She gave me a greater sense of bitachon than any mussar shmuess could have

AS a rav, I often have to preside at funerals of people I’ve never met — elderly parents of members of my congregation, for example.

This time, I was asked to attend the levayah of Yosef Leib, a 65-year-old man who passed away alone in his apartment. I had never met him, but he must have been an exceptional person.

He was a devoted son, brother, nephew, and uncle who never missed a family event and never forgot a birthday. His kibbud av v’eim was exceptional, and every other week, he spent Shabbos with his elderly mother. It was certainly a zechus to assist at the kevurah of this special Yid.

The following week, I went to be menachem avel at his sister’s house.

Only two people were sitting shivah — his sister and his mother. I wondered how this most recent tragedy would affect the mother. This was her second son to predecease her. I assumed the woman sitting across from me would be forlorn and despondent.

As I moved my seat closer to his elderly mother, we began to talk.

She told me of her life in Poland before the war and how she escaped with her parents to the Russian front, barely avoiding the clutches of the Nazis. After a few years in a number of DP camps and many tefillos, she arrived on these shores with her husband. They set about building a new family in the mesorah of her family from Poland.

I sat mesmerized as she recounted her first days in New York when she faced  new culture and language, with minimal financial support. She detailed how she and her husband rode the subway with much trepidation to Lower Manhattan, arriving at the HIAS office, which was the primary financial aid organization.

Spending the few dollars in her possession on a presentable blouse, the young woman placed her trust in Hashem and began to rebuild her family. She and her husband worked hard to make a new life for themselves.

As I listened to how many times her life’s plans were upended and how she persevered in the face of so many challenges, I was deeply moved. But I was wondering: She had survived so much, yet here she was, observing shivah for her son, who had never married or had children.

How would this loss impact her emunah?

She looked at me with a smile and a spirit of resilience possessed only by those who have experienced the unimaginable and yet rebuilt their lives.

She said, “I am so blessed by Hashem. Who could have imagined I would live to see children and grandchildren and great-grandchildren? Hashem has been so kind to me. Who could have thought I would live to see this brachah?”

I sat in silence.

In front of me sat a woman who had lost relatives in the Holocaust and had sat shivah for her husband and two sons. Yet she was the one praising and thanking Hashem for His kindness and His brachah.

As I stood to leave, reciting the traditional HaMakom, I realized that much more than I had comforted this nonagenarian, she had comforted me. She gave me a greater sense of bitachon than any mussar shmuess could have.

As is often the case with those precious survivors, it is they who provide us, whose challenges are so minute in comparison, the emunah we so desperately need.

(Originally featured in Mishpacha, Issue 1055)