Category Archives: Faith

Witness to History: Ruth Gruber

In 2019, my husband Larry and I were browsing the shelves of Book Passages, an independent bookstore in San Francisco’s Ferry Building. Larry held up a book he had found in the history section: Haven–The Dramatic Story of 1,000 World War II Refugees and How They Came to America.

“Do you remember the exhibit at the New York State Museum regarding the only Jewish refugees brought to the United States during World War II?” he asked me.

“Yes,” I said. My mind flashed back to walking through the Albany museum’s exhibit with its pictures, displays, and sign boards depicting a group of refugees who were housed in Fort Ontario (Oswego, NY).

“This book is a first-hand account by the woman responsible for getting the refugees to the United States—Ruth Gruber,” he explained on his way to pay for the book.

Six years and much reading later, Larry and I agree: Ruth Gruber, American journalist, photographer, writer, humanitarian, and United States government official, is one of the most interesting people who ever lived.

Gruber was born in 1911 in Brooklyn, the fourth of five children of Russian-Jewish immigrants. She graduated from high school at 15 years old. After earning an undergraduate degree from New York University at 18, she won a fellowship at the University of Wisconsin, where she obtained a master’s degree in German and English literature. She subsequently received her doctorate from the University of Cologne in Germany at 21, making her at the time the youngest person with a doctorate.

After returning to the United States, Gruber became a correspondent for the New York Herald. The only reporter to be allowed to travel across the Soviet Arctic, she saw firsthand how people lived there and witnessed the Siberian Gulag.

During World War II, she worked for the Department of the Interior where, as a special assistant to U.S. Secretary Harold L. Ickes, she became its field representative in Alaska. In June 1944, she was to undertake what she later considered “the most important assignment” of her life.

Reading the Washington Post at breakfast, Gruber, then 33, learned that President Franklin D. Roosevelt had signed an executive order allowing 1,000 refugees gathered in Italy, 90% Jewish, to be admitted to the United States. After years of this country’s refusal to allow Jews to escape the Nazi horrors of World War II, this was the only government authorized attempt to bring European Jews to America under the protection of the U.S.

Rejoicing that something was finally being done, Gruber rushed into Ickes’ office to express her concern for their well-being.

“Mr. Secretary, these refugees are going to be terrified — traumatized,” Gruber recalled in a 2010 interview in the Sunday Telegraph of London. “Someone needs to fly over and hold their hand.”

“You’re right,” Ickes responded. “I’m going to send you.” The fact that she was young, Jewish, and could speak both German and Yiddish made her an ideal person for the job. Oswego was chosen as a location for housing he during World War II primarily because of the availability of Fort Ontario, a decommissioned military base, which was converted into a temporary refugee shelter.

After flying to Italy, Gruber boarded the Army troop transport USNS Henry Gibbins and greeted the refugees. “I would like … to know who you are, what kind of people you are. What you’ve gone through to survive,” she recounted in her 2000 book Haven: The Dramatic Story of 1,000 World War II Refugees and How They Came to America “You are the living witnesses.”

Throughout the two-week Atlantic crossing to the United States, Gruber proved to be a calming, empathetic listener and a communicator and advocate for the refugees who came from 18 countries. She intervened in disputes, taught English, cared for the seasick, and comforted the refugees, some who had miraculously escaped the Nazis and others who had spent time in concentration camps.

During the voyage, “Mother Ruth,” as she was often affectionately called, became a witness herself, listening to and writing down many of the refugees’ stories. “Get all the terror,” said Dr. Henry Macliach, a doctor from Yugoslavia. “We lived it. We will live with it for the rest of our lives. But you are the first one we can tell it to. Yes, write it down so the world will know.”

On Aug. 3, 1944, the ship arrived safely in New York City, and Gruber accompanied the refugees to Oswego. Initially, the site of the cold, desolate fort surrounded by barbed wire brought back memories and fears of what many had faced in Europe. Through Gruber’s guidance and the support of many others, including the residents of Oswego, government officials, and even Eleanor Roosevelt, the place became a “haven” from the ravages of war.

“Thus I became a witness and participant,” Gruber wrote. “I experienced their joys and pain, rejoicing in their marriages and love affairs, sharing pride in their children, mourning those who died by their own hand or by acts of God.”

FDR’s initial executive order stated that the refugees were “guests” of the United States under the condition that they must return to their origin countries after the war. In late 1945, the federal government changed its mind and allowed all who wished to stay to become U.S. citizens. The final chapter of Haven lists the successes of the new U.S. citizens, who would establish careers in many fields, including medicine, technology, education, law, business, and the arts.

In recent years, New York legislators in both the U.S. House and Senate have been working to designate Fort Ontario and its associated museum, Safe Haven, as a National Historical Park. In 2018, Senator Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY) passed a bill directing the Secretary of the Interior to conduct a special resource study, the first step in the process to designate a site as a unit of the National Park System. In 2024, the SRS was finalized and concluded that the two-acre portion of Fort Ontario representing the fort’s use as a World-War II European refugee shelter meets all necessary criteria. The bill passed the Senate but failed to become law. In February 2025, Gillibrand, Senator Charles Schumer (D-NY), and Representative Claudia Tenney (R-NY) reintroduced the bipartisan bill.

“The Holocaust Refugee Shelter at Fort Ontario was a place of safety and hope during a dark moment in history, and it deserves recognition in the National Park System,” said Senator Gillibrand. “I am proud to once again be introducing this legislation to achieve this goal and am determined to work across the aisle to get it done.”

Gruber was profoundly impacted by her participation in the refugees’ “journey out of despair and death, to hope and life and light.” Although she was born a Jew, she became a Jew. “I knew my life would forever be inextricably interlocked with Jews,” she wrote in Haven.

The rest of her life was a testament to that commitment. After World War II, she witnessed the scene at the Port of Haifa where Jewish refugees on board the ship Exodus were not allowed to enter Palestine. She then followed them to France and Germany. While on a ship off the coast of France, the refugees conducted a hunger strike. The only reporter allowed on the ship to report firsthand on the unfolding story was Ruth Gruber. Her book, Exodus 1947, became the basis for the 1960 film Exodus. She later covered Israel’s war for independence. She became Ben-Gurion’s friend and conducted a first in-person interview when he became Israel’s first president.

In 1951, Gruber married, had two children, and continued her journalistic endeavors. In 1985, at 74 years old, she visited Jewish villages in Ethiopia and chronicled the rescue of the Ethiopian Jews to Israel. Throughout her life, she chronicled her adventures through her photography, articles, and 18 books. Gruber died at 105 on November 17, 2016.

“I had two tools to fight injustice — words and images, my typewriter and my camera,” she was quoted in her New York Times obituary. “I just felt that I had to fight evil, and I’ve felt like that since I was 20 years old. And I’ve never been an observer. I have to live a story to write it.”

A typewriter. A camera. Empathy. With my iPhone camera nearby, I click away on my computer keyboard, hoping each of my stories displays the same empathy Ruth Gruber showed throughout her life. She is not only the most interesting person I’ve ever encountered. Ruth is my hero and my role model. I’m so grateful to have learned her story.

Originally published May 11, 2025.

Making a difference in the new year

3 Replies

This article was originally written for Rosh Hashanah 5785 (September 2024). It may be a little late for the High Holy Days, but the message is also valuable as we begin the secular year of of 2025.

The High Holy Days is a time for us to turn inward, to reflect on our lives, not only where we have been but also where we hope to go in the coming year. So much of the world needs our help. What can one person do? How can one person make a difference?

In the Pirkei Avot, Rabbi Tarfon writes,“It is not incumbent upon you to complete the work but neither are you at liberty to desist from it.” That quote has been in my email signature for several years and serves as a reminder to me and those that read it that we can all can make a difference. No, we cannot save the world. But our inability to do EVERYTHING does not give us a pass on doing nothing.

This truth is found in the often-told starfish parable. An old man is walking along the beach in which hundreds of starfish have been washed along the shore during high tide. As he walked, he came across a little girl who is throwing the starfish back into the ocean. “You realize that you will not be able to make much of a difference,” the old man tells the little girl. She picked up another starfish and threw it as far into the water as she could. “I made a difference to that one.”

It reminds me of “starfish” moment. On a recent trip to the beach, Larry and I were walking along the edge of the water. As Larry was enjoying the waves and the birds, I was picking up garbage and sticking it in a plastic bag I brought with me for that purpose. A broken styrofoam cup. A short length of cord. A lone flipflop. And a dozen or so plastic caps from water bottles.

“You can’t pick up every bit of litter on the beach,” Larry said.

“Yes. But I can do something!”

Yes, Larry was right. I am not going to pick up every piece of litter on a beach. But I can at least fill up a plastic bag with some of it.

Giving away my freshly baked challahs also gives me a chance to do something . Early into the pandemic, I started baking three or four challahs a week. At least one of the challahs went to someone in our community who needed cheering. The first one went to a friend whose wife was in a memory unit at the hospital. Week after week, we delivered challahs to people who had lost their spouse, who faced illness; who got bad news from their families. My small challahs were small tokens of love and caring. My challah baking has slowed down in recent months, and I usually make extras to tuck in the freezer to pull out as needed. It just filled my need to do SOMETHING!

For the past ten years, my writing has been a way for me to feel as if I am making a difference. Initially my writing focused on my family stories. In the past eight years, I have become captivated by telling other people’s stories, the lives of Holocaust survivors. So much has been written already: fictional accounts, memoirs, graphic novels, poetry, plays. Many of have become classics: Elie Wiesel’s Night;Prima Levi’s Man’s Search for Meaning; William Styron’s Sophie’s Choice, and Anne Frank’s Diary of a Young Girl. Then why do I continue to interview Holocaust survivors and their families?

Writing these stories allows me to do my part to make the world never forget. Each story is a statement against Holocaust denial. And having each story published has brought feelings of pride, comfort, and maybe some peace to the subjects and their family. Following Rabbi Tarfon’s advice, my inability to write everything doesn’t mean I cannot continue to do something.

And what happens when one person joins others to make a difference? Fortunately, I am surrounded by people in my 55+ community who are also doing their part to help people in the greater Poinciana area. Solivita has over 200 clubs, and many of them support the local community. The Do Unto Others Initiative (DUO) has raised over $260,000 in 11 years to support the work of the St. Rose of Lima Food Pantry. Another club, Solivita Friends Helping Those In NEED, provides similar support for St. Vincent de Paul St. Ann’s Food Pantry in Haines City. Solivita Friends of Elementary Education Schools (SoFEEs) provides nourishment, school supplies and seasonally appropriate clothing to local elementary schools. In the past nineteen years, Stonegate Women’s Golf Association (SWGA) has been able to provide over $300k to local community charities. The Solivita Performing Arts Council (SPAC, Inc.) has raised over $139,000 since its inception, providing grants to help local schools purchase and maintain instruments, fund band and choir concerts, produce school theatrical productions, fund thespian workshops and support art projects. SOLABILITY, a club consisting of individuals of varying abilities, provides activities accessible to all. Members of the Butterfly Club provide financial support for our beautiful butterfly garden; volunteers keep it weeded and in control. Our Book Circle, which has over 30 book clubs under its umbrella, donates books and financial help to Polk County Schools. The Shalom Club makes an annual contribution to the Perlman Food Pantry or Jewish organizations supporting local families. The organizations above represent only a small sample of ways individuals have joined together to help those in need.

So, yes, one person can make a difference. Wishes for a sweet, healthy 5785. May it be a year in which each of us make a difference.

Solivita’s butterfly garden

Published in Rosh Hashanah 2024 issues in Capital District New York’s The Jewish World and Orlando’s Heritage Florida Jewish News.

Solivita is a 55+ community for active adults in Poinciana, Florida.

Do Something! The Gift of Giving Back

On Passover miracles

6 Replies

“There are only two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle.” Albert Einstein

The story of Passover, more than any other Jewish holiday, is all about miracles. A burning push. A staff that turns into a serpent. Ten plaques, each one worse than the previous one. The parting of the Red Sea. Manna coming down from heaven. Moses receiving the Torah.

I have experienced what I consider miracles in my own life. Meeting Larry at a Purim party over fifty years ago. Holding our son and, three years later, our daughter, in our arms. Seeing flashes of ourselves and our children in our three beautiful grandchildren.

Just this past month, I experienced my own mini-miracle. On my fiftieth birthday, Larry gave me a pair of diamond earringsOnce I had second holes pierced into my ears, I put them on and only took them off to clean them. About ten years ago, I lost one of them when the backing came off. Six months and one earring replacement later, Larry found it when he swept our garage. I happily chalked it off to an amazing stroke of good fortune.

I thought my luck ran out on Friday, March 31, 2024. While eating dinner at a restaurant with friends, I realized that I had lost one of my diamond earring again. I had no idea when and where. In the middle of the night? During an aerobic session at the Palms, our community’s recreation center? An hour later, while doing laps in the community pool? That evening, walking into the restaurant? Or anytime in the last week, the last time I remember feeling it on my earlobe?

I made a couple of phone calls to the appropriate places and did a thorough sweep of my house, car, and garage. I then resigned myself to ever seeing it again. I tried to be philosophical. It’s only stuff, I told myself. Friends had loss their entire house to a fire a year ago and were yet to even have a roof. Other friends had lost spouses and—worse yet—children to illness and accidents and suicide. I certainly was going to get past a lost earring.

Exactly a week to almost the moment that I felt that empty space on my earlobe, as we members of Congregation Shalom were settling into our seats for the Shabbat services, my phone rang. “Marilyn, this is Anita at the Palms. I want to let you know that we found your earring!” A cleaning person, who was ironically on her last night on the job before moving an hour away, found my earring stuck in her mop. When I picked it up the next day, the backing was obviously missing and the post was bent. But my diamond was still intact. Luck? No, I consider someone finding my earring—and turning it in to lost and found— a miracle.

More importantly, through my writing, I have been able to share stories of other people’s miracles. My great aunt Lillian Waldman was fired from her job at the Triangle shirtwaist factory a week before a tragic fire snuffed out the lives of 146 garment workers. Born and raised in Bialystok, Poland, Harry Oshinsky faced innumerable obstacles as he navigated a three year journey over three continents, arriving in Brooklyn, New York in 1916.

Along with immigrants’ stories, I also shared miraculous stories from World War II and the Holocaust. United States Army soldier Melvin Weissman survived a plane crash and the subsequent sixteen months in a German POW camp, using his knowledge of Yiddish to provide needed information to his fellow prisoners. Galina “Golda” Goldin Gelfer and her father spent two years hiding in a Russian forest with Soviet partisans, living as did the real-life Jews portrayed in the 2008 movie Defiance. Seven-year-old Estelle Feld Nadel, hours away from being deported to Auschwitz after being captured by Nazis, escaped from a prison cell and found shelter and refuge in the home of Righteous Gentiles. By his own account, Albert Kitmacher credited his survival during the Holocaust with five miracles that snatched him out of the jaws of death. Eva Geringer Schloss, along with her mother, survived Auschwitz/Birkenau and recently held her first great-grandchild.

As I write this, parts of the country are now experiencing a total eclipse. Scientists can provide a logical, calculated explanation, but even they were celebrating this once-in-a-lifetime moment. Dr. Charles Liu, Graduate College/Staten Island, called the totality of the April 8, 2024, event nothing short of a ridiculous coincidence of cosmic proportions. The astrophysicist, an award winning educator who hosts the LIUniverse podcast, offered up on YouTube his own rendition of a Cat Stevens song: “We are going to see a moon shadow, moon shadow, moon shadow. Looking and laughing in a moon shadow.”

Moses and the Israelites may have experienced a solar eclipse through the ninth plague. God tells Moses, “ Hold out your arm toward the sky that there my be a darkness upon the land of Egypt, a darkness that can be touched.” (Exodus 21) to stretch forth his hand that a darkness might be placed over Egypt, a darkness that could be felt.” The darkness encompassed the Egyptians for three days, but the Israels “enjoyed light in the dwellings.” In those circumstances, the eclipse must have been viewed it as a miracle, a message from God.

No matter what, this Passover, I will hope for miracles. I hope that my friends who have been diagnosed with terminal cancer will go into complete remission. I hope that scientists will find a way to deal with climate change and global warning. And most of all, I hope for the miracle of peace in the Middle East and the world. Shalom. Chag Sameach.

https://www.gc.cuny.edu/news/why-2024-eclipse-will-be-epic

Tanakh. The Jewish Publication Society. Philadelphia1985.

Photo Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons. Moses and the Children of Israel Crossing the Red Sea, c.1855, by Henri Frédéric Schopin

Keep Calm and Bake Challah is on Amazon!!

Guess Who Got Covid?

3 Replies

Note: As I post this article, Larry and I had just finished up our Special Olympics Florida state meet with our track and field team. We had a wonderful, exhausting, and incredibly rewarding two days with all of our “stars.” In this article, I reflect back on last year’s 2022 SOFL State Games and its aftermath.

Guess who contracted COVID?

After months and months of being careful, I had pressed my luck. As Special Olympics Track and Field coaches, Larry and I attended the Florida State Special Olympics game with eleven athletes from Osceola County on May 20 and 21, 2022. All of our events, which took place in the ESPN Wide World of Sports Complex in Orlando, were supposed to be outdoors. Plans changed quickly when torrential rains and strong winds swept in moments after we had parked our car. Our team, along with several other teams from a variety of sports, spent the first two hours sheltering in the Advent Health Building lobby. The “close encounters of the super-spreading kind” happened again that night when rain delayed and then finally resulted in the cancellation of opening ceremonies. Although Larry opted not to wear a mask, I made sure I had my KN95 covering my face whenever I was inside. Outside, however, I eschewed protection, hoping for the best.

Fortunately, the weather improved the second day of competition. By Saturday afternoon, however, I was exhausted. I tried to hydrate, but I was totally wiped. “Maybe I’m getting too old for this,” I thought to myself. Or maybe I was just feeling the effects of two sleep-deprived nights, two mornings of 6 a.m. alarms, and my putting on at least eight miles corralling our athletes to various venues in 90 degree heat and 90% humidity.

By the time our last athlete had claimed his second place medal in the 400 meter walk, even Larry, who had shown no signs of slowing down, was ready to get out of the heat and go home. We stopped for a late lunch, drove home and collapsed on our couch. After a slow walk on Sunday morning, we went to Publix for our second booster shot. Then we spent the rest of Sunday with a repeat performance on the couch.

On Monday, I attempted my usual walk but felt as if I were plowing through mud. By Tuesday afternoon, exhaustion was accompanied by congestion and a runny nose. “Just a head cold,” I thought. It took me until Wednesday to administer the home test.

You know how it usually takes 15 minutes to see the results? Forget that. Within thirty-seconds of putting the disgusting drops into the assigned spot on the test strip, the “positive” line showed up.

“I have COVID,” I texted my husband, who was at a ROMEO [Retired Old Men Eating Out] luncheon. Unfortunately, he didn’t read the text and only learned the news on a phone call when he was driving home. His passenger quickly put on a mask. Sorry Rich! That is the proverbial “Shutting the barn door after the horse has bolted.” Fortunately Larry and he didn’t come down with it.

I never have been a good “patient” in that I have no patience for being sick. When Larry came home from his outing, he found me on the computer, a box of Kleenex and a cup of tea by my side, interviewing someone for my Holocaust Torah story while typing away. “Get off the damn computer, put on a mask, and go lie down,” he told me.

Exhausted, congested, and realizing that I couldn’t leave the house anyway, I gave up. I spent the next three days sacked out on the couch catching up on Outlander. Note: There is no better way to veg out than spending twenty hours with Jamie and Claire as they romped their way through pre-Revolutionary War America.

Later than evening, Larry made dinner for both of us, something he did every night for the next eight nights. And to top it off, he made me an ice cream sundae every night to help “soothe your scratchy throat.” At least that is the way we justified 350 calories of pure bliss. Larry, meanwhile, was earning enough “Best Husband in the World” points for a lifetime.

By Sunday, I was feeling well enough to resume my work on the Holocaust Torah story. I even had enough energy to take a short (masked) walk and to water my drooping houseplants. As was the case for so many others who contracted “the plague,” however, it took me another two weeks to get over the fatigue.

Do I have any regrets about going to the Special Olympics State meet? Not one bit. Seeing our athletes competing in their events, coming down off the awards platform, finding their way to their parents, and beaming with pride, brings so much joy it was worth spending the two days in a sure fired “petri dish.”And how could I not hug my athletes when they finished a great race or threw the softball farther than they ever had or showed me their medal?

So where do we go from here? Yes, I may get COVID again, but having it may have helped me build up some immunity. Larry was spared this round but will he contract it in the future? Only time will tell.

On March 25, 2020, Jewish World published my first “pandemic” story. “As I write this, we are in the second week of our own national crisis,” I stated. “Larry and I worry about our friends and family—especially our own children.” Over the ensuing months, I wrote about how COVID and its forced locked-down impacted us: our first sad Passover seder for two; our hours and hours on Zoom; our trimmed down wardrobe (on my not slimming down body); our hopes for a more sensible approach to COVID with a new president; our tentative steps back into the world with masks and bottles of hand sanitizer and vaccines and boosters; our joy in finally reuniting with our children and grandchildren, and, of course, my baking dozens of loaves of challahs I baked throughout the long months.

It is now time to put all these stories, published every two weeks in Jewish World, into a book. Keep Calm and Bake Challah: Surviving the Pandemic, Politics, Pratfalls, and Other of Life’s Problems will be finished and available on Amazon in June 2023.

And it is time to move on. Yes, we will test before visiting our children. Yes, we will mask when necessary, especially in unavoidable crowded venues including planes and other public transportation. Meanwhile, I will continue to keep calm, bake challah. and learn to live in the “new normal” in the Age of Covid.

A version of this article originally appeared in the Jewish World News, a bi-weekly subscription-based newspaper in upstate New York.

Special Olympics Florida state meet before I knew what hit me!

Today I am a woman: My adult bat mitzvah

2 Replies

I am publishing this on the thirtieth anniversary of my adult bat mitzvah, which was held at Congregation Beth Shalom, Clifton Park, NY.

My education at Congregation Beth Shalom in Plattsburg, New York, was strong in Jewish history and traditions, but it was very weak in Hebrew. If I wanted to learn the language needed to follow the service, I either had to attend twice during the week, difficult with its one hour round trip, or I had to be preparing for a bat mitzvah, not something females did in the 1960’s in Upstate New York.

Our father had grown up in New York City in the Depression. His bar mitzvah ceremony was celebrated with several other boys in his Eastern Parkway synagogue, including the president of the shul’s son. The honor conferred on this golden boy was his reading most of the Torah portion and the haftorah and giving a speech while the remaining b’na mitzvoth were left with very short prayers and shorter participation. The party consisted of some sponge cake and wine back at my father’s house followed by playing sandlot baseball.

As a result of my father’s experience, his son was to have everything denied the father. Jay’s bar mitzvah was a huge celebration. Over 120 people were invited to the service, including relatives we had never seen before and never saw again. Immediately following the service, my parents hosted a lovely reception at the Cumberland Hotel in Plattsburg. We all got new clothes for the party; I remember how special I felt in the “balloon” dress that was popular in 1961.

As was the tradition in our reform synagogue, one’s Jewish education officially ended at sixteen years old with a Sunday morning confirmation service . My class consisted of three girls: Susan Singer, Andrea Siegel, and me, none of us who had had bat mitzvahs. We recited prayers and gave speeches. Mine was on anti-Semitism. How in the world my teacher ever encouraged that topic and how I ever summarized its history in less than ten minutes I’ll never know, but I felt proud in my white robe and mortar board cap. A reception followed. What I remember most was how one of my teachers gave Susan and Andrea cards with cash gifts and completely ignored my presence. Not the sweetest memories to carry from my simchas.

Despite the snub,I loved learning about Jewish history and traditions. I attended classes with the grade behind me and even helped out in the primary grade classrooms. Once I left for college at Albany State, I attended services for Rosh Hosanna and Yom Kippur at Beth Emeth, but I was not involved in Hillel nor did I take any classes in Judaic Studies that were beginning to be offered.

It was not until my children were born that I began to be interested in studying Judaic topics again. Over the years, I took some basic Hebrew and playbook Hebrew classes so I could better follow the service. In the years I stayed home with my children, I seriously considered going back to school for a second master’s in Jewish Women’s Studies. When time constraints ruled out classes, I began a self-tutorial, reading books by Anzia Yezierska, Tillie Olsen,Cynthia Ozick, Grace Paley, and other noted Jewish female writers. This all went on the back burner when I returned to a full-time teaching position in 1986.

In 1993, however, Flo Miller, one of Congregation Beth Shalom’s teachers, suggested that I take a Haftorah trope class that summer with two other interested women. The four of us met each week around Flo’s kitchen table. By the end of the summer, each of us had chosen our own Haftorah for our adult bat mitzvah. I chose Mishpatim, the Torah portion whose date for reading that year fell on the week of my father’s ninetieth birthday to honor him and, coincidentally in the year of my forty-third birthday to reaffirm my link to Judaism on what would have been the thirtieth anniversary year of my own bat mitzvah. Over the next several months, my lunch hours at work consisted of a quick bite and at least two practice sessions with the Haftorah. Once a week, Flo would call me on the phone, and I would again read the Haftorah to show her how well I had progressed. By winter, Flo, Rabbi Harry Levin and I decided that I would also read two Torah portions at the service.

My bat mitzvah, which was held on February 4, 1993, was not a huge affair. My parents and Larry’s parents could not come from Florida, and my siblings were too spread out across the country. Many members of the the synagogue attended, however, along with Larry’s sisters and brother-in-laws and a few close friends, I A Kiddish followed, and then my family and friends went to a Chinese restaurant for a celebratory meal.Meanwhile, I taped a full rendition of the Haftorah and Torah readings and sent it to my father for his birthday.

I would love to say that the experience resulted in many more Torah and Haftorah readings at Congregation Beth Shalom. Unfortunately, learning Hebrew did not come easy to me. It never flowed off my tongue, and even though I enjoyed the musicality of the tropes, I continued to stumble over the Hebrew letters and vowels. My next experience reciting Haftorah for a service proved to be even more difficult for me than the first, and I have not tried again. I continue to enjoy attending services and have high respect for the congregants who volunteer to read Haftorah and Torah portions. And through Jewish book clubs and my own independent reading, I will continue to study and appreciate my chosen faith.

A version of this article originally appeared in the Jewish World News, a bi-weekly subscription-based newspaper in upstate New York, in the August 20, 2015, issue.

Happy Japchae Day!

2 Replies

Thanksgiving is hands down my favorite holiday. I love celebrating with a large group of family and friends. I love reflecting on all for which I am thankful. And I love foods that we traditionally load onto our holiday table: the turkey (especially tasty when eaten while it is being carved), Ocean Spray whole cranberry sauce, my mother’s stuffing recipe, Marilyn’s World Famous Chocolate Chip Cookies, Anita’s rugelach, Adam’s vodka infused apple pie, and Hannah’s japchae.

Wait! Japchae? What is a Korean recipe that features translucent sweet potato noodles, thinly sliced beef, and vegetables doing on our Thanksgiving table?

For many years, Larry and I spent Thanksgiving with our cousins Freya and Randy. We literally had to travel over the river and through the woods to their Washington County home—which I referred to lovingly in Yiddish as in ekvelt— to share the day with at times over 30 family members and friends. Their daughter-in-law Hannah, a first-generation Korean-American, brought japchae every year, and I considered that to be as traditional as apple pie. In 2014, the holiday was especially sweet as our daughter Julie and her husband Sam had told us that they were expecting a baby in mid July. Larry and I were so grateful to harbor the secret throughout that memorable weekend.

True, a few Thanksgivings were not exactly times of gratitude. Larry’s 78-year-old grandmother Bubbie Rose passed away on Thanksgiving morning in 1974, three and a half months after she beamed throughout our September wedding. My father passed away a week before the holiday in 2008, much to the annoyance of the congregant who was responsible for arranging for the food at the traditional Jewish gathering after the funeral. “I hope you realize this is a lousy time to ask people to help set up a shiva minyan,” she informed me. Fortunately, members of our Upstate New York shul gladly showed up. And despite our grief in both occasions, we were all grateful for their long lives and all the blessed memories we share.

In 1984 the day before our family’s planned departure to visit my Pennsylvania siblings for Thanksgiving, a section of our garage door hit Larry on the head when the spring snapped. Fortunately, Larry avoided what could have been a catastrophic injury by mere millimeters. Upon the advice of our doctor, however, we cancelled our traveling plans. A quick supermarket run to secure a turkey and all the fixings and a Blockbuster run (remember those?) for a stack of family friendly movies resulted in a quiet cozy long weekend. We were grateful for that unexpected intimate family time.

The most sobering Thanksgiving came in 2016. As we were packing for our flight the next day to Colorado for a gathering with our son-in-law Sam’s family in Fort Collins, our daughter Julie called to tell us that our 15-month-old granddaughter was in the hospital with pneumonia in a hospital a mile from their Rocky Mountain home. By the time our plane had landed, she had been rushed to Denver’s Children’s Hospital.

The next few days are still etched in my memory: Our wan granddaughter, connected to oxygen and IV’s, rushing to hug her Zayde. Julie and Sam holding their daughter as she watched endless repeats of Frozen on their iPad. Her wails every time a nurse entered the room. Our 120 mile round trips to the hospital while listening to the depressing news of the recent presidential elections. Adam rolling out a vodka-infused crust for the apple pie. Sharing a lovely Thanksgiving dinner with Sam’s family around a table missing three important people.

As Larry and Adam headed to the airport, I remained behind to provide needed help as Mountain Girl continued her recovery. Despite the circumstances, I have to say that week caring for my granddaughter, still connected to oxygen by a three foot hose because of the 9100 foot altitude, was precious. We sang and danced to “Wheels on the Bus” and “Rubber Duckie” and “The Alphabet Song.” We stacked toys and put together puzzles. She learned how to walk up and down the stair. I fed her so many blueberries, her favorite food, that she had numerous “blueberry blowouts,” for which Gammy was responsible. It was not the Thanksgiving we had planned. But we were thankful for modern medicine that saved her life and that provided the needed interventions, including a twice a day nebulizer, that resulted the healthy, thriving second grader she is today.

By the following year, Larry and I, who had moved to Florida that June, headed up north. Thanks to dear friends who let us “house sit” while they visited relatives for a week, we again shared a wonderful Thanksgiving with Larry’s huge extended family. Freya and Randy had passed the Thanksgiving reins to our niece Laura and her husband Paul, who had recently purchased a home in Guilderland, New York. The buffet table was laden with almost all the Shapiro traditional food except one. Hannah bypassed on making japchae. Oh well! We still had plenty to eat.

Maybe it was because airports were especially crowded on this holiday weekend. Maybe because we weren’t used to the cold. Or maybe it was because I no longer could depend on Hannah for japchae. In 2016, Larry and I decided to join a large group of friends from around the country and the world at a nearby resort. By the second year of shredded salty turkey over gluey mashed potatoes and subpar pies, our friend Peter declared that Larry and I should host a Thanksgiving potluck at our home.

We happily agreed. Plans were going smoothly until we realized a few days before our scheduled Thursday feast that Peter and his wife Margaret were flying home on Thanksgiving Day. “I thought you Americans had all your holidays on Monday,” he said. No, Peter, I explained. Thanksgiving is ALWAYS on Thursday!

Fortunately, everyone was able to adjust their schedule, and we celebrated Thanksgiving on Ere of Yontiff—Wednesday. I prepared a 22-pound turkey, stuffing, mashed potatoes, and my World Famous Chocolate Chip Cookies. Everyone else filled in with their own favorites. I was hoping the Hunters would bring scones and clotted cream. Instead, their contribution of two bottles of Moet & Chandon champagne worked out, as did the orchid they brought that continues to bloom. Not surprisingly, no one brought japchae.

We got to celebrate our International Thanksgiving one more time before COVID shut down the world, necessitating that Larry and I share our 2020 meal with extended family on Zoom. By 2021, however, we were up and running with the understanding that everyone bring their favorite dishes and COVID-vaccine infused arm.

What a joy it is to know that 2022 is ushering in what I hope to be a new string of large gatherings of friends and family!

You may be reading this the day after Thanksgiving when Larry and I will be eating leftover turkey, stuffing, and apple pie. Meanwhile, we will have had what we hope will have been a wonderful day with many of our “regulars” as well as several new friends. We hope the day will be joyful and uneventful. If not, I will find reasons to be grateful—no matter what challenges pop up and even if we don’t have japchae!

Remembering wonderful past Thanksgivings, including our 1979 gathering with our family in Pennsylvania!

We continue and they continue: The Czech Torah Scrolls

14 Replies

“Each Memorial Scroll is a memory of the past and a messenger for the future.” Memorial Scrolls Trust

They escaped destruction by the Nazis. They survived Communism, They found their ways to new homes around the world. This is a story of three Torahs that had their roots in vanished Czechoslovakian Jewish communities.

Up until World War II, Czechoslovakia had a thriving Jewish population that first reached the area over 1000 years ago. With the rise of Hitler came increased antisemitism and eventually The Final Solution. Throughout Europe, synagogues were burned and the vast majority of Jews were murdered. Almost all Jewish artifacts—Torahs, candlesticks, prayerbooks—were destroyed.

The one exception was Bohemia and Moravia with its population of 115,000 Jews. This area in Czechoslovakia was declared a “German protectorate.” Miraculously, except for the items in Sudetenland, most of the artifacts remained unscathed during the early years of the war.

In 1942, the Nazis ordered all Jewish synagogue possessions in the region to be sent to Prague. The Jewish communities of Prague, believing the Judaica would be safer if stored in one place, worked closely with the Nazis to collect and catalogue over 210,000 items. In the end, it took 40 warehouses to store the treasure. Unfortunately, nearly every Jew who worked on the project was sent to their deaths in the concentration camps.

The Czech Torahs survived the war but almost did not survive Communism. The Torah and other scrolls lay in a musty, damp warehouse until 1963. At that point, Czech government, in need of foreign currency, sold the scrolls to Ralph Yablon, a philanthropist and founder member of Westminster Synagogue in London. On February 5, 1964, 1564 Torahs and other scrolls arrived at the synagogue. They were divided into three categories: those in usable condition, those in need of some repair; and those deemed too far damaged to be restored.

The Memorial Scrolls Trust was then set up to preserve and restore the Czech scrolls. Each one had an identity plaque fixed to one of the etz chaim, the wooden shafts onto which the Torah is rolled. They were loaned out to Jewish communities and organizations around the world in need of a Torah, with the understanding that the congregation was responsible for the scroll’s upkeep. The Torahs, as per stipulations by the MST, were never sold or donated but allocated on loan on the understanding that they would only need to be returned if the synagogue no longer operated. According to Jeffrey Ohrenstein, Chair, MST, 1400 scrolls have been allocated on loan around the world. Approximately 150 scrolls remain in the Memorial Scrolls Trust museum, which also has some 500 binders and wimples.

At least six Czech scrolls are on loan in the Capital District of New York and surrounding areas: Beth Emeth, Congregation Ohav Shalom, Gates of Heaven, Temple Sinai, Congregation Beth Shalom, and Congregation Beth El.

I first had the honor of holding a Holocaust Torah as a member of Congregation Beth Shalom in Clifton Park, New York. In1981, the synagogue requested from MST a replacement for three that had been stolen. Abbey and Richard Green, CBS congregants, helped fund the costs of shipping the Czech Torah MST#293 (circa1870) from London. A tag, dating back to the dark days of the Shoah, read “The Elders of the Jewish Community in Prague.”

At the time, Beth Shalom was less than ten years old, an irony that was not lost on one of its congregant. Yetta Fox, herself the child of Holocaust survivors, stated that having the Torah at a new congregation was “almost like a second life.”“Having lost one community,” said Yetta, “there is now a new community that can nurture this Torah.”

Early in 2007, the congregation arranged to have needed repairs done on the parchment of the 137-year-old Torah. That June, the congregation held a rededication ceremony, which included a procession from the Clifton Park town hall to the synagogue five minutes up the road. During the march, the scrolls were passed from hand to hand under a chuppah that the children of the Hebrew school had decorated with Stars of David. Upon its arrival, the Torah was wrapped in a wimple, the cloth traditionally used to wrap a boy at his circumcision. “This is our baby,” said Fred Pineau, a former president, “so we’re wrapping it on our Torah.”

David Clayman, the president at the time of the story. , reported that the Torah is still in good condition. To preserve it, however, it is left rolled to Parasah Beshalach, which contains “The Song of the Sea,” gently unrolling it only once a year as prescribed by the MST. Every year, in the month of Shevat, the Torah is brought out and Beshalach is chanted. “The scroll is so fragile, we are afraid to roll it to other parashot [Torah portions].”said David. The congregation brings out the Holocaust scroll twice more each year to be ceremonially held: On Kol Nidre, the solemn service commemorated during the opening hours of Yom Kippur; and on Simchas Torah, a holiday that celebrates the completion of the reading of Deuteronomy, and the beginning of Genesis.

In 1982, Sharon and Barry Kaufman, now residents of Florida, obtained a Czech Torah in honor of their daughter Robin’s bat mitzvah for their Spring, Texas synagogue. While awaiting completion of their new building, Jewish Community North congregation was holding services at Christ the Good Shepherd Catholic Church. Their only torah was on temporary loan from another Houston-area synagogue. The Kaufmans worked with Rabbi Lawrence Jacofsky, the regional director of the United Association of Hebrew Congregations, to obtain Torah Scroll MST#20, written circa 1850.

When their precious cargo arrived at the Houston airport in February 1982, Barry and Sharon immediately brought the Torah to the church to show Father Ed Abell, Good Shepherd’s priest and their good friend. The three of them carefully unrolled the scroll where it had last been read: Yom Kippur. 1938. The tenth of Tishri 5699 or October 4 and 5, 1938. Shortly after that service, the Jews that had worshipped in the Kostelec/Orlici synagogue were rounded up and sent to concentration camps, most—maybe all— never to return.

To commemorate the moment, Father Abell, using the yad (pointer) from the loaner Torah, read from the scroll in flawless Hebrew. That evening, Sharon and Barry brought the Torah home to show Robin. As they slowly unrolled the entire scroll on their pool table to make sure is was undamaged, they found a cardboard tag that had been attached when the scroll was catalogued by Jewish librarians and curators when the scroll arrived at the Central Jewish Museum Prague during the Shoah. Aeltesternrat der Juden Prague, it read in German Elders of the Jews of Prague.

At Robin’s bat mitzvah in May 1982, the Torah was dressed in a cover sewn and embroidered by Barry’s mother. In a moving speech to the congregation held at Good Shepherd, Barry spoke eloquently about the Torah’s history.

“If this Torah could talk—might it share with us the heart-wrenching knowledge of a prosperous people whose world had suddenly been taken from them, whose home and synagogues were gutted and destroyed for the value of their belongings? Would it tell us of the helpless terror in the fragile hearts of old men and women forced to watch their children brutally slaughtered before their own end was to come?”

After Barry spoke, the Ark was opened, and the Czech Torah was passed from the rabbi to Barry to Sharon to Robin. Clutching it tightly, Robin walked through the congregation. For the first time in two generations, a B’nai Mitzvot carried it with joy and reverence throughout a tearful congregation.

When Larry and I moved to Florida, we joined Congregation Shalom Aleichem, which was founded in 1981, ironically the same year Congregation Beth Shalom had received its Czech Torah. Initially, congregants met at the Kissimmee Women’s Club. When Harry Lowenstein, a Holocaust survivor whose parents and sister numbered among the six million Jews killed during World War II, joined with his wife Carol, he began to press for a building of their own. “I saw a synagogue burn,” said Harry, “and I was determined to build another one.” Starting with a $120,000 contributions from Sandor Salmagne, another Holocaust survivor, the Lowensteins raised another $60,000 for building expenses, including donations from Harry and Carol.

As the synagogue on Pleasant Hill Road neared completion, the Lowensteins worked to obtain the prayer books for both every day and holy days, the Torah finials, and the Yartzheit (memorial) board. Most important to the congregation, however, was to obtain a Torah.

Harry and other members reached out to the Memorial Scrolls Trust, noting in the correspondence that four of its members were Holocaust survivors. “Our Temple will be dedicated to the memory of the victims of the Holocaust,” wrote then president Henry Langer. “We would therefore deem it an honor to have you lend us a Scroll for our Temple.” With the Lowensteins’ financial support, they were able to obtain Scroll MST#408. The Torah was from Pisek-Strakonice in what was then Czechoslovakia, about 60 miles south of Prague and dated back to circa 1775.

Once they received word that they would indeed be loaned a Czech Torah, the Lowensteins asked British friends who had a vacation home near the synagogue to be responsible for getting it from Heathrow to Orlando International airport. “[Our friend] sat on the plane with the Torah on his lap for 12 hours,” recalled Carol. “He would not let it out of his sight until he could hand the Torah to Harry.”

For those who had miraculously escaped hell, welcoming the Torah was like welcoming another Holocaust survivor. “It’s like holding a piece of history” said Phil Fuerst in a 1993 Orlando Sentinel article. “You feel like you own a piece of a world that survived.”

According to Marilyn Glaser, the congregation president, the atzei chayim, which were broken, were replaced in September 2022 in accordance of the terms of the loan agreement with MST.

In November 2024, the Jewish Federation of Sarasota-Manatee commemorated Kristallnacht by celebrating the Torah scrolls that survived the Holocaust with a gathering of 24 Florida-based scrolls from the MST. Jeffrey Ohrenstein, who travelled fromLondon for the event, said “These Torahs are messengers from destroyed communities that depend on their newer congregations to assure they are remembered and the Jewish heritage is cherished.” The program ended with a parade of the Torahs. Frank Gutworth, Congregation Shalom Aleichem’s treasurer, proudly carried Scroll #408.

Three Czech Torahs. Three congregations. Thankfully, in the end, the Nazi’s plan to eradicate the Jewish people failed. As Gloria Kupferman stated in her speech at the rededication of the Congregation Beth Shalom Torah in 2007, “We are by no means extinct. We are alive. We are thriving.”

Special thanks to Jeffrey Ohrenstein, Chair, Memorial Scrolls Trust, London, U.K. Thanks to David Clayman, Yetta Fox, Marilyn Glaser, Frank Gutworth, Harry Lowenstein, Flo Miller, and Sharon and Barry Kaufman for their input for the article.

Originally published June 10, 2022. Updated on blog November 2024.

Published in Jewish World (Capital Region NY), June 9, 2022 and Heritage Jewish News (Orlando, Fl) June 10, 2022

Sources:

https://www.albany.edu/news/releases/2005/nov2005/holocaust_scroll.shtml

www.cjcn.org

http://www.congregationbethshalomcp.webs.com

www.czechtorah.org/thestory.php.

www.memorialscrollstrust.org.

http://www.shalomaleichem.com

Frank Guttman holding Congregation Shalom Aleichem's Holocaust Torah — Frank Guttworth holding Congregation Shalom Aleichem’s Holocaust Torah

Holocaust Stories Needed!

5 Replies

“You really need to talk to Harry.”

My friend Marilyn Glaser gave me this advice before one of our Friday night Shabbat services in our Florida synagogue. I was aware that Harry Lowenstein was a Holocaust survivor. But Marilyn, the shul president, knew I was a writer, and she knew his story needed to be preserved.

By this time, I had been writing for the (Capital Region, NY) Jewish World for over four years. The majority of my stories had been about my family: growing up in a small North Country town in New York; meeting my husband in 1973 to learning to live with him after our retirement in 2010; raising two children; moving to “The Sunshine State” in 2015. Up until that point, I had not tackled biographies. Fortunately, Harry was a willing story teller.

As I sat at his kitchen table, I was riveted by his description of four years of hell, first in a ghetto and then in Nazi concentration camps. After liberation, Harry returned home to find that every one of his relatives had been murdered by the Nazis. He eventually made it to the United States, married Carol Sainker, raised three children, and owned and operated a clothing store in Kissimmee. Meanwhile, he was determined to carry on his family’s legacy. “I saw a synagogue burn,” said Harry, “and I was determined to build another one.” With the contributions from friends and fellow Holocaust survivors, the Lowensteins raised enough money to build our synagogue.

After Harry’s story was published, my writing became more diversified. I was still writing my sometimes funny, sometimes poignant family stories, but I also took pleasure from interviewing what I referred to as “ordinary people with extraordinary lives.” A woman who has raised over $150,000 for cancer research after losing her 32 year old daughter to leukemia. A man whose introduction to a doomed ship as a boy resulted in his becoming a “Titanic fanatic;” a group of former Catskill workers celebrating a reunion.

But the stories that moved me the most were about who lived through—or died in—World War II. Jewish soldiers. Concentration survivors who were haunted with their memories until their passing. Righteous gentiles who had rescued others from the horrors.

I have never been shy about my retirement avocation and never fail to tell friends and strangers I am a writer. This summer, I shared this information with Eva Nozik, who was visiting Summit County, Colorado.

“My aunt, Golda Goldin Gelfer, who recently passed away, was a Holocaust survivor,”Eva said.”You need to talk to her children.”

She set up a Zoom call with Anna Livits and Sofia Zukerman, Golda’s two daughters, and other members of the Goldin family. The Nazis, they told me, invaded Glusk, Belarus, on June 22, 1942, Golda’s 14th birthday. Six months later, Germans and local supporters rounded up and murdered over 1000 Jews, including Golda’s mother Elke and her two sisters, Chaisoshe (19) and Malka (8). Golda and her father Meir escaped certain death by hiding in an attic and eventually finding their way into the forest. The two soon joined Soviet partisans in their efforts to sabotage the Nazi offensive until Belarussian liberation on July 4, 1944. Several revisions (and many nightmares about the Holocaust) later, it was finished and ready The Jewish World’s next issue.

Even before it was published,, Anna expressed her gratitude. “I don’t have enough words to thank you for the work you have done,”she wrote me in a December 13 email. “I had a dream today that my mom was smiling. It’s like she was in peace that we remember her family, Elke, Chaisoshe, and Malka.”

The descendants of Meir and Elke Goldin have more stories to tell. They are eager to recount Golda’s time in the woods, her life in the Soviet Union after the war, her move with her children to the United States. They also want me to connect with the son of a cousin who survived “murder by bullets” by falling into the pit.And, by the way, they have a friend whose parents survived the Warsaw ghetto.

Meanwhile, I have other stories on my “To Be Written” file. My cousin Eric (Z’L) Silverman came over on a stolen visa just before the war. Trudi Larkin Wolfe’s parents, both concentration camp survivors, recently passed away, but their oral history is preserved on video as part of Stephen Spielberg’s Shoah project, and she and her sister will fill in any gaps. Ruth Gruber, a brilliant Jewish woman who was appointed by the FDR administration to oversee the Oswego Project, a refuge for Jews that is the subject of a New York State Museum exhibit. And I made a promise to a friend that I would write an article about his father, who came to the United States in the early 1900s via, of all places, China.

After hearing Golda’s story at the most recent meeting of SOL Writers, my group of fellow writers said that I am “a woman on a mission.” “You make the unbearable bearable,” one said. “Keep writing.”

Despite my passion, I initially questioned about pursuing more stories about this terrible time in humankind’s history.The Holocaust has already been the subject of innumerable novels, memoirs, plays, movies, and, and even children’s books.

I found the answer in a teaching from Pirkei Avot, a compilation of the ethical teachings and maxims from Rabbinic Jewish tradition. “It is not incumbent upon you to complete the work,” wrote Rabbi Tarfon (46 CE-117 CE), “but neither are you at liberty to desist from it.” (Pirkei Avot 2:21) When the Anti-Defamation League reports that Facebook, Instagram, and other social media platforms have “cracks in enforcement” that allow Holocaust deniers to disseminate hate speech; when a school administrator in Texas can tell a group of educators during a training session to “have an opposing view” when teaching the Holocaust; when 77 years after Soviets liberated Auschwitz, anti-semitism is on the rise; I must continue to tell the stories. My writing will certainly not “complete” the work of masters such as Elie Wiesel, Victor Frankel, and Steven Spielberg. But I cannot use that as an excuse.Whether my articles and, in the future, my book is widely read or languishes in an Amazon warehouse, at least I did not “desist.”

But I need help. If any of you have a Holocaust story you would like to be preserved in writing, please contact me via email at shapcomp18@gmail. com. Those who were lost as well as those who survive deserve to have their lives remembered and honored. Never again.

A version of this article originally appeared in the Jewish World News, a bi-weekly subscription-based newspaper in upstate New York.

There Goes My Heart

The stories on "There Goes My Heart " capture special moments in a lifetime spent in Upstate New York, Florida, Colorado, and beyond.