie Sally

By Recia Kolker Gordon

I was four years old when my Mother died. I don’t remember her at all. I have a faint recollection of a hospital bed in the living room of our double parlour. I remember the wood-grain pattern of the door to the parlour. My parents and I lived with my Mother’s parents on de Bullion Street, ” in a third floor flat, in what is now known as the trendy “Plateau. My Zaidie Sam had a small Restaurant at 50 Roy Street, corner of Ste. Dominique called Sam’s Lunch and my Bubbie was the cook. Their customers included the working people in the area from the chicken stores, butchers and fish mongers. My Bubbie worked in the restaurant until her health declined and she stayed home to take care of me. My Bubbie’s sister, my Aunt Polly, was always at our house but did not live with us. She lived nearby. Unfortunately, she was not a happy person (I think she was bi-polar) and made all our lives miserable including my Bubbie’s; but she never said a bad word about her. She suffered in silence. My Mother had a rare cancer - sarcoma of the spine and suffered horribly. My Bubbie, who I think was superstitious, believed that she got the cancer because as a young girl she hit her back on a diving board years earlier. Because my Family was in mourning for a year, they thought it would be best to send me to school. The only one that would accept me was a Jewish Communist School and My Bubbie Sally took me to and from school every day. I went there from kindergarten until grade two when the government closed the school and I was transferred to the Jewish Peretz School and then to Baron Byng High School. When the year of mourning for my Mother was up, my Grandmother’s other sister, Rose, died and not only did she have another year of mourning but she took my Auntie Rose’s daughter, Esther to live with us. Around the same time, my Father’s father, my Zaidy Bennie, died very suddenly and my Father went to live with his mother (my Bubbie Mary) and left me with Bubbie Sally. I did see my Father from time to time but my Bubbie Sally was left to bring me up. I guess the responsibility of raising her daughter’s child weighed heavily on her and she was always very overprotective. I felt smothered. Even when I was in high school, she would wait in the window to make sure I came home safely. We had sheer curtains but she thought if she stood behind them, I wouldn’t be able to see her.

My Bubbie was a great cook and baker but I didn’t like Jewish style cooking. She always made meals for the family and something different for me. I only remember eating chicken, steak, lamb chops, liver, salmon and halibut growing up. We moved to Esplanade Avenue, across from Fletchers Field when I was 10. She was always happy for me to have friends over after school always making sure to have baked treats for them. For me, she would go to the Arena Bakery, on Mt. Royal, every day and buy me a chocolate log. Was I spoiled? I guess so. Friends would come over after school for cookies and milk and to do homework as some were “latchkey” kids whose mothers worked. We would also get together with the boys in our group, move the dining room table and practice dancing. She never complained. When I was five, I got a puppy whom I named Wig Wag, or Wiggy for short. She was a Heinz 57 with a long body and short stubby legs and a long tail. My Bubbie spoke to the dog in Yiddish. Every day my Bubbie would make Wiggy a scrambled egg for breakfast and a bowl of coffee with three cubes of sugar and they would have coffee together. If you put down two or four lumps, she would not touch the coffee until my Bubbie made it with three lumps. Because we thought she couldn’t get pregnant we never had her neutered and “surprise” - she became pregnant and every year thereafter had many puppies. She had them in the bathroom or in the pantry. She had around 85 puppies in her lifetime and 81 lived. We found homes for all of them. My Bubbie never complained about the dog, the puppies or the mess. As long as I was happy, it was ok.

When I was young, my grandparents bought a country house in Plage Laval where we spent the summers. My Uncle Benny would drive us there at the end of June and take us home after Labour Day. It was a wonderful place to be and I was very happy there. Eventually my Grandmother’s children, my Aunt Molly and Uncle Ben’s wife, my Aunt Martha came for the summer with their young children and the Uncles came for the weekend. Sometimes, my Father came as well. The house was on wheels and we had the best times. The house was full of laughter and my Bubbie was happy to cook and have her family together.

When she was in her 60’s, my Bubbie developed asthma which got progressively worse each year. After I was married and was pregnant with my daughter, Elsa, I couldn’t look at raw food. Every night, my husband and I would go from work to my Bubbie for supper. After I gave birth, my grandparents moved into the apartment building where I lived, right above me. It was easier for me to check on her and help as needed. We got a live-in caregiver for my Bubbie when I became pregnant with my second daughter, Stephanie, as I could not help as much. Her asthma got worse and weakened her heart so much that it finally gave out. I gave birth during shiva and named my daughter, Stephanie “Shaindel, “after my Bubbie Sally (Shaindel). My Bubbie was a very practical person. When I was in Grade 8, I was in the science stream and wanted to stay and go onto University but my grandparents could not afford to send me. I had to switch to commercial and I resented it for so many years. Bubbie Sally felt that if something happened to her, I would have to take care of myself and support myself by getting a job. She was preparing me for the real world and not the pampered world I lived in. When I gave birth to my daughter, Elsa, she told me not to breastfeed. Don’t tie yourself down she would say. This way you can go out and let your husband feed the baby. You won’t have to worry about your milk coming in, etc. I listened to her. She was also a wonderful caregiver who took care of so many people besides her own children, with nary a complaint. Happy or not, she accepted her lot in life. How fortunate was I to have my Bubbie Sally in my life!

“What Can I Do For You?”

By Saralyn Cohen Greenblatt

Jen Cohen, my mother, what a special one-of-a-kind person! Her “chochmat chaim” and the wonderful values that she grew up with and then passed on to us have made her a role model for me in so many ways. Her love for Judaism, the supreme importance of family and her never ending giving of herself define her essence. Her strength, both physical and spiritual have been evident every day of her life. Mom raised us to embrace our Jewishness. Friday night was always a special time for the family to be together for Shabbat dinner, and there was always room at the table for others. Jewish holidays were occasions to be cherished for their festive atmosphere and warmth. In 2001 my husband and I took a two year leave of absence from our work and from Israel to be closer to family in Winnipeg. My mother came over to help me make hamantaschen - it was with such fun and joy. I will treasure that memory forever, especially when I heard "geshmak" and turned around to catch her licking the poppy seed off her fingers. Our house was filled with Jewish culture and meaning and she instilled in us all a deep love for our heritage. She was so happy to be with us in Israel on her many visits and we had such wonderful times. Her efforts to learn Hebrew were shared with us all – what great laughs we had together. There was nothing in this world more important to Jen Cohen than family. She was always there for any of the family at any time and for any reason. From the time she was a little girl supporting the family in any and every way was of ultimate importance. That never changed throughout her entire life. It didn't matter to whom or where - anybody needed anything and she was there - without them even having to ask. I can't even remember or count how many relatives we took in over the years, giving them a home when one was needed and for as long as was needed. Mom’s giving heart accepted it as the natural and obvious thing to do. Personally, I don't know how I would have managed without all the help she gave me and my family over the years. Even though she always made the kids finish the milk from their morning cereal, they loved having "Safta Jennie" around, especially the way she would cut up the oranges for them! How many games of Rummy Cube we played together! She showed us the supreme values of giving and of unconditional love. Nothing was ever too much for her! When Mom became limited in what she could do, she was sad and upset because she felt useless and not needed. What she didn’t understand was that for us, just being with us and kibitzing, be it in English, Ukrainian, Hebrew or Yiddish; coming along to Polo Park (a shopping center) and being outraged by the prices; joining us for a walk through the English or Botanical gardens where she so enjoyed the flowers; riding in the car and admiring the green trees; or just being, gave us so much pleasure. There was not a selfish bone in her body. If she thought doing something would give us pleasure, she always made the supreme effort so as not to disappoint us. My sister used to encourage her by saying “you are a good sport” – and that she was. Her giving heart knew no bounds. Even though Jim and I made our life in Israel - so far away, Mom was always so close to me. She was with me in my garden when I smelled the roses or hung the laundry; with me in shul; with me in the kitchen when I made the babka for opfasten, the gefilte fish for Rosh Hashanah or the charoset for Pesach (all of which she taught me and we used to do together), with me when we were trying to teach our children to be mentchen; and certainly, with me when I was doing meezeleh maizeleh and shepping nachas from our grandchildren.

Wherever Jen Cohen may be now, I have no doubt that the first words she speaks will be "I need a job", and she will probably get the best one available! I would like to sum up with loosely translated excerpts from “Eshet Chail”, which for me sums up my mother, Jen Cohen, who died at the age of 100, but is forever with me as a role model and guiding light.

What a rare find is a woman of valour! Her worth is far beyond that of rubies… She sets her mind on a goal and reaches it; she plants a vineyard by her own labors. She girds herself with strength and performs her tasks with vigor. She sees that her business thrives; her lamp never goes out at night… She gives generously to the poor; her hands are stretched out to the needy… She is clothed with strength and splendor; …Her mouth is full of wisdom; her tongue with kindly teaching… Many women have done worthily, but you surpass them all….

‫( מאמע‬Ma-meh)

By Leah Krolik Goldstein

My mother, Taubeh Baila Wiernik, was a shy, modest, kind, loving, unassuming woman. She did not have an easy life. She was born in 1915, as far as we know. Her mother died in childbirth in 1916, at the age of 34; her father in 1926 at the age of 70. He was 26 years older than his wife. So, at the age of two my mother was left in the care of her aged father. My grandfather, Yaakov Leib Wiernik, was a Ger Hassid, one of the strictest of the Hassidic sects. He spent most of his life in torah study and had no other skills or trade. I can only imagine how helpless he must have felt, finding himself at age 60+ with a toddler to care for, when he was hardly able to care for himself. My mother spoke of her father only with love and adoration and inevitably would cry when mentioning either one of her parents. Yet, one of the few anecdotes I do remember her telling me is that she was beaten if she dared comb her hair on “shabbes” or was caught tearing a piece of toilet paper. She would often escape to her friend Edith’s house for refuge. Luckily for my grandfather (and my mother), he had 4 surviving, married siblings, who would look after my mother for periods of time. Most of the time she spent in the care of her uncle Moishe and his wife Sura. My mother was very close to their eldest daughter, also Taube (Tilly) and revered her as an older sister. Tilly was about 14 years older than my mother. In 1922, when my mother was about 8 years old, her Aunt Katy (Yocheved), the youngest of her father’s siblings was already in America. She sent to Pultusk, their hometown, a steamship ticket and travel documents for my mother to join her in Baltimore. My grandfather was by then 68 years old, had suffered a stroke and was wheelchair bound (two years before his death.) He was reluctant to let her go. While he was hesitating, her cousin Tilly, also named Taube Wiernik, took the ticket and travel documents and was off. Both were diminutive in stature so there was no difficulty in proving identity, especially then. Thanks to my mother’s bad luck, Tilly was off to the Goldeneh Medinah, and thus escaped the horrors on the horizon and my mother was left behind to care for her sick father and became trapped in Poland when the Germans marched into and bombed Warsaw. In about 1933, when my mother was 18 years old, she moved to Warsaw with her closest friend Edith. The two women roomed together and worked as seamstresses. I imagine it was a relatively good period during the years before the war. My mother talked of going to concerts, theatre and the opera. They had a close circle of friends and were passionate about their political ideologies. Years later, when visiting a cousin of my mother’s in Israel, he suddenly turned to me and said: “Tell me, is your mother still such a red hot Communist?” When I voiced extreme shock he added: “Didn’t you know? She was petite and swift and would move throughout the city hanging and distributing posters for the cause; always one step ahead of the police. My mother never spoke of this, nor did she retain her allegiance to the cause. My mother’s friend Edith somehow did make it to America in the late 1930’s. My mother was supposed to follow but her plans were interrupted by the outbreak of the war. Instead, she managed to cross the border into the Soviet Union and as a Polish national became one of the tens of thousands of prisoners of war who were sent east to Siberia, Kazakhstan, Kirgizstan, etc. to spend the next 5 years as slave labourers in the dozens of prison camps in the East. I don’t know any details of how she crossed the border nor the circumstances of the arduous journey to the camps. The only thing I do know is that she worked as a log roller – rolling logs along the river. This petrified her daily, as she had never learned to swim. After the war, she made her way back to Poland. This was a common route. Most people went back to be reassured that there was no reason to stay. The country was in ruins and their families had all perished. The allies set up displaced persons camps in Germany, Austria and Italy. My mother ended up in such a camp Wegsheid-Bindermichel, near Linz, Austria. It was there she met my father and where I was born.

Commented [Ma1]: le

Before 1948, the three of us were looking for a country to give us refuge. My father had Zionist leanings and had already managed to obtain passage to Palestine for his younger brother and sister and her family. My mother wanted to be reunited with her cousins in America. She also argued that she had been standing in bread lines for more than five years and didn’t want to go to Palestine where ration coupons and bread lines were still the norm. When she wrote to her cousins Tilly and Norman to ask that they sponsor us, they refused. So we stayed in the DP camp a bit longer and were finally granted entry to Canada. I learned this story from my mother sometime in the late 1980’s. We were driving to New York from Montreal for a family Bar Mitzvah. At some point during the eight-hour drive, my mother, for the first time that I could remember, started telling stories of her past. I was astounded, as the past was locked behind a door that rarely opened for more than a glimpse and I was devastated because of the sadness and despair of the story itself. I grew up knowing her cousin Tilly as the only living relative on my mother’s side. My mother adored her and when I was two we took the train to Washington to visit Tilly and Norman. We were not yet Canadian citizens and arranging travel documents and permits was a big deal then. When I was five they came to visit us in Montreal. Over the years we would visit back and forth and there was a constant stream of letters and on occasion, even a three-minute-long distance phone call – also a big deal. I couldn’t believe that after all my mother had suffered, from toddlerhood onwards, that they could be so dispassionate and refuse us sponsorship. I couldn’t understand how my mother could maintain any sort of relationship with them, never mind such a close and warm one. I boldly told her I would have immediately cut them out of my life. She answered that they were her only living flesh and blood when all else had been destroyed. Norman, she said, had long ago apologized to my father. He said that he had envisioned having to feed another 3 additional mouths (although by then they were quite well established,) and he didn’t know at the time how hardworking and industrious my father was. My mother, in her wisdom chose to understand their concern. I thought about it and realized that my mother’s forgiving soul and gentle nature, actually gave us a bit of family when we, as most people around, had none. My father and Norman became best buddies. The loved the times they spent together. They reveled in sharing a “schnaps” and a joke and a song – especially if it was a bit bawdy. And my mother loved Tilly dearly, which gave us all a bit of family and simchas and good times together.

PARENTS AND ME, READY TO EMBARK

TAUBA

& FRIEND EDITH

Florentina – “Titine”

By Sandra Van Rompaey

Growing up with my Mama was not easy. In some ways, she was an excellent mother indeed; we had three delicious meals a day, bathed every day and went to good schools. She was a real genius with money. With five children, she was a housewife, but she stretched my Dad’s very average income to the point where all five of us had music classes and learned to play several instruments, and my 2 sisters and I took ballet classes… My parents were able to rent a permanent holiday flat on the Belgian coast, and from when I was 12, Mama treated herself to an annual 2-week ski holiday in Austria and the family had a 1-month summer holiday abroad, in off the beaten track destinations, such as Norway… In her mind, she was probably the only mother who did it right. Her greatest flaw: she is always right, her actions are the norm, and everyone who does things differently, is just plain wrong. Don’t like the taste of something? Prepared a non-conventional combination of foods? “Surely you cannot think that’s normal?” Even now, while her memory is slowly fading, sometimes her belief that her behaviour is standard and superior gets the better of her. She resides in a care facility, where she is fairly happy and is well taken care of. She does not seek contact or conversation with the other residents, unless they approach her. When she talks to me about them, she berates them, calling them “old”, “abnormal”, “crazy” or “demented”. She will be 83 soon, and was recently diagnosed with Alzheimer-dementia. She cannot remember the names of her fellow residents, not even of the people who take care of her. I try to encourage her to ask, and remember them for her. The doctor who delivered her diagnosis said that all things considered, she is doing fairly well. She was present when the diagnosis was made, but she blanked out the Alzheimer-dementia part of what was said and cheerfully told me afterwards that she was doing fairly well. I didn’t correct her and never will. In her mind, she just has a problem remembering things. Her life, past and present, is wrought with very negative elements, including some grave injustices that were done to her. At the tender age of seven or thereabouts, she was inappropriately fondled by an adult man… She was abused by her husband, my father, who also cheated on her for no less than 16 years before they divorced. By that time she was “too old” for the job market and he fraudulently filed for bankruptcy, in order to dodge the alimony that she was entitled to. She had no option but to rely on welfare before being able to officially retire, but nevertheless managed to save and invest and gather a nice amount in savings. Two years ago, she was lured to Brazil by one of my sisters, where, during the year that she stayed there, she was robbed of all the money that should have ensured comfort in the autumn of her life… She was subsequently dumped at Schiphol airport all by herself, disoriented and penniless, where my brother picked her up. Mama suffers from a general lack of emotion. Terms of endearment and expressions of love for another are alien to her. “You have a name” was her motto; telling someone you love them only serves to convince yourself that you do. She lost a child, her second-born; Edwig was his name; he was born in 1958, and likely died of Sudden Infant Death syndrome when he was only two months old. I am sure that’s a lasting injury to her soul. Seven years later, I was her first child after that. I call her every day. 4428 kilometres separate us, but I feel that we are closer than ever. Not as close as I had always wished we would be, but I realise that her state of mind will not allow for any improvement, so I’ll take it. This essay is written on the eve of the third wave of the COVID-19 pandemic, so I cannot go and visit her; because of the pandemic and the robbery by my sister that preceded it, I have not seen or embraced my Mama for over two years now. I hope relief of the pandemic will not be too late.

She was always beautiful, a Gina Lollobrigida type of beauty. Even now, wrinkled, with progressively thinning hair and her body littered with many scars of various ailments and subsequent surgeries, she is still a good- looking elderly lady. She wears her diamond rings and earrings, dresses up, and wears nail polish. She is with me while I work at my desk, and she shows me, over and over again, the fallen autumn leaves that she collects outside to spruce up her window sill. She tells me every day how the plants that my brother and I gave her are doing. Whether they still bear flowers, and what was their name again? She forgets. She collects crusts and crumbs to go feed a chicken and a rabbit that reside in the garden downstairs, and is intimidated by the male resident who thinks she is intruding on his own bond with the animals... I used to say that she was the most intelligent person that I knew; she really was, but she forgets. I ask her what she had for lunch, and she forgets. Watching me being interrupted by one of my cats while I work, she asks me about my cats and dogs, how many I have, and what their names are. She forgets. I love my Mama. Always have. Even when I hated that she couldn’t show affection, when her punishments were too harsh, or when her criticisms were brutal and undeserved. I hope she will keep doing well for a long time to come…

L to R: My aunt, My grandfather (Bompa), My uncle, Mum (15 yrs), My grandmother (Bomma)

Mum after her divorce; she was verry unhappy sort of shell-shocked from my Dad's betrayal.

L to R: My older brother, my Mum's brother, Mum (20 yrs), her second son, Edwig (sadly died 2 mo. later)

Belgium, at granddaughter’s wedding

3 days before my sister took Mum away from me

1956 Passport

2020

2015

Babey Trepman

By Charlotte Trepman

My Mother --- Buna (Babey) Widutschinski Trepman … was a ‫ברען פייער‬. Her Bergen-Belsen survivor friends called her ‫בעבקע קאזאק‬. In these times, she might have been compared to the Eveready bunny. Everyone marveled at her energy, her indomitable spirit, her refusal to give up. As her daughter, I often resented being asked if I had the same energy as my mother, but since then I have come to understand her personality, recognize her drive, and appreciate her need to prove how vibrant she was. She was one of three daughters born to Sholom and Faige Widutschinski in Siaulai, Lithuania on August 20, 1924. He was an accountant for the Jewish community and she was a homemaker. Dora was the oldest, Bebka was the middle child, and Sonia was the baby. My mother was musically talented and was sent to music school. She was also accepted to the community Hebrew day school where she shone academically. Her childhood friend, Yehudit, with whom I am still in touch and whom I visit whenever I am in Israel, told me that my mom was the best student in the class. She also excelled in her piano studies and basked in all the praise and admiration bestowed upon her. On the other hand, Bebka was an impish young lady. When I once asked her why she does not appear in a family photo of the entire Widutschinski clan that was taken one summer before the war when Uncle Al and Uncle Charlie came with their wives to visit and attempt to convince the family to leave Lithuania and come to Pittsburgh, PA where they lived, my mom sheepishly responded that she was sent away to summer camp that year…..Her parents needed a break from her. When I moved to NY, I became very close to my mother’s childhood friend, Hannah (Henke), who loved to tell stories about their friendship. Hannah’s aunt owned a candy store and….if you knew my mother, you could imagine the rest! My mom would threaten Hannah that, unless she got candy for her, she would not be her friend. Hannah always succeeded in stealing the desired treasure from under her aunt’s nose, and my mom would then begin to divide the spoils: one for Hannah, two for Bebka, etc. Needless to say, Hannah’s parents and her aunt knew my mother very well and consequently knew what was going on. Similar mischievous stories abound. During the war, Bebka and Dora worked outside the ghetto. They often smuggled food back into the ghetto for their family and once, my mother, wearing an oversized coat, was beaten for having been caught. Nonetheless, she was still able to smuggle some potatoes inside her large coat and, when she arrived home, she laughed out loud despite the beating. Another time, there was a rumour in the ghetto that there would be a children’s transport. My grandmother came home to find Sonia gone….and sat, almost catatonic, in her grief. When Dora and Bebka returned to the ghetto from work, they found their mother inconsolable. Bebka opened her oversized coat to reveal their young sister whom they had hidden when leaving the ghetto. It took my grandmother quite a while to realize that her youngest had not been taken, thanks to the courage and pluck of her older daughters. Sadly, although there were many such stories of daring and “chutzpah” from Bebka and Dora, who survived the war together, Sonia was not to survive, and she perished in Auschwitz along with her mother. Bebka always said that, without Dora, she never would have lived. Interestingly enough, that never prevented her from lashing out at Dora, even after they were both married with children, and “torturing” her older sister for whatever reason, like a “good” sister might do. My mother was about fifteen when the war broke out and, as I learned from a psychologist many, many years later, much of her energy and drive probably came from the need to prove herself after losing her mother at such a young age, an age when young women still need the approval and support of their mothers. Bebka was always looking to be praised, to be told how great she was, what a wonderful pianist, teacher, wife, cook, mother she was.

Sometimes I felt that I was there to satisfy all her unfulfilled dreams…..I started taking piano lessons at 4 and, with regard to that and other extra-curriculars, I was always “the best” in everything I attempted. I was also “the best” in school, and my artistic talent, rhythm, and linguistic ability were second to none. Of course, I was the most beautiful girl, as well. My mother’s family was “the best”, her taste was “the best”, and her cooking and baking were “the best”, as was her mothering. She was “the best” kindergarten teacher in Montreal. When she was trained to teach fitness classes at the Y, she would report her success at dinnertime and tell us how much everyone loved her class. It was “the best”! Truthfully, when I turned eighteen and older, and realized how very average I was, I was filled with self-doubt and feelings of inadequacy. I always felt that my abilities were inferior to others’, and that my mother’s praise and adoration were always exaggerated because I was her daughter. In contrast, I had friends who could never please their Holocaust survivor parents who berated them and would never be satisfied with anything they did. I guess, in retrospect, I was lucky that my mother loved and praised me blindly rather than criticize me for whatever I did and never be happy with anything I did. In spite of my complaints, my parents’ home was filled with love, education, music, art, and traditional values. They had many friends who sought their company and the chance to spend time with them. They had strong family values and, to this day, I am very close to the people to whom I am related. The bonds with their survivor friends were also strong (“closer than family”), and I am also tied to them, their children, and their grandchildren. My mother was a devoted wife and mother who built a home for my dad and us in spite of the trauma she had experienced. We were surrounded by deep love and loyalty, and the security that evaded her and her sister during those terrible years between 1939 and 1945. Her ability to pick herself up after the Shoa and resume a relatively normal life as an active and vital member of the Montreal Jewish community is a testament to her strength of character and her outstanding ability to overcome adversity.

My Mother

By Roz Horovitch Cohen

My mother, Mary Malus Horovitch, was a very special lady. She was born into a family of 5 children. I learned very little about her childhood with the exception that her father was difficult and her wish was that her mother outlived him to enable her to have some peaceful years. This did happen since I remember Bubbie but Zaida died before my older sister was born. I learned from a cousin that she dated my dad for many years. He was a very religious man and was the son who took care of his aging parents. Finally they got married and I know she was so happy with him. She cooked and baked and took such good care of her 2 children. My father had his own successful plumbing business and we had a good life. We went to the beach in his truck and actually took neighbors who sat is the back. My father got sick and died when I was 8 years old leaving my mother with 2 young children. They were only married for 12 years. One of her sisters was very close to her and helpful but she died 6 months after my dad. My mother never recovered from these loses. Everything changed in our lives after that awful year. My mother had to work in a factory to support us. The worst part was her depressions and hospitalizations. I felt so sorry for her and as a child I believed I had the “magic key” to help her if only I knew where it was. With all this sadness she managed to make a life for us that was relatively normal. She was a loving mother and did everything in her power to make us happy. My sister and I were the center of her life and she provided us with everything she could. I marvel at how she managed when she wasn’t in a deep depression. I loved her so much and tried to be the best daughter I could. I know how much she loved me and how she struggled every day. She hung on for many years until my sister and I were adults, married with our own children. She finally succumbed to her sadness and overdosed in 1982. I was so sad but knew that life was so hard for her and I understood that she just couldn’t fight any longer. One of my granddaughters, Molly, is named for her and is as kind and sweet as my mom was. Every year when I light her memorial candle, I pray that she is at peace with my dad

My Mother

By Reisha Singerman Forshpan

We are three sisters, each five years apart, and have seven children between us. Today our children have children and so we are all grandparents. This is how I’d like to share my relationship with my late mother. I will refer to my mother because this is a story about mothers and daughters, but need you to know my late dad was all in. I had the extraordinary experience of watching the depth of love given to my children. The pure joy that was felt, the unconditional love, the unending patience. It was so natural to put my children, their grandchildren, first. At times I would laugh at this explosion of pleasure coming from them. I loved that we were the recipients of this spirit of love and kindness, yet did not grasp how the thrill of spending time with these grandkids went right to their kishkes, in a wonderful way.

Today I have my own grandchildren. Four beautiful souls. I feel them in my kishkes. Is this a natural instinctive response? Maybe so. When I’m with my grandkids, my mother is right there with us. Her wisdom, her love and years of role modeling guides me. She and I are smiling and I’m feeling warm and bonded with her in a way I never felt before. Ah! Now I absolutely get it!

My Mother

By Mette Hvid Hansen

My mother, Betty, was born 1st of December 1928, on the western coast of Denmark. A poor and barren place close to the sea with very religious grandparents (black inner mission) who often took care of her when her mother was too sick. Her father was a travelling salesman, gambling as well and sometimes she lived in rich surroundings but most often very poor. My mother ran away from home when she was 16, she wanted to have an education more than just going to school every second or third day so she chose nursing as this education gave her a place to live while studying. When she was 17 she met my father at a dance – he was 15 years old, playing the violin and was a son of a widowed mother. His mother became my mother’s rock! My grandmother was the first woman in her family to have an education, to work with money in the post office and who took care of her two children on her own. She told my mother to continue her education, not to be dependent of men (well of course her son was different) and to decide and plan her own life. She even helped my mother by giving her money to live. My parents knew each other from age 15 and 17 though they didn’t get married before my mother finished her education and they even lived together without being married – not what you expected back then. My mother’s family were not proud of her, she didn’t follow the “rules” and was not married to a farmer or a fisherman and she didn’t stay at home. My father became a doctor and that was not a something people from the west looked up to – they saw it as “sissies” and weak because they didn’t work the land or sea. My Mother never forgot her background though and even as a nurse married to a doctor her main medicine for the common cold was chicken soup! I often wondered of how many of the recipes I got from her were the recipes my eastern European friends in Israel use and much of the good old advice was also identical. (There were no European roots other than Danish, having tracked the Danish ancestors back to around 1705) My mother was a strong woman – I am the eldest and was born when she was 32 (she chose not to have children before) and my siblings when she was 35 and 37. She married my dad in 1955- in a black dress!! They had to get married, otherwise they would not be able to get a flat! My parents were married for 34 years before my father died, and my mother went back to work with in the MR-scan department, not easy at her age, but she always said as a motto (which I really, really hate) “You can do it if you really want”! Both she and my father’s mother were proud women who broke away from the standard mode of what was expected of women!!

My Mother

By Harriet Reznick Pearson

As a young woman, aged 22, my mother came to Canada in 1929, from a shtetl in White Russia. She arrived with my father and my oldest sister Ruthie. Though she spoke all the Slavic languages, she never mastered either English or French. But that never stopped her. She managed to communicate with many people in her own way. She worked with my Dad but I am not sure if she was a hindrance or a help. :) I am the youngest of 5 and I often described my childhood as a Dickens child and tumbling up. However, what stands out most is that when my mother was most upset, she would sing with a beautiful voice. She always had an open door, and nobody ever left the house hungry. There was always room for one more to sleep over or eat at the table. Once JIAS sent a couple to stay with us for 2 months and they left 6 years later! My sister and I slept on the sofa. I liked that part and when I had my own house, that was the “tradition” and warmth I tried to continue. Of my 3 sons, one of them also always has room for one more. I wasn't her favourite child and most probably gave her trouble. But she did the best she could, although that wasn’t always enough for me. However, because of her, I learned to make a Passover Seder and I am grateful for that, although the circumstances that led to that were not “so nice.” After my father-in law passed away my mother knew that I would not be able to attend their seder if my mother-in law was not invited. And yet, she chose not to invite her. It turned out to be my blessing, because that is when I began making the Passover Seder a tradition in our home and invited all kinds of people. It was wonderful although I did miss being with the family. 6 years, later she and my dad apologized and asked me to please come to their seder with my mother-in law. By then it was “too late” as my mother-in law declined to go to my parents’ house – I’m sure there is a lesson in there somewhere!! All this happened before we left for Israel. And that is another story!! From the time I was very young, I was taught responsibility, too often more than should have been expected of me. I think she knew of certain issues and did nothing about it. From all of this, I learned to do the best I could with my kids and I didn't make the same mistakes as a parent, but still feel I could have been a better mother. However, in Israel, I did the same with my kids. I didn't read and write Hebrew and I never could help them with their homework either, nor teach them good study habits. I hope my grandkids will be better off in that respect. My mother did not have an easy life. She left home as a young girl and she was always sick, in and out of hospital. And this was always very stressful. Although she was not the kind of mother one could have a heart to heart with, she gave me more information on occasion than I needed to know. Growing up was not easy, but here I am, 78 years old and still coping especially when the demons raise their ugly heads. Then that too passes. I marched to a different drumbeat than the rest of my family and I still do. We know each other now and just love each other as we are. Life goes on. I am grateful that I had the strength to overcome my bad choices and also that I was written in the good book when I got sick. I love to laugh. And I have and have had for most of my life, people who keep me and love me, just as I am, flaws and all. People do the best they can – and my mother did the best she could. She was my mother.

Dora Wasserman

By Ella & Bryna Wasserman

To the world she was Dora – whose love of the Yiddish language and Yiddishkeit (the culture surrounding Yiddish) founded the Yiddish Theatre in Montreal (now known as the Dora Wasserman Yiddish Theatre). She was accrued the Order of Canada, was inducted as a Chevalier of the Ordre National du Quebec and received a lifetime achievement award of the L'Académie Québécoise du Theatre, from her peers in Quebec. But to Bryna and to me she was Ma (abbreviation of “mame” which is mother in Yiddish)! (We do admit though at times if we called her from across the room ”Ma … Ma!” she didn’t hear us, but if we yelled “DORA” she reacted!) If I didn’t bother her – she didn’t bother me! Bryna was three years younger, more fragile, suffered with different ailments including hospitalization as a baby - so I was the baby sitter. To establish herself as a Yiddish entertainer, including acting and singing Ma was away many nights and days. She was so different from all our friends’ mothers. She didn’t knit, crochet or sew nor bake nor cook… But, we do admit, she was famous for her Russian Borscht which she shared when asked. However, the new generation that joined the “gruppe” felt uncomfortable with our calling it “a shit recipe”! But that’s what it was … in Yiddish “mehn shit arayn” means you just throw in (no measurements) … so you throw in some sugar, some salt, some tomato juice … cabbage etc… “mehn shit arayn”. I think one can understand that nobody ever got it quite right! There were always people in the house… singers, actors, writers, and boarders: Talking, singing, playing the piano (which we had before we even had a bed to sleep in because you can’t live in a house without a piano!) Dora had to have dresses and gowns to entertain and Bryna and I loved to play act and we had lots of beautiful “costumes” with which we could improvise! Our life revolved around stories, songs, plays, dancing, games and going to movies and theatre - anytime and anywhere… One of my “oldest friends” from Esplanade St. said to me recently, “I loved coming to your house, it was always so happy!” Our home was the retreat for the children who came to the Saturday morning Children’s Yiddish Drama Group which met at the Jewish Public Library on Esplanade. The children - of all sizes, colors and ages came and went, they joined in whatever was happening. If it was cold Dora would drive them home and when I got my driver’s license at age 16, I would go along (to take the car up hill)! Truth be told a book could be written just about the Little White Vauxhall! Ta (abbreviation of Yiddish Tatte – father) was always working, either in the factory or at home and whatever Ma said – it was ok with Ta. As far as he was concerned our mother always knew best. When the Montreal Yiddish Theatre was born at the Folk Shule (Jewish People’s School) with the encouragement and cooperation of the principal Mr. Shloime Wiseman, rehearsals were held in the school but many rehearsals were held in our house… and Bryna and I shared Dora “as a mother” to many of actors. The actors rehearsed and then they talked to Dora about their personal aspirations and problems and she always was there with an intelligent ear, an open heart and sound advice… Clever Woman! There was not a movie, concert or a play that we ever missed and many a time our friends were also invited... where did she get the money? Our father worked for a meagerly salary and Dora would be lucky if she got $5 for an evening of entertainment (which Jewish Organization had money to pay?). But we never felt we lacked anything... black bread, a piece of herring, a shot of vodka and you don’t need more, as Dora would say, “vos noch darf mehn!”

And we learned very quickly in life that there is no such thing as TIRED or SICK… you went to school, or to rehearsal or work no matter what! “Tired??? You can sleep tomorrow.” “Sick?? Should I call Paperman’s?” As Brynale recalled – no matter where or what or when the ‘theatre was always with us’. “Once, on an overcrowded streetcar we were standing and a man standing next to us was talking to himself and it was a little scary... So I moved closer to my Ma, hugging her leg and told her why I was frightened. And very casually she reassured me that there was nothing to be afraid of. “Narele it‘s ok.. the man is an actor and he is rehearsing his lines!” And that was that! “You will go back to work and I will stay with the baby”… so she said in 1965 when the first of her 8 grandchildren was born.. and she did! The first, Bradley, was her side kick to all the rehearsals and meetings …. and then with two in tow when Cara, the second grandchild was born… at 6:00a.m.- winter, summer, spring and fall, she would drive Ta to his work, come back so she could have a car and baby sit and ran her life from our home.. She flew / drove back and forth from New Jersey so that Bryna’s children would know her and then came to Israel to see her family on the kibbutz. She never tired of her double life – Dora vs Ma (and then aka Bubby)! In our father’s eyes Dora could do no wrong… he worshipped her, appreciated her and loved her from the day he met her in Khazakstan. That was our life … music, laughter, coffee, people, love, Yiddishkeit! (Arguments, disappointments and other issues – of course … but not important enough to write about). What we remember brings us smiles, laughter and happy tears… and a desire to pass on to our children and grandchildren and future generations what we embraced from our parents. Nothing to do with $$ or material issues… what we got and what so many of our friends got from their parents you cannot buy for money! Always in our heart…

Mother Touching me with Tender Gaze Chanting with Godly blessings, The essence of words half spoken, Knowing wisdom.

Guarding words of suspected agony, Calming decades of torrid existence With triumphant attitude and careful embrace Sheltering me the plight of gusting hurricanes

Protecting, praying, hoping and reaching To angels with both hands Catching mercies from elusive destinations Protesting the promises of hope

Defending with both arms her birth right Murmuring I am of earth I am a river to my son.

A poem by – Domy Reiter Soffer To my mother Rosa.

By Domy Reiter-Soffer

When God Created Mothers by Erma Bombeck

When the good Lord was creating mothers, He was into His sixth day of overtime when the angel appeared and said, “You’re doing a lot of fiddling around on this one.” The Lord said, “Have you read the specs on this order? “She has to be completely washable, but not plastic; “Have 180 movable parts….all replaceable; “Run on black coffee and leftovers; “Have a lap that disappears when she stands up; “A kiss that can cure anything from a broken leg to a disappointed love affair; “And six pairs of hands.” The angel shook her head slowly and said, “Six pairs of hands? No way.” “It’s not the hands that are causing me problems,” said the Lord. “It’s the three pairs of eyes that mothers have to have.” “That’s on the standard model?” asked the angel. The Lord nodded. “One pair that sees through closed doors when she asks, ‘What are you kids doing in there?’ when she already knows. Another here in the back of her head that sees what she shouldn’t but what she has to know, and of course the ones here in front that can look at a child when he goofs up and say, ‘I understand and I love you,’ without so much as uttering a word.” “Lord,” said the angel, touching His sleeve gently, “come to bed. Tomorrow –-“ “I can’t.” said the Lord. “I’m so close to creating something so close to myself. Already I have one who heals herself when she is sick…can feed a family of six on one pound of hamburger…and can get a nineyear-old to stand under a shower.” The angel circled the model of a mother very slowly and sighed. “It’s too soft.” “But tough!” said the Lord excitedly. “You cannot imagine what this mother can do or endure.” “Can it think?” “Not only think, but it can reason and compromise,” said the Creator. Finally the angel bent over and ran her finger across the cheek. “There’s a leak,” she pronounced. “I told you that you were trying to put too much into this model.” “It’s not a leak,” said the Lord. “It’s a tear.” “What’s it for?” “It’s for joy, sadness, disappointment, pain, loneliness and pride.” “You are a genius,” said the angel. The Lord looked somber. “I didn’t put it there.”

Reprinted by permission of The Aaron M. Priest Literary Agency, Inc