Building Homes

In 1991, Rebbetzin Tehilla Abramov visited Manchester and gave a course for kallah teachers. Mrs. Wagschal became one of the town’s most active kallah educators. Soon, she realized that her style was more suited to married ladies, and hundreds of women attended her “Ladies’ Refresher Courses.” Her approach was broad: as well as halachah and hashkafah, she taught women about respect, closeness and emotional maturity, communication skills, giving and receiving, self-esteem, and many other foundations of a successful marriage. When more kallah teachers were needed in the community, Chavi trained them, walking them through the material step-by-step.

One attendee of these classes recalled her experience: “At the first shiur, I saw that there were 15 participants: two or three had no head-covering, the others ran the gamut from partially covered hair to full chassidish double covering. How is she going to do this? I thought. And then she began, ‘All of us are here for one purpose: to become better wives to our husbands.’ With those words, she united us.”

Mrs. Wagschal was phenomenally successful in encouraging people to invest in their marriages. Her practical advice was sought by both younger and older women. As a master of the human psyche, she knew what women needed to hear. A Holocaust survivor was captivated by a shiur Mrs. Wagschal gave in a family vacation camp in Wales, and became a close friend and mentee. She had survived the war and raised a family, but confided in Mrs. Wagschal that she felt she was just going through the motions — she felt frozen and unable to connect with her children on an emotional level. Chavi explained that if she took care of her own emotional needs, working on self-love and self-care, she would be able to nurture others, too. “At 60 years old,” this lady confided, “Chavi Wagschal gave me a new lease on life.”

Everything Changes

“When my mother began to have attacks, we were too young to realize what was happening,” Malky recalls. “The first one was on the way back from hearing my oldest brother lein his bar mitzvah parshah. A few such incidents led her to consult a neurologist.” The diagnosis of MS took a while. When it was pronounced, the doctors spelled out the merciless nature of the condition —  the disease would progress until it robbed her of every faculty. Her youngest child was not yet two years old.

“I was 12 when our parents called me and my sister Rikki into their bedroom and told us what Mommy had. We were devastated,” Chumi says. Mrs. Wagschal began to walk with a stick, grab rails and a stair lift were installed in the house. For her children, the change of their vibrant, active mother into an invalid with limitations was extremely difficult — and frightening. Malky was then in seminary, Chumi and Rikki were in their teens. With hindsight, the daughters view this as one of the hardest stages of their journey. Once Mrs. Wagschal began to use a wheelchair, everyone in the close-knit community knew that illness had struck.

One person who was initially unaware of Mrs. Wagschal’s condition was her mother. Her close friend and confidante, Mimi Younger, was awed by Chavi’s kibbud eim. “Especially as her mother was an almanah, Chavi always tried to minimize her tzaar.” For three years, she kept the diagnosis, the pain, and the weakness completely hidden from her, upon the advice of the Manchester Rosh Yeshivah ztz”l. After that time, she had to explain her ill health, but whenever she was in her mother’s presence, Chavi made a huge effort to downplay what she was going through.

During those first years, the Wagschals spent time, money, and energy on alternative cures. Chavi visited alternative practitioners and healers, followed severely limited diets and a rigid routine of daily exercise. She tried acupuncture and cranial osteopathy, regular hydrotherapy, and herbal remedies. The Manchester Rosh Yeshivah and other rabbanim offered chizuk and advice and encouraged this hishtadlus.

When the disease continued to progress, Rav Segal ztz”l pronounced: “Your avodah now is to be mekabel b’ahavah.” His words became the Wagschal credo.

Permission to Feel

Life had changed in so many ways, but the love and understanding remained a constant in the Wagschal home. “We spoke about everything, we were very open,” her daughters explain. “Feelings were allowed. Our mother allowed us to get angry and upset and she sometimes shared her own sadness, too.” Despite Chavi’s great burden of worry and illness, she did not lose her empathy for others’ smaller problems, which had endeared her to so many women. “Each person’s suffering is his whole world,” she used to say, quoting the Steipler in the sefer Chayei Olam. She validated her children’s feelings, and even their worries about their friends’ reactions. “My mother always dressed with dignity,” Chumi said, “but from the time she went into a wheelchair, she used more makeup than before. I knew she made this effort for our sake.”

Mimi Younger comments that sharing was one way in which Chavi Wagschal faced and triumphed over her challenges. “She would process her disappointments by speaking them over.” Speaking and writing came naturally to her. She was honest when she encountered deterioration or yet another task she couldn’t do. She would say ‘It’s hard for me,’ or ‘It’s disappointing for me’ or ‘It’s frustrating.’ ” In turn, the children spoke about their struggles, their embarrassments, and their fears, too. Chavi knew how to have a good laugh with her friends and shared lighter moments with her children.

Chavi, who was well-versed in sifrei Tanach, mussar, and hashkafah, compiled a “rainy day box” — notebooks full of divrei Torah, chizuk, and powerful stories, as well as long, warm letters to her family. She also journaled about her daily life and struggles. At first, her letters and notebooks were handwritten. Then, she was able to type but no longer write. When typing became too difficult, the family invested in a voice-activated PC. When Chavi’s voice grew too weak, she attempted to use an eye-activated computer. Sadly, she did not have the muscular energy in her eyes to use this for long.

Facing Adversity with Faith is the book that resulted from her journals. In this candid record of her personal journey, Mrs. Wagschal records her deepest feelings, her battle with sadness and bitterness, her highs and lows, her hopes and pleas to the Ribbono shel Olam for a recovery, her struggle to accept His “no.” She also shares her sources of chizuk, the ideas that she held on to as MS forced her into a wheelchair, and as her hands were no longer able to write.

Making the Difference

From the wheelchair, Chavi’s finger remained on the pulse of her home. The Wagschals tried devotedly not to burden their children with the weight of illness. Mrs. Wagschal employed assistance to ensure that her house remained impeccably kept and that her children were not bogged down with cooking and housework but could enjoy their social lives, including sending them to camp.

The boys went off to yeshivah, the girls to seminary. Chavi never held a child back from the best opportunities for their growth. Malky began her married life in Australia, the other couples started, and some settled, in Eretz Yisrael. The aide whom she had devotedly engaged for her elderly grandparents became her own reliable housekeeper, and later her personal aide. Meanwhile, a rotation of companionship was formed by the women of Manchester, who rallied around Chavi with love and admiration as she became housebound, and then immobile.

At first, Mrs. Wagschal continued to give her popular courses and shiurim and to mentor women and couples privately. In fact, her second book, You Can Make the Difference, consists of workshops on marriage and life that she gave while already ill. Later, her daughters sat next to her during classes, turning the pages of her notes, or giving their mother sips of water, as she fought to speak using a microphone. Eventually, MS weakened her voice, and the shiurim stopped. Mrs. Shuli Levy, a close friend and co-kallah teacher, remarks, “Teaching was so important to her, but Chavi accepted this b’ahavah, too.”

Life continued. Mrs. Wagschal was zocheh to marry off her youngest child, Hinde Leah. Sentences became difficult. Then words. Chavi determinedly repeated what she wanted to say until it was understood, sometimes spelling words out letter by letter.

On one memorable Seder night, she asked her son to “steal” the afikomen for her. The family was intrigued — what could she ask for? Speaking with difficulty, she made her request to her husband — that he please daven for a certain friend of hers who was going through a dark time.

Mostly, her sparse words were not requests, but compliments or guidance. For example, she would take great pains to compliment a mother on her son’s derashah, or remark to a visitor “What a beautiful outfit.”

A Family Approach

Chavi Wagschal had devoted herself to marriage education. Ultimately, it was her own marriage that provided an education to so many. As MS transformed their lives, the challenges brought the Wagschals closer together. Chavi’s book is full of Torah wisdom she heard from her husband and the chizuk they shared. The dignity and respect present in her home and the beautiful way in which Rabbi Wagschal honored and cared for his wife, were a shining example. Among many tributes in this vein, an anonymous letter received at the shivah contained the following: “My own marriage is full of challenges. Whenever I saw Rabbi and Rebbetzin Wagschal, I received a living reminder of the degree of respect I have to give to my wife, and went home strengthened.”

Chavi made a huge effort to participate in simchahs. A simple “mazel tov” at a vort could cost her hours of preparation, dressing, and being lifted from bed to wheelchair, sometimes only to find that the venue had limited accessibility and her efforts were in vain. Rabbi Wagschal would patiently accompany her. “He was a tzaddik in his acceptance and his kavod and care for his rebbetzin,” says Rabbi Paysach Krohn, a close friend of the Wagschal family.

Their father’s example filtered through to the family. “Because Tatty accepted the challenge with such temimus, we too felt that way. He reiterated and showed us through his actions that the MS was not Mummy’s nisayon, but our family’s nisayon. We all had to grapple, we all had to accept and rise to the test,” Chumi says.

Malky agrees. “My father never, ever, spoke over Mummy’s head, even during very bad times in her last years when it seemed she could not follow the conversation. Outsiders urged us to send our children to our parents’ home for Shabbos seudos, so my father would not eat ‘alone.’ He steadily refused. ‘I’m not alone, I’m with Mommy.’ His Shabbos seudos were conducted at Mummy’s side, in the same beautiful fashion as always.”

The Soul Shines Through

Five years ago, the Wagschal children were summoned to the ICU, where their mother barely clung to life. But Hashem has His plans: Mrs. Wagschal survived and returned home. Her condition had significantly worsened; she could no longer eat and was paralyzed from the head down. Her mind and her heart though, remained active, brimming with the faith she had achieved, and concern for other people.

Family, friends, and visitors ensured that Mrs. Wagschal was never alone. They learned her beloved seforim aloud for her to follow, davened, sang, read to her, and chatted about daily life — as in the good days, Chavi related to both the sublime and the mundane.

“One of my brothers was once learning Shaarei Teshuvah with Mommy,” Chumi tells, “when the incongruity struck him. Rabbeinu Yonah discusses how man sins and pursues all the pleasures of This World — and Mommy had not tasted any pleasure from the world in five years. He said, ‘Mummy, all this is not relevant to you, you have not done aveiros in years.’ And with great difficulty, my mother tried repeatedly to get one word out to answer him — ‘b’machshavah’ — perhaps I have sinned in thought.’ ”

“My mother could only look upward toward the end —so she asked my father to paste the Six Constant Mitzvos onto the ceiling of her bedroom,” Malky says. “During these last five years, she lived on pesukim of emunah and bitachon. That is what gave her strength.” Mrs. Wagschal’s motto, from the beginning of her illness, and shared to give strength to thousands, was Tammim tihyeh im Hashem Elokecha — do not worry about the future, just accept whatever Hashem sends, as He sends it. This credo, on posters around the house and always in her mind, sustained her until her final day.

Continued Legacy

A descendant of the Chasam Sofer, and a granddaughter of the famous Sternbuch family, Mrs. Chavi Wagschal was a niece of some of the generation’s Torah luminaries, including Rav Moshe Sternbuch of the Eidah Hachareidis and Harav Dovid Soloveitchik of Brisk. Her parents, Rav Yitzchok Tzvi Leiberman and Mrs. Maisie Leiberman, raised her in Manchester. Chavi and her sisters were sent to a non-Jewish school. “We once met a classmate of my mother’s, who remarked ‘Your mother and her sisters acted like ambassadors for the Jewish People,” Chumi Meiselman marvels.

Gateshead Seminary was the next stop. “Mr. and Mrs. Kohn and the choshuve Rabbanim of Gateshead played a pivotal role in molding me,” Chavi was to write in her first book. At 18, she was engaged to Reb Nosson Wagschal. The chassan was a promising talmid of Rav Shlesinger’s yeshivah in London, but Chavi’s sights were set on her ultimate goal: his growth in Torah, and she encouraged him to spread his wings. With her encouragement, they left to Eretz Yisrael where Rav Wagschal learned at the yeshivah of Chavi’s uncle, Rav Dovid Soloveitchik of Brisk, before settling in Manchester.

When Mrs Wagschal’s father, Rav Yitzchok Tzvi Leiberman, passed away at a relatively early age, the young woman went to his kever with an unusual kabbalah: “Daddy, I will take care of your kibbud av v’eim in your absence.” Her grandparents lived in a different neighborhood, and the Wagschals had no car, but this was no deterrent. “My mother cooked and baked for her grandparents and could be seen loading up her big Silver Cross carriage with pots and pans and walking over there, or traveling on the bus,” says Malky. “She arranged their medical appointments, bought their medications, coordinated visitors, and found them a reliable housekeeper and caretaker.”

In Her Words: Quotes from Mrs. Wagschal’s Books

“People like to comfort a suffering individual by telling them ‘you have so many blessings’ ‘at least your brain is active’ ‘people are so kind to you’. When I am in tzaar, I also know my blessings with my intellect, but my ill health and discomfort does not let me enjoy them, I simply want to be understood.”

“I haven’t been to simchos for ages and it’s telling on me. One can not only be involved with problems; one needs a healthy balance. And yet I cannot cope with going to kiddushim and receptions. I am scared of being knocked over and not getting to a chair quick enough. I must try. I must make a Herculean effort and take another women with me to see that I can get a chair. My sister is right. I owe it to my children to mix more socially. Oh where do I find the inner strength, both physically and mentally?”

“Today I heard bad news. It made my insides curdle. I felt sick. Anxiety overwhelmed me. As in so many challenges, this threatens to engulf me. It is so easy to recriminate, to apportion blame, to burden oneself that one made unforgivable mistakes.

“True, we made mistakes, but what does it help to burden oneself with thoughts like ‘I could have done’ ‘I should have done’ ‘I would have done’? These thoughts are not productive, they are not bringing me closer to my Creator. Yet they are natural; it is normal to worry.

My anxieties are drowning me—Aybishter, help!!

I took the sefer Mitzvas Habitachon and read the tefillah on bitachon and emuna. It brought me a measure of acceptance. I must read it and reread it.

What was was bidei Shamayim [Heaven sent]

What is is bidei Shamayim

What will be is bidei Shamayim

May this anxiety diffuse itself with Your help.”

(Originally featured in Family First Issue 549)