Tributes To Irene Klass

An unlikely friendship we formed Hard to define or explain Never bound by rules or age Rather by mutual ideas and thoughts

It was with profound sadness that I absorbed the news last week that the petite, charming Irene, wife of Rabbi Sholom Klass, and publisher of The Jewish Press, returned her soul to her Maker.

The Gemara in Sanhedrin, Daf Mem Zayin, Amud Alef, concludes that a hesped or eulogy is in honor of the deceased, and not the living, so as such even though I am not worthy of being maspid you, I will say something nevertheless.

Irene Klass, the cofounder and publisher of The Jewish Press, the first nationally-distributed Orthodox Jewish newspaper in the U.S., died last week. She was 94.

On Monday November 21, the 15th day of Kislev, at 11:00pm, Mrs. Irene Klass, the Publisher of The Jewish Press and Editor Emeritus of The Jewish Press Magazine section, passed away. At the same time, her daughter, Naomi Klass Mauer, was at the airport, getting ready to escort the aronof her husband, Dr. Ivan Mauer, to his final resting place in Eretz Yisrael. Mrs. Mauer wrote the following hesped for her mother while on the airplane.

I was in Brazil, speaking to the Jewish community of Sao Paulo, when the sad news of the petira of Irene Klass reached me. Many memories, many scenes, many conversations and experiences flashed through my mind. With Irene's passing, a whole era - a whole way of thinking, of values, of goals, of idealism - disappeared. Irene had a sense of mission and never allowed politics, petty jealousies or territorial considerations to influence her.

It is with profound sorrow that we address the death of Mrs. Irene Klass - publisher of The Jewish Press, wife of Rabbi Sholom Klass, zt"l, the newspaper's founder and longtime publisher, and daughter of Raphael Schreiber, a"h, the paper's co-founder.

The first time I met Irene Klass, of blessed memory, was in Israel. I was an olah hadasha (new immigrant) in 1971, and she had come to visit her daughter Naomi, who at that time lived near me in the Jerusalem suburb of Kiryat Moshe. "What do you do?" she asked me. "Well, I'm a writer, but haven't found much work in Israel. In Australia, I was helping my husband in his pharmacy as a Revlon Beauty Consultant."

It was with profound sadness that I absorbed the news last week that the petite, charming Irene, wife of Rabbi Sholom Klass, and publisher of The Jewish Press, returned her soul to her Maker.

An unlikely friendship we formed Hard to define or explain Never bound by rules or age Rather by mutual ideas and thoughts

The Gemara in Sanhedrin, Daf Mem Zayin, Amud Alef, concludes that a hesped or eulogy is in honor of the deceased, and not the living, so as such even though I am not worthy of being maspid you, I will say something nevertheless.

"What's new?" It was a casual question, posed to me by Irene Klass when we met at a Jewish women's lecture during the fall of 1994.

.

What is it about a diamond that makes it the most valuable gemstone known to man?