Her granddaughter shares an incredible thought Rebbetzin Shain herself had commented on and which anyone who knew her could attest to. Rebbetzin Shain said that there were three things she knew she had never been guilty of: speaking loshon hora, judging people without the benefit of the doubt and getting angry. But it made sense, her granddaughter said, as this was a woman who loved her fellow Jew so completely that there was no way she could ever have anything bad to say about any of them, her sole focus was on seeing the good.
Rebbetzin Shain’s positive attitude was well-known. But not everybody knew the degree to which it existed. Her granddaughter shared that she would never use the word “deadline,” rather she would call it a “lifeline”!
Her granddaughter also related that Rebbetzin Shain lived constantly with G-d. She married Moshe Shain, a rabbinical student, when she was 17. Shortly after their marriage, she and her husband traveled to Poland so that he could study in the Mirrer Yeshiva. (Her father had sent other promising young Jewish men to pursue advanced Torah study in the great yeshivas of Europe, including another son-in-law, Rav Chaim Pinchas Scheinberg, who later became Rosh Yeshiva of Torah Ohr in Jerusalem.) The kollel way of life was not exactly the done thing in 1930 America, especially if it meant traveling to a foreign country. The Shains’ life in Poland was a difficult one, on a physical level – as you can imagine, many of the amenities they were used to in America did not exist there, including running water – but on a spiritual level it was incredible. They were surrounded by the great Torah giants of the era. When they left Poland to return to America, Rav Finkel told them to always “look out for hashgocha.” Rebbetzin Shain took his words literally and forever after would look for ways to frame life events through the lens of hashgocha protis.
Whenever there was a wedding of a grandchild in America, she would come from Israel for three weeks. She had three children, so each week of the visit she would stay at a different child’s home. For one particular visit, she arrived in the States in the middle of a blizzard. She ended up staying with a friend near the airport for two days until she was finally able to reach her children’s home. Most people would have been annoyed at having a family visit cut short, especially not knowing when she’d be coming back again. “But what did my grandmother say?” her grandchild relates, “Oh, Hashem is so good. He knew how tired and jet lagged I was so He arranged that I should stay two days away from the family so I could rest!”
On the occasion of another stay at a child’s home, a married granddaughter came to visit. Bubby Shain remarked, “You look so pretty! Are you coming from work?”
“Yes, when I get dressed in the morning I remind myself that I will be standing in front of students all day, and I need to look my best,” her granddaughter replied.
“Oh,” Bubby Shain commented lightly. “When I get dressed in the morning I think, I will be standing in front of Hashem all day – do I look my best for Him?”
This then was Rebbetzin Ruchoma Shain, a woman infused with love for G-d and man by her exceptional parents, who in turn influenced many Jews directly through warm friendship and reached even more through her powerful and inspirational writings.
