Monthly Archives: November 2025

“A tiny person with a big heart:” Losing our Bubbe on Thanksgiving

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Thanksgiving has always been our favorite holiday. When we lived in Clifton Park, we celebrated for many years by running the Troy Turkey Trot in the morning and then joining the family for dinner at Larry’s cousins’ home in Argyle, New York. Our most memorable Thanksgiving was also our saddest. In 1974, two and a half months after we married, Larry’s beloved grandmother passed away.

Bubbe Rose was the matriarch of Larry’s family. Her tiny stature — she was under five feet and weighed less than one hundred pounds — belied her powerful presence. Everyone loved her.

Bubbe Rose was instrumental in making sure Larry and I got married. We had been seeing each other for a little over two months, but Bubbe was getting impatient and decided to intercede.

“So what is your relationship with this woman?” Bubbe Rose asked her only grandson.

“We’re dating,” Larry responded. 

“You’ve dated long enough!” Bubbe said. “She’s a nice girl. Marry her.”

Fortunately for Bubbe, Larry and I didn’t waste much more time. We got engaged on Rosh Hashanah but waited to announce our plans after the Yom Kippur break-the-fast at the Shapiro’s Saratoga Springs home. As the holiday coincided that year with Larry’s father’s birthday, we held off until Ernie blew out the candles on his cake.

“I have a special present for you this year, Dad,” Larry said.

“Another stupid tie?” Larry’s sister Anita chimed in.

“No, I am giving you a daughter-in-law. Marilyn and I are engaged!” The family was thrilled, but no one was happier than Bubbe Rose. 

Rose [née Slominsky] Hurwitz was born in 1894 in what the family believes was Russia. At a young age, she emigrated to the United States and settled in Syracuse. There she met and married Mose Hurwitz, a coal merchant. Their daughter (and my future mother-in-law) Doris was born in 1920; their son Asher was born eight years later. Rose was a true balabusta, a competent and skilled homemaker, and her home became the gathering place for family and friends for the Jewish holidays. Doris and Ernie were married in the Hurwitz living room on June 20, 1942.

Bubbe’s home in Syracuse remained the heart of the family throughout the next two decades. Immediately following their wedding, Ernie reported for duty at his army assignment in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. Doris joined him but returned to Syracuse to deliver their first child, Anita, a year later. Five years later now living in Schuylerville, New York, Doris returned to Syracuse for the birth of their second child, Larry. Mose died less than a year later, and Asher took over the coal business. In 1950, Ernie’s mother Celia died, making Rose their only surviving grandmother.

When Ernie was called back to service during the Korean War, Doris, along with the two children, waited out his return at Bubbe’s home. Once Ernie was discharged, the family moved to Saratoga Springs, where Ernie resumed his pre-military career running Shapiro’s of Schuylerville. Every Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur was spent in Syracuse, along with frequent visits.

By the early sixties, Doris and Ernie had added two more children to their family: Marilyn in 1953 and Carole in 1959. Rather than Doris and Ernie packing up the six Shapiros for the drive to Syracuse, Bubbe Rose and Asher came to Saratoga Springs for most of the holidays and for at least one weekend a month. If the family couldn’t be in Syracuse, Bubbe and Asher brought Syracuse with them: baked goods from Snowflake Pastry Shoppe; white fish and cold cuts from one of the city’s kosher delis; and back issues of the Syracuse Herald-Journal so Doris could catch up with her hometown news.

Larry has two favorite stories about Bubbe’s legendary cooking skills. On March 29, 1959, Larry and Asher watched their beloved Syracuse Nationals defeat the Boston Celtics in the sixth game of the playoffs in the city’s War Memorial auditorium. (Unfortunately the Nats lost the critical seventh game, a loss Larry still remembers with regret.) The next day, Larry came down with the flu, necessitating his staying in Syracuse for the following week. Bubbe Rose believed that the only way to cure him was to feed him endlessly. 

In 1971, Larry was accepted to graduate school at Syracuse University, and he moved in with Bubbe Rose and Asher. He probably did not weigh more than 126 pounds when he arrived. Along with breakfast and dinner, Bubbe insisted on packing him elaborate lunches, which Larry shared with his envious fellow students. In less than two months, he had gained sixteen pounds, some of the weight taken off before he graduated. By the time we met at a Purim party in March 1973, he had settled into his adult weight..

We were married on September 8, 1974. Bubbe Rose attended the wedding, looking beautiful in a long pink gown. On November 23, she suffered a stroke. Doris immediately went to Syracuse to be with her. As the week progressed, her condition worsened; by Wednesday, she was unconscious and unresponsive. On Thanksgiving Day, November 28, Larry and I drove to Syracuse to see her for what we knew was the last time. We walked into the hospital room, quietly shared with her that we were there, and told her how much we loved her. To our surprise, she reached out and gently touched our hands. Moments later, she passed away. In a strange way, we got to spend one last holiday with her—a holiday we will always remember.

Was Rose Hurwitz a remarkable woman? She did not write any books. She did not make any scientific discoveries. She was not a movie star. To her children and their siblings, however, she was as remarkable as anyone who had ever lived.

How do you honor a person who meant so much to you? You pass her story onto your children and grandchildren. You have a daughter, a granddaughter, and niece who all have the middle name of Rose. And you always remember that Thanksgiving Day when she touched your hand for the last time.

Bubbe Rose front and center at our wedding

Everywhere a sign….

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I am not a fan of the supernatural. Except for Ghost (I love the chemistry between Demi Moore and Patrick Swayze!) and Sixth Sense (What a great ending!), I shy away from any movie that smacks of the occult. And while I respect Stephen King as a writer, I rarely read his best-selling horror novels.But there is one area in which I AM a believer: signs from the other side. 

Several times in my life, I have felt that I have had “visits” from those I had loved and lost. Six weeks after my mother-in-law passed away in 1994, I strongly felt her presence at my daughter’s bat mitzvah six weeks later, literally seeing her sitting on the bima and smiling as Julie ran the service. Thirty-six years later, soon after my mother had passed away, I woke up in the middle of the night feeling someone stroke my shoulder and smelling the powerful scent of Bengay. No, Larry had not touched me, and we didn’t even have the topical analgesic heat rub that my father used in our house. I was convinced it was a sign from my parents that they were together and that they were okay.

So, it was not a surprise that I believe my beloved sister Laura, who passed away on August 29,2025, has sent messages to me in the past two months. Yes, many would write them off as coincidences. I know better. 

On September 6, 2025, I sponsored the oneg, refreshments served after the Friday night service, at Congregation Shalom Aleichem in my sister’s memory. I had spent the week baking cookies, brownies, and challah but waited until Friday morning to order the cake. When I called Publix, the bakery told me it was too late for a special order; I would have to use what they had in the store. The two choices were one with colorful balloons and one unadorned white sheet cake. White? How boring! I texted my niece/Laura’s daughter to ask what lettering I should use for the cake. “What’s her favorite color?” I asked.

“White,” Jen wrote back. 

“OMG!” I wrote back. “That’s the only cake they had left!”. Coincidence? Maybe? Or a sign??

The next “sign” occurred when Larry and I traveled Lake Champlain to spend time with my two surviving siblings and their spouses at my brother Jay and his wife Leslie’s home. Fortuitously, Laura had sold her fully furnished cottage, only a mile down the road, a month before her death, and my sister Bobbie was getting it ready for the October closing. I took one last walk-through and took a few items to bring home. A “Wine Down” towel (Laura LOVED her white Zinfandel). An apron our mother had sewn for Laura decades before. Her favorite flannel shirt. And a green floral tote bag. After throwing out some tissues and a plastic bag filled with Tylenol, I switched the essentials from my regular pocketbook to Laura’s tote.

The next day, I was rummaging through the tote to find my comb. Deep in a side pocket were two pictures: one of six-month-old Laura smiling from her baby carriage; the second, a formal shot of Laura and Will, her significant other, who had passed away 18 months earlier. “Look what I just found!” I said with tears in my eyes. “Laura is telling us that she is happily reunited with Will, the love of her life!”

One last sign: Soon after trip to New York, I called Dan Dembling, the architect and president of Capital District Jewish Holocaust Memorial, Inc, to ask if the governor had signed the bill to establish and create the New York State Holocaust Memorial. When he said it was still being reviewed and considered by the executive chamber team, I told him that I would knead prayers into my weekly challahs that the bill would be passed quickly, in part selfishly so that I could complete the story I wrote about the project this past spring. Dan then asked me a favor: Please knead in prayers for his mother, who had passed away Friday, August 18, at the age 87 years old.

“I’m sorry to hear this, Dan,” I said. “Was she sick?” 

“No,” Dan said. “She was doing great, but she came down with what appeared to be pneumonia and was gone ten days later.”

“Oh my God,” I said. “My sister passed away on Friday, August 29, with the same scenario! I promise I will knead prayers for her when I bake my challah! What was your mother’s name?”

“Frances,” Dan said.

I gasped. “That was my mother’s name! My three-year-old granddaughter was named after her…Frances June. We call her Frannie.”

“What a coincidence!” Dan said. “I have an interesting story as to how I got my name. When my grandmother was single, she was the secretary for her synagogue. During her time working there she also typed manuscripts for the rabbi’s wife, Sadie Rose Weilerstein, a prolific author who wrote several Jewish children’s books. One book was What Danny Did, a collection of short stories about how the protagonist celebrated each of the Jewish holidays. Growing up, that was my mother’s favorite book. When I was born, my mother named me Daniel after Weilerstein’s character. I have an original first edition of the book on my shelf, and I will text you a picture of the book and Sadie’s inscription to my grandmother that is on the first inside page.”

We said our goodbyes, and minutes later, Dan, as promised, sent me a picture of the old book and the inside leaf. It read:

To Miss Spieler

In sincere appreciation

from

Sadie Rose Weilerstein

March 25, 1928

 MARCH 25, 1928, exactly fourteen years to the day before Laura was born. Another message from heaven that Laura is okay? I don’t doubt it.

“While we may lose a person we love, their love is not lost to us,” Mary Louis Kelly writes in It. Goes. So. Fast. “It just simply finds its way in different channels.” Whether it be coincidences or “signs” or b’shert, the love we share has found a life of its own, its own channels. May Laura’s memory be a blessing. 

The oneg in Laura’s memory