The Rebbetzin arranged for us to hear the best speakers before, during, and after the war. For instance, Rav Brevda ztz”l visited and spoke to us about the zechus of us remaining with the Jewish People in the Jewish People’s homeland; other seminaries and yeshivos had emptied.

On a day-to-day basis, we merited learning from The Rebbetzin herself and her incomparable choice of staff: Rav Yitzchak Berkovits (now Rosh Yeshivah of Aish HahTorah), Rebbetzins Karlinsky, Samet, Sarah Rivka Rubinfeld, Chana Ovadia, Chaya Legumsky; Rabbis Tauber, Neugroschel, Leff, Eisenbach, Geller… among a host of other brilliant teachers whose classes would leave us breathless.

The Rebbetzin was good to me. I was twice as old as the youngest student at EYAHT, yet she let me be a part of the student body and stay in the apartment “dorm” once I’d signed on for what I called, lovingly, Jewish Boot Camp. I thank G-d for every day — every moment — of my EYAHT months.

I stayed for 16 of them. I’d planned on only a six-week stay. Until I married, my time at the Rebbetzin’s school spent learning what it is to be a Jew were the most meaningful months of my life.

A never-to-be-forgotten memory: When I was saying goodbye to the Rebbetzin before I left for the United States, the Rebbetzin told me I could come back whenever I wanted and for as long as I wanted. I was flummoxed and moved. I wasn’t the easiest student. But as tough as I might have been, the Rebbetzin’s view of a Jewish life slipped into the neshamah of this EYAHT student.

I didn’t return to EYAHT. Instead, I joined the ranks of Torah Jews. It would be two decades before I would claim Eretz Yisrael as my permanent home. Had the Rebbetzin not been a part of my life, that wouldn’t have happened.

Nor would I have been prepared to meet my husband. Whenever he saw the Rebbetzin, he would thank her for teaching me. As do I. The Rebbetzin was an extraordinary gift from Hashem to the Jewish people; she helped swell the ranks of Torah-observant Jews. It’s beyond my ken to imagine that any of her students will meet the Rebbetzin’s equal.

We deeply mourn the loss of the Rebbetzin. The world has been diminished with her passing.

Yehudis Zuckerbraun

 The Rebbetzin has passed on to the Next World. I knew the day was coming, but now that it’s happened, I’m still stunned. Even though I hadn’t been able to speak with her for the last couple of months, her presence in this world was a comfort. Now I feel unsteady, like a calf who suddenly has to stand on its own. It’s a strange feeling.

I came from Los Angeles, California, with little background in Judaism. I vaguely remembered a Passover dinner at my grandmother’s house when I was a kid, and attending a boring Reform Hebrew school, after my great-uncle gave my mother money, before he passed away, and requested she give her kids a Jewish education. How I found my way to Jerusalem, and specifically to EYAHT, in my late twenties, is a long story.

After I married and established a Torah family of my own, Rebbetzin Weinberg continued to be a light and inspiration that spurred me ahead in my avodas Hashem, always there to support, direct, answer, and enlighten. She understood the ongoing struggle and continued to act as a mother and guide, to make sure we stayed strong.

I used to say, ‘’Rebbetzin, thank you for bringing me to where I am today.” And she would answer, “You chose it. You did the work.”

“But you showed me the way,” I told her.

And it was true. She pulled me over the humps. She cleared the fog when it threatened to overwhelm me. She was sure of the way, and I held on tight.

“You’re in the right camp,” she once assured me when a family member challenged my decisions. I asked her one time, while at EYAHT, “How can I stay here? I’m hurting my family so much!”

“If your mother was sick, and you needed to get her a medicine that would heal her, but it could only be found far away, and she didn’t want you to go, what would you do?” she asked me.

“Of course I’d go,” I replied

“So that’s what you’re doing,” she answered.

She had answers I couldn’t argue with.

She also knew how to give constructive criticism when it was due. Once, while at EYHAT, I complained to her that the girls in the seminary who had been on kitchen duty the week before me had left the old food in the refrigerator, and now I had to take care of it also. I was expecting a sympathetic response and was surprised when the Rebbetzin said, “The problem is that you think Hashem owes you a perfect world.” So much for complaining!

I realized she wanted to help me look at things in a way that would help me grow. I never forgot that lesson, that every occurrence has a hidden message that can bring me more awareness of the Creator.

ThankYou, Hashem, for giving me the life-changing gift of knowing Rebbetzin Weinberg.

At her shivah, before leaving, I told her son, “I feel like I’m going out into a different world.”

He replied that his mother used to say, “When a tzaddik passes away, the world becomes a little darker.”

I thought for a moment and said, “Yeah, but she brought a lot of light into the world. She has little stars twinkling all over, and those will never be extinguished. May she merit endless nachas, especially for HaKadosh Baruch Hu, which was always her main goal.”

Chani Feldman

IT felt appropriate that I was in my makeshift Pesach kitchen when I heard the painful news that Rebbetzin Weinberg was nifteres. It didn’t matter that Pesach was still a few weeks away, because for Rebbetzin Weinberg it was never too early to prepare physically and spiritually for an upcoming Yom Tov.

I attended EYAHT in 1994. I was a relatively new baalas teshuvah, having been shomer Shabbos for a year and a half before being transported to a new world on Rechov Imrei Binah. I’ll never forget walking down the stairs to the two apartments that were joined together to form the otherworldly place that would be my home away from home for the next year. It was there that my mind learned the holy concepts of the Torah, and it was there that my heart absorbed Rebbetzin Weinberg’s lessons that became part of the foundation my home was built on.

The first time I saw the Rebbetzin, she took my breath away. She was striking and regal in her turban. She spotted me, the newcomer, with her piercing eyes, and I was immediately filled with trepidation, as she resembled real-life royalty. But our eye-contact gave way to her genuine smile, and right then and there I became one of the Rebbetzin’s girls. Ladies, women, girls — all types, all stripes, all backgrounds, all upbringings — joined together to learn how to build a home steeped in Torah, from where we would serve our Creator. From that moment on, I thought of her as The Rebbetzin.

I don’t remember the class we were in or even what we were learning, but I remember the first time the Rebbetzin said, “Take out your Good Wife and Mother Books.”

My what?

On cue, everyone took out notebooks, all different varieties, some with decorated covers, all filled with many pages of notes. “Love rays,” the Rebbetzin taught, and I dutifully scribbled on a paper that would later be transcribed into my own Good Wife and Mother Book, “are thoughts about why you love a person. Think those thoughts when you look at your husband, when you look at your children, when you look at your friends. Those thoughts send love rays. The way you feel about others is the way you feel about yourself. When you send love rays to someone, it will be reflected back at you.” I couldn’t possibly grasp the power of that in the moment, but close to 30 years later, those words speak volumes to me from my notebook, as do the following few excerpts:

“The whiteness of a smile has more nutrients than milk.”

“Don’t let marriage be robotic — make it exciting!”

“You can serve children the same dinner, but never the same chinuch.”

“Parents and children shouldn’t be equals, no matter what the outside world is telling you.”

“Over a fight about who got the smaller cookie, say, ‘It’s tastes better when you give in.’”

“Never punish children when they don’t do mitzvos.”

“Learn to like your mother-in-law before you meet her.”

“Never tell your children it’s hard to be a Jew.”

“Teach children at an early age to do things around the house by saying ‘Who wants to do a mitzvah?’ and not ‘Get me this’ or ‘Do that.’”

“Don’t tell your husband about something that’s bothering you until he’s eaten supper.”

I used to get “teased” about my Good Wife and Mother Book. You went to Israel and that’s all you learned? Yes, we also learned Tanach with mefarshim, halachah, and mussar. All were taught by choshuv moros and rabbanim, but there was a certain emphasis placed on learning how to build a Torah home. Before the Internet was really a thing, before cell phones were a battle, and before anyone could dream about what social media would do to kids, the Rebbetzin was giving us the cure before the makkah. She understood that baalos teshuvah came from a world where the values didn’t align with Torah and that not everyone was able to receive the yesodos necessary to naturally transmit them to their FFB children.

Learning wasn’t an intellectual pursuit at EYAHT, it needed to become part of your DNA so you could transmit it to future generations.

Much has been written and shared about the Rebbetzin’s love of Shabbos and how she would teach a subject called  Kedushas Shabbos to the entire school each Friday. I was privileged to see it come to life in the Rebbetzin’s home, as I was one of the students she hired to work in her home on Erev Shabbos. No expense was spared, and the amount of food that was made and purchased was unlike anything I’d ever seen before. She sent food packages all over Yerushalayim and Bnei Brak, to family and others in need.

The Rebbetzin would carefully monitor the vegetables I washed and chopped and would always tell me I didn’t peel the onion enough. (Take off another layer, keep peeling, which is just like how to understand people.) And when my eyes would tear up from the onions, the Rebbetzin would tell me to stop and daven. (Talk to Hashem. Say Tehillim. Never, ever waste a tear without davening.)

Incidentally, this was related to the strategy the Rebbetzin taught about how to cry on Tishah B’Av when the question invariably came about how to cry for something we never knew. Sparing us the deep, philosophical response, the Rebbetzin would tell us to bring an onion to the Kosel because not crying wasn’t an option.

Everything put into the oven was accompanied by a heartfelt “lichvod Shabbos Kodesh.” Each napkin that was purchased was bought with the intention of beautifying Shabbos. Each oil cup filled to light Shabbos candles for all of the children and grandchildren was to dignify the day. Her love of Shabbos was indescribable.

I’m grateful I was able to express my hakaras hatov to Rebbetzin Weinberg in person about 10 years ago, which was my first time returning to Eretz Yisrael since I left in 1995. Words are always insignificant to properly convey the transformational experience that was EYAHT.

Each Shabbos table I set (even when paper goods are the best I can do that week), each potato peeled for Pesach, each flower I buy for Shavuos, each pan or tray of food placed in the oven with a resounding “lichvod Shabbos Kodesh,” should be an aliyah for the Rebbetzin’s holy neshamah.

Yehi zichrah baruch.

Rebbetzin Lori Palatnik

I’Mvisiting from Israel, sitting in my mother’s room in a nursing home in Toronto, watching as she sleeps. John Denver music plays, but I cry, as I’ve just learned of the passing of Rebbetzin Weinberg.

Your parents bring you into this world, but your spiritual parents bring you to the World to Come.

Rebbetzin Weinberg was my spiritual mother. My heart is broken.

Not a week goes by in which I don’t quote her. And not a day goes by in which I don’t live the wisdom she instilled within me.

I first met Rebbetzin Weinberg in the summer of 1985 on the first Jerusalem Fellowships. Yes, long before there was Birthright, a handful of young men at Aish had the idea of bringing over “the best and the brightest” from campuses across North America for a six-week study and tour experience in Israel.

They housed the girls in Telzstone, just outside of Jerusalem, and after a day of touring Israel, we were told that the evening lecture was being given by a woman — not just any woman, but Rebbetzin Denah Weinberg, the wife of Rav Noach Weinberg, the founder of Aish HaTorah.

My first impression was that she seemed regal, her crown a high wrapped turban that colorfully picked up the colors and patterns of her stylish dress. One of us had the guts to ask if we could get a ride in the car that was taking the Rebbetzin back to her Jerusalem home. The answer was yes, so we piled in. She didn’t seem thrown by our presence, and we surmised that despite her appearance and lecture, she also had a “cool” side.

Towards the end of the six weeks, I made the best but hardest decision of my life: I didn’t get back on that plane. I had a lot of questions that I wanted answers to and was convinced that the best place to get those answers was “the source” in Israel. How long could it take to get answers? I gave it “one more Shabbos.”

So I and three other Jerusalem Fellowship girls stayed and checked ourselves into EYAHT, the Rebbetzin’s school in Kiryat Sanz, a very, very… very religious neighborhood in Jerusalem. The other three had come planning to stay; I’d barely planned to come. After a few days and some Torah wisdom that literally blew me away, I realized I wasn’t  going home so fast. But how could I possibly stay? I had a job, relationships, a life plan that didn’t include this….

One morning I awoke and saw my Jerusalem Fellowships alum and now new roommate put on her fuzzy pink slippers. I didn’t bring slippers, or clothes for fall or winter… the days were getting colder. And suddenly, I lost it. I ran to the bathroom, locked myself in, and couldn’t stop crying.

After I came out, still sobbing, I tried to explain to my roommates about Belinda’s fuzzy slippers, which made no sense to them, or me. Someone took me by the hand and said the Rebbetzin wanted to see me.

I sat down at her dining room table, and the Rebbetzin came in and sat down beside me. She asked me what was wrong. The waterworks restarted.

I explained I’d graduated from college, had my own place, a great job, great friends, and was succeeding just fine, thank-you-very-much. What was I doing here? I wanted to one day get married, but giving up the clear track I was on and all that I knew meant… what?

Rebbetzin Weinberg calmly and with complete conviction told me that right this minute G-d knew exactly who I was going to marry, so I need not give it another thought.

I just stared at her, and for some crazy reason, I believed her. And then I said I’d already done my roommate college years, had graduated and moved on, and so if I did stay I needed my own room. Only later did I realize how chutzpahdig that request was; no one got their own room. But she said, “No problem,” moved some girls around, and gave me the small kitchen of the flat.

Thus began a rollercoaster year under the Rebbetzin’s tutelage. We weren’t a big group, but boy we were spirited. I personally balked almost daily at some of the theologically laced assumptions that flew in the face of my feminist upbringing. The Rebbetzin and I had our clashes; my questions were emotional ones, and  time and time again she patiently and confidently pressed my — and society’s — buttons. I was shaken that many things I “knew” to be true actually had no intellectual, scientific, or historical basis, which made me question what else may not be true. I had to find the courage to re-examine my truths and values, keep those that were valid, and discard those that weren’t.

Sometimes the intensity of it was just too much, and more than once I convinced a fellow skeptic that we needed a real-world fix, cutting an evening class or two (or three) to do something “normal.” (Note to self: Rocky 2, dubbed in Hebrew, is for sure not worth the admission price.) The next morning there would be a small note with my name on it pinned to the bulletin board just outside the school’s kitchen: “We missed you in class last night. Denah.”

For my entry track, I remember the Rebbetzin teaching just one class a day, attended by all levels. It was The 48 Ways to Wisdom, and it was life-changing. She told us again and again that good wasn’t good enough, that we needed to become great. And she made it crystal clear that greatness wasn’t riding on any man’s coattails; we had to be great women apart from anything and anyone. And the road to that greatness was emulating our Creator — to be giving, compassionate, loving, merciful… But sometimes the bar of great seemed way beyond my reach.

A few months in, one of the other girls cut my hair in a pretty funky way, not exactly in keeping with the Kiryat Sanz neighborhood look of headbands and conservatively tied-back hair. What would the Rebbetzin say? She walked into the classroom, we stood up, she came to her place, we sat down. She looked up, saw me, hesitated for a split second, raised her eyebrows, smiled, began teaching, and never said a word.

After a year of ups, downs, learning, laughter, and many tears, I was beginning to see where I could possibly fit into the Torah world.

The next summer I worked as a madrichah on the second Jerusalem Fellowships and started thinking about that future husband the Rebbetzin had promised me was out there. Initial dating yielded no one, so during the summer break, I went home to Toronto for a few weeks.

When I came back to Jerusalem, I really didn’t want to move back to Kiryat Sanz and the dorms. I wanted to continue learning, but “off campus” in a shared apartment. The Rebbetzin wouldn’t hear of it, and I wasn’t admitted back to her school. I appealed, but as strong as I was, the Rebbetzin was stronger.

I never told anyone, but I would sneak back for classes when she wasn’t there, learning from the other excellent teachers. I also found the best classes at other Jerusalem women’s schools, and created a clandestine schedule for myself, never registering, keeping my head down, hoping no one would notice.

A few months later, I got engaged to one of the young men at Aish, and immediately went back to EYAHT when I knew the Rebbetzin was there and shared the news. I was afraid she might be disappointed when she found out who he was, but she was overjoyed. He was known as one of the more learned scholars there, and she gave me a subdued, but for her, enthusiastic stamp of approval.

Although we’d planned to live in Israel, Hashem had other plans, and we made a three-year commitment to Aish Toronto. That turned into 13, and then we moved to the U.S. to help other communities.

Only once while I was there did the Rebbetzin visit Toronto, as she almost never left Israel. It was so strange to see her outside of Jerusalem;  I drove her around to her appointments. I told her I was trying to write a beginner’s guide to Shabbos book, but with so many little kids and my role helping my husband build a new community, it just wasn’t happening. “Write five minutes a day, every day,” she told me.

And that’s what I did. Of course, five minutes quickly turned into more, but it was the commitment to do it daily that became the basis not only for my first book, Friday Night and Beyond, but for the others that followed.

I told her I felt uncomfortable when people referred to me as a Rebbetzin, for I knew how little I knew and how small I was in front of her, a “real” Rebbetzin. She told me I was a Rebbetzin and that she was very proud of me. I still can’t believe that’s what she said….

Soon I began leading women to Israel once or twice a year, not in a thought-out way, but those missions became the seeds of what would later become the JWRP, now called Momentum. While on the trip, I’d often get a message that the Rebbetzin wanted to see me. So off I would go to Kiryat Sanz, at first thinking she was going to applaud my efforts. But no, it was to give me rebuke, to point out where I was messing up, to recalibrate me toward the bar of greatness she expected me to reach.

I remember coming back, and a colleague was aghast when I told her what happened. But I was smiling. Getting tochachah from the Rebbetzin was gold, because it came from a place of wisdom, caring, and love. Each year I looked forward to it.

After her husband, Rav Noach, died, there was a major gathering of Aish International, and I was asked to speak at one of the sessions for five minutes. I kept reworking in my mind what I would share, and sat in the front row of 850 attendees listening to speaker after speaker extoll Rav Noach’s greatness, how he alone founded Aish HaTorah and created a movement, how he epitomized “the power of one.”

I immediately changed what I was going to say.

Getting up in front of all of those rabbis and all of those who had been sitting there listening to those speeches, I gathered up my courage and said, “It’s not true. Reb Noach didn’t do it alone. He had Rebbetzin Weinberg by his side.”

The room exploded with applause.

Rav Noach Weinberg publicly shared countless times that he couldn’t have done it without her. As a single young man, he already knew that he was about to embark on something no one else had ever done, and he needed a very strong and independent woman by his side in order to make it happen. He dated countless women before finding her.

After marrying and moving to Israel, there were times he was gone for months, raising money abroad for this new, maverick yeshiva he called Aish HaTorah. Not only did the Rebbetzin have to keep their home and growing family together, she also had started her own school for women, first in her home, then in a neighboring building.

One of the greatest things we can achieve in parenting is to make sure our kids know we believe in them. The Rebbetzin believed in me, even when I didn’t always believe in myself.

Devorah Bragg

T always knew Rebbetzin Weinberg was great, but I never realized HOW great.

This is probably something being said over and over by her family and students.

To hear from her children that her Shabbos davening was three hours long!

Just to see her personal siddur with her annotations and reflections that she’d written in the margins was moiradig, a lesson on Hashem and making tefillah so real.

To quote: on the front of the siddur: “Pray or pay.”

Another line was approximately, “If you’re  a baal chesed then tefillah is a chesed for your neshamah.”

In Pesukei D’zimra, when we’re praising the awesomeness of all the creations, Rebbetzin had added at the end “and little me,” and when the creations are praising Hashem, she’d written “and this is happening right now!!”

The Rebbetzin was remarkable in that she kept up with us students for decades, she remembered who we were and our personalities and challenges. The Rebbetzin always had an answer, no matter what the question, whether in ruchniyus or gashmiyus, chinuch, shalom bayis, the nisyonos of the generation, preparing for chagim, Shabbos, recipes. She was a pro at how to handle not-yet-frum relatives… and kiruv in general.

She truly loved us and said so. She showed it in how she prepared meticulously for her classes. There was always food, homemade and fresh, presented prettily, whenever you came to her house. There were always new hand-outs for every part of the shiur. She posed real and challenging questions that made you think and establish where you stood on sensitive topics. I’d been at EYAHT for over two years, and she never repeated her weekly Shabbos class. She had an unlimited amount of material and was continuously learning and delving to find more. She literally went into gemaras, mishnayos, midrashim. She did endless research. The Rebbetzin was a talmidah chachamah. Everything she said had a source.

The Rebbetzin was always careful to push us forward, but never too far; she seemed to know how much we could handle better than we ourselves did.

She wouldn’t settle for mediocre, but wanted us to be great, and emphasized this. She strove and pushed for “sheleimus.”

She loved teaching, learning and supporting Torah. Her highest ideal was that we should marry and support Torah learners and raise families where that was the ikar.

She always pushed us to ask questions, to the point that she would get frustrated if we sat in class just imbibing, without challenging her. She encouraged us to search for answers. “Everything is in the Torah,” she would say. “Torah has answers to everything.”

Some of her oft-repeated phrases were:

“Don’t settle for mediocrity.”

“Don’t be a robot Jew. Hashem doesn’t want robots.”

“Shabbos is a day ON, not a day off.”

“Information is Transformation.”

“Hashem is ‘echad, yachid umeyuchad.’ One. One not two. The Only One. Unique.”

The Rebbetzin had total clarity. A rare commodity.

I asked her daughter, Tova Wolf, how she became this way. She responded instantly, “Mesilas Yesharim. Learning mussar changes you.” The Rebbetzin had learned and taught this sefer for 50 years, but not in a repetitious way. She was learning it actively each time, always looking to go deeper and get more understanding. All her children and grandchildren knew the first page of the introduction by heart, and she asked her students to as well. “Know… what were you created for… and what are you going to do about it today!”

The Rebbetzin had a true love of the Jewish people, all Jewish people regardless of background, culture, observance. And lots of patience to go with it.  And she cared and  davened for everyone and anyone who needed. It pained her that people were suffering, whether physically or emotionally. And she really felt for tzaar Hashchinah. She would cry over this. She encouraged us to know who the gedolim are and to follow them, to ask sh’eilos and do what the gedolim instruct us to do.

The Rebbetzin also had a wonderful sense of humor and used it well. Her mashalim were perfect, and with these traits she was able to encourage us to improve in tzniyus, chesed, Shabbos and ahavas Yisrael.

I recall her telling us of an encounter she had at a bus stop, when a lady enquired about how hot it must be to dress so covered up in the summer, and the Rebbetzin naturally responded, “It’s hot today. It’s hot for everyone, but it’s a lot hotter in Gehinnom!”

She was always focused on building our “Olam Haba,” teaching us to use every opportunity in this world to prepare for the real and lasting world. Nitzchiyus.

May her neshamah have an aliyah from our telling over her Torah. T’hi nishmasah tz’rurah bitzror hachaim.

Miriam Bernstein

Before you begin reading, turn back the clock 33 years, to Eretz Yisrael in the era of mom-and-pop makolets, phone tokens, and thin blue aerograms. No clue? Ask your “elders.”

IT’S dark and the world is still as I hop into the taxi with the Rebbetzin. Only moments before we were in her bright kitchen, peeling potatoes. But the urgency of the matter had drawn her to the phone to call a cab.

Rushing across town from Kiryat Sanz on that Thursday night, the streets are a blur. Perhaps I’m in a plane, hovering above the earth. It certainly feels other-worldly as we rush to Agron Street, off King George, to the only supermarket open that late, one of the few large supermarkets that even existed then.

What was the Rebbetzin missing? Was her chicken soup or cholent at risk?

Hardly. She’d realized that there weren’t enough treats in the house to honor the Shabbos Queen. What would she give her children? Her grandchildren? That wouldn’t do. And so off we went, with “lichvod Shabbos” on our lips.

Wasn’t the little Imrei Binah Street makolet going to be open the next morning? I recall asking the Rebbetzin. But pushing off kavod Shabbos wasn’t her style. If there was something she could do right then for Shabbos, she was going to do it. I also wonder if she did it for me — to show a newcomer what putting Shabbos first means.

We left the store with a few bags of Krembos and other goodies, but I took home more than that.

Rebbetzin, I’ll miss you. But when I buy fresher vegetables for Shabbos and leave the older ones for my weekday soup, it’s definitely your chinuch I’m serving up.

“Come to my house. You can write it there.”

When the Rebbetzin gave instructions, you listened. And so I came day after day, instead of attending the afternoon classes, to a small alcove in her house. Pen and notebook in hand, I waited for the muse to strike. Strike that. I mean I waited for Hashem, my newly-introduced Creator and the source of all inspiration, to give me the right words for EYAHT’S Chanukah play.

Rebbetzin Weinberg had seen the writer in me, and she wasn’t going to let me off easy. Just like I was going to learn to make the best use of my Jewish soul, so too was I going to make best use of the creative talent I’d received from Above.

I may have complained about it at the time (ahem) but even then, I recognized the gift she was giving me: an essential part of myself, one of the many chunks that had been thrown out with the bathwater of teshuvah.

Once Upon a Kvetch didn’t win any Oscars that year. Neither did my Purim shpiel fashion show: Techiyas HaTznius. But I was writing again. And from there the pages and files soon began to fill up. When I stopped by the Rebbetzin’s house to drop off an inscribed copy of my first book, some 23 years later, I felt an extra measure of satisfaction. It had all started right there.

I hurry down Malchei Yisrael Street in Geula, past the sidewalk sellers peddling duct tape and plastic sheeting to the anxious crowds. We’re in the midst of the Gulf War. Saddam Hussein is shooting missiles at Israel. We’re offering up Tehillim against tillim (missiles).

But on this wartime afternoon I have a different agenda. I must purchase a new pair of dress shoes. The store is deafeningly silent as the owner gives me all of his attention.

He grills me. “Why are you out shoe shopping now?

So I try to explain. My rabbanit. She, um, gives a $100 loan to students who want to buy new garments to wear to greet Mashiach. The Chofetz Chaim had a garment set aside, and now we will, too.

Always a bit different, I’d opted for new shoes over clothing.

He gives me a look, but that’s okay. The Rebbetzin sent me, and I’m excited to fulfill this mission.

I gazed inside that shoe box now and again. It gave me the strength to get through my first war.

I was in the main classroom when the call came in.

“Miriam, your dad is on the phone!”

Finally.

I rushed to the payphone in EYAHT’s narrow fleishig kitchen and grabbed the clunky black receiver.

It was cousin Matthew.

My heart fell, but I managed to navigate the conversation.

Later that week I approached the Rebbetzin, close to tears. “What’s going on with me? My father passed away 13 years ago. Why did I jump up like that? Am I really waiting for him to call?”

Not one to pass on a teaching moment, she explained: “It’s because deep inside, every one of us knows that the soul is eternal. Now you know that you know that.”

And I was comforted.

Two days before I flew back to the States for my cousin’s bar mitzvah, a sliding cabinet door in one of the classrooms fell out of its groove and landed on my leg. (We didn’t have the best facilities, but we did have the best staff!)

I bustled about, packing for the three-week trip, and soon took flight. Only when I was halfway there did I realize that my leg was throbbing. The swelling and subsequent infection forced me to cancel my return ticket. I was in New York and I was floundering. I was supposed to be back at EYAHT by then, but Hashem had derailed my plans (aka led me to the next station of my journey). Now what? I needed guidance. I had to have guidance. I had so many sh’eilos.

“Call Rav Berkovits collect, and I’ll pay for it,” the Rebbetzin assured me.

So for over 40 minutes, I stood in midtown Manhattan, crying into a payphone, collect, to Rav Yitzchak Berkovits, gaining clarity and finding direction. (In those days, before The Jerusalem Kollel or his position as rosh yeshivah of Aish HaTorah, we EYAHT girls were spoiled. Rav Berkovits was our personal rav and halachah teacher.)

Just like when I needed medical attention, and my student travel insurance had expired, and just like when I didn’t have the means to pay full tuition, or any, the Rebbetzin had taken care of me again, from 6,000 miles away. Just like that.

Now the Rebbetzin is farther away. But only a bit. And she can continue to help me from there. I’m banking on it, actually. The Rebbetzin knows why.

(Originally featured in Family First, Issue 838)