In Memoriam

We all know about the Satmar Rebbe’s anti-Zionist stance, but there was much more to him than his anti-Zionism.

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My father sought out truth and insisted on telling the truth even at the cost of lost accounts. He always did the right thing even if it was not popular.

When we talk about the Torah being passed down generation to generation, Dr. Rosner was a living example of that. He brought the Torah from last generation to the children of this generation. He was a conduit of tradition.

She believed in giving people chances in life to be great and to bring out their potential to its maximum.

On challenging days, I close my eyes and I can feel your embrace which makes me feel safe and secure.

What gave her the superhuman strength to survive? She said that when she was young her father taught her the sentence that represented her Hebrew name Leah. It was “Lo amut, ki echye, v’asaper ma’aseh Ka” – I shall not die, for I will live and tell of G-d’s ways.

My grandfather loved to show me all his books and would ask me if I was learning as well. He would always tell me a story from the Gemara, and his face would light up as he would tell it.

To describe Rabbi Henkin by that singular – albeit incredible – accomplishment of advanced Torah study for women would be incomplete, to say the least.

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His name may not appear in the index of chronicles of Jewish life over the past half-century, but his influence as “rey-eh David” – the intimate of rulers – was felt and appreciated immediately.

Before the horrors of the Holocaust began, Rabbi Shapira had become the advocate for Peasecod, the many young people who were struggling with the meaning of the ancient texts and their own identities as traditional Jews.

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He once confided to me that the rhetoric and backlash was so intense at the time that he contemplated resigning.

René believed that Hashem was with him the whole time because the numbers the Nazis engraved on his arm added up to 26 – the gematria of Hashem’s name.

Your wonderful smile radiated great happiness for your ability to help, to promote, to lead the vision of clinging to the Land of Israel.

There wasn’t anything that I was afraid to ask my mother, and no matter the question she always gave me the honest answer.

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Speaking of her feelings for Israel, Irene says, ‘my heart always beats a little faster, and I experience a moment of inner joy, when I land in Lod Airport and feel the ground of Israel under me.’

Mom…a word I don’t normally utter. So much was embodied in those three letters.

Everything he intended and needed to do was laid out in advance so that he didn’t miss a beat and accidentally skip over something he wanted to get done – including calling his grandma, my wife, each and every Thursday evening.

He did not take the easy path of avoiding any controversial topic or promoting only safe and popular stances.

As I sit now with my book of Tehillim, my mother's words echo loudly in my head. "Pray! Use your ko'ach tefilah and pray!"

You, Zaidy, were always spoken about in my home at all times to my children, who didn’t really get a chance to know or meet you as I did. You would have loved them all.

For the sake of peace, we are trying to be silent, and peace is very important. But I fear that is not the way you would want us to be.

Through decades of leadership, Torah and chesed, there is but a void left in the place of the Rebbe on the dais of gedolei Yisrael.

As Rav Ruderman explained to Professor William Helmreich in a January 1978 interview, “College gives a person parnossah. We find that our boys stay with learning longer this way. They don’t have to kill themselves for a job.