Regal yet practical, Rebbetzin Sara Finkel brought majesty to the Torah world

If you stopped by the apartment in Givat Moshe 2, it wouldn’t be apparent that a centenarian lived there. The dining room table was always covered by a pretty cloth, a plate of cookies and bottle of drink at the ready, and a frum weekly magazine was always opened to an interesting article, ready to share with visitors.

And then there were the paintings. They covered the walls and the furniture, and over the years, the floor, propped up gently against the seforim shranks. Flowers, Jerusalem alleyways and windows, streams and bridges, skillfully depicted. Gedolim portraits glowing off the canvases. And, of course, the portraits of Rav Nosson Tzvi Finkel ztz”l, rosh yeshivah of Mir Yerushalayim. From different angles, with his hat on, with his hat off, eyes lowered, learning. Captured by an artist, yet painted with the love only a mother possesses… it’s the home of artist, pianist, cookbook writer, mother of gedolim, eishes chayil Sara Finkel a”h.

Spanning Generations

A lot can change in 101 years. Rebbetzin Finkel’s life spanned generations, locales, worlds. Her parents, Rav Shmuel and Kreindel Leah Rosenblum, were famous for their chesed and hachnassas orchim. Kreindel Leah came from a Gerrer chassidic background; her father, Rav Yitzchok Meir Lubling, had been a noted lamdan in Bedzin, Poland.

The Rosenblums immigrated from Europe to St. Paul, Minnesota a few years after World War I. Growing up in St. Paul, before Bais Yaakov had reached American shores, young Sara was sent to public school, but her parents sent her to Hebrew school each day after her classes had finished.

Sara used to help her parents host the gedolim who would often stay in their home. When Rav Avraham Shmuel Finkel, mashgiach ruchani of Chevron Yeshivah, came to visit from Eretz Yisrael, he tested the impressive young woman to see if she would be a suitable match for his son, Eliyahu Meir. The test’s subject? Chesed.

Rebbetzin Finkel described their meeting (Mishpacha, Issue 833). “At the Friday night seudah, as I sat across from him, he mentioned that his feet hurt,” she remembered. “I fetched my father’s slippers and said to him in Yiddish, ‘Here, put these on, your feet will feel better.’ ”

“Shortly after Shabbos,” she continued, “he asked me for directions to a place he needed to go to. It seemed that the directions weren’t clear. So I put on my coat and walked him to his destination.

“It appeared as if he was testing me. When he returned to our home, he spoke to my father about his son Eliyahu Meir.”

The American girl met the Chevroner bochur, a grandson of the Alter of Slabodka, and was duly impressed, as she recounted in the biography Rav Nosson Tzvi (ArtScroll/Mesorah, 2012), But she worried about the cultural gaps in their background, telling her brother, “The girl who marries this fine young man will be a lucky girl, but I am not sure he is for me.” After a few more meetings, though, “I turned out to be that lucky girl!”