With
the onset of the Corona
pandemic, we have been served a bit of history. By now, everyone knows that almost
exactly 100 years ago the infamous Spanish flu pandemic swept the globe,
killing 50 million people worldwide. Less well known is the fact that outbreaks
of disease cropped up in various localities in other years. Around 1915, my Uncle
Joe, all alone in Troy, Alabama, came down with typhus.
As many of you know, our family’s American journey began in 1914,
when Uncle Joe Weinstock got off the boat at Galveston, Texas.
Like thousands of other young, Russian men brought over by the generosity of
the financier Jacob Schiff, he was greeted at the port by Reform Rabbi Henry
Cohen and taken to a hostel, where he was put up for the night, given a kosher
meal, and then sent to a destination chosen by others. Their plan was to
distribute the immigrants around the center of the country, away from the
teeming slums of New York.
Fresh from Pollonoye (Polona), a little shtetl in the Ukraine, he was
sent to Troy, Alabama. There wasn’t even a shul in Troy, but he found
lodging with Mrs. Kermish, a frum
woman. Uncle Joe told me, when I interviewed him 45 years ago, that Mrs.
Kermish saved his life. She would rub him down with alcohol to take down the
fever and nursed him back to health. He called her a tzadekes.
Had my uncle not survived that deadly epidemic, he would not have
been around to bring over his mother, father, sister, and brother, after World
War I. Left in the Ukraine, his sister (who became my mother) and the rest of
the family would probably have been there when the Nazis came and made the Jews
dig pits, then shot them so that they would fall into the pits.
This memory, which I have not thought about for many years, came
to me during our current COVID pandemic. Like so many of us, my existence could
easily have never happened had it not been for this close call with death that
occurred early in the 20th century. And there was another miracle as
well, this one in Europe.
This miracle had to do with a curfew. Like lockdowns and
quarantines, curfew also requires isolation and not leaving one’s home. After
World War I, the newly independent Poland fought a war with Russia over
territory. During that war, the Russians placed a curfew on the town of Tiktin (Tycochin), in Poland. Anyone found
outside was subject to execution as a spy. People were unable to secure food,
and the situation was dire.
My father, Meyer Oberstein, was a teenager, and he took a big
chance. He went outside to do some kind of business and get food for the
family. Unfortunately, he was caught and put before a firing squad. He told me that
there were dead bodies all around, and he felt his end had come. Just in the
nick of time, an old man with a beard came by riding on a mule. They called him
Commissar. He asked the soldiers why they were going to shoot my father, and
they said he was a spy caught outside during curfew. The old man on the mule
must have been someone important because he told them to release the boy, as he
was just a kid. My father ran home and felt lucky to be alive. My children
believe the Commissar was Eliyahu Hanavi.
Had the old man on the mule not come at that moment, my father
would not have lived to come to America
and meet my mother. It’s really miraculous that Uncle Joe survived a
deadly disease and my father escaped a firing squad. In life, for all of us,
things could have turned out differently. We believe in hashgacha pratis, that Hashem looks out for each of us.
* * *
Of
course, Uncle Joe’s escape from death was not the only instance of hashgacha pratis in his life – nor in
any of ours. Recently, Hamodia had a
photo of the grave of Harav Shmuel Avraham Abba Twersky, zy”a, the Mekarover Rebbe of Winnipeg. This was part
of their weekly series depicting photos of the tombstones of righteous people whom
most of us never heard of. These were rebbes and rabbanim who came to America in the
early, years when Yiddishkeit was struggling to survive on these shores. The
person who writes the series believes that there are plenty of kivrei tzadikim, graves of the righteous
right here and that we should daven at them.
This picture brought back something else that Uncle Joe had told
me when I asked him to record his life story into a tape recorder. In 1914,
when young Joseph Weinstock decided to go to America so that the Czar could not draft
him into the Russian army, he first went for a bracha to the Mekarover Rebbe of Berdichev, which is very near his
town, Polona. His father, my zaidy Eliezer, was a devoted chasid and sort of a gabbai
for his rebbe. When Uncle Joe came to get a bracha,
the Rebbe, Rav Moshe Mordechai told him that, when he got to America, he
should bring him over and establish a Mekarover kloiz in America.
Then World War I came, Rav Moshe Mordechai was niftar, and his son became the Rebbe. I learned this from the
caption on the picture in Hamodia and
also learned that the son did indeed make it to North
America and was a Rebbe in Winnipeg,
Manitoba, Canada.
You may have heard from me before that Uncle Joe was the only shomer Shabbos balabos (non-clergy) in Montgomery, Alabama.
He not only brought over his family but revered his righteous father and never
strayed from the bracha that he had
gotten many years before from the Mekarover Rebbe, Rav Moshe Mordechai Twersky.
To remain a frume Yid in Montgomery was a miracle,
too. But he was not just frum; he was
a chasid. Let me explain.
When I interviewed Uncle Joe, he concluded his story by saying, “I
never had a bad day in America,
America
has been good to me.” Suffice it to say that he did not have it so easy and he
never had children. He told me that when he first came over, he bought a horse
and wagon and rode around through the neighborhoods of Montgomery calling out, “Fresh fruit, going
cheap.” He was popular because he was always happy and singing. The local
newspaper did a story on him. It said, “Weinstock came over from the Old
Country with a smile on his face, and the smile never faded.”
I do not think it would ever have occurred to me to go to a
yeshiva had I not had an uncle who was suffused with Yiddishkeit and ahavas Yisrael. He wasn’t the only
influence. I owe a lot to Rabbi Aaron Borow, who prepared me for my entrance
exam to Yeshiva University High School.
He taught me basic Hebrew and also how to read Rashi. No one in my “shtetl” had gone to a yeshiva, ever.
As an aside, my father had a sister in Montgomery, Elsie Katz. In
fact, the only reason he ever traveled to Montgomery
was to visit his sister. On one such occasion, he went to shul, and my Zaidy
Eliezer took him home for the seudah;
there he met my mother. Tanta Elka told my father not to send me to Yeshiva.
She told him that when she came to America, she had seen Yeshiva Rabbi
Yitzchok Elchonon, and it was in a slum on the Lower East
Side. Better to stay in Montgomery
and study privately with the rabbi. I told her, “Tanta Elka, Yeshiva University
is no longer located on the Lower East Side, it has grown somewhat since you
were in New York.”
* * *
Let
me now turn to the miracle of Feigi’s birth. Some of you may know that my wife
was born after her parents had been married for 20 years. Her mother, Rosalyn
Siegel, came from Altoona, Pennsylvania to Baltimore for the summer. She met a girl who
took her to the Adas, where the young shomer
Shabbos were. She met Yechezkel-Chester Siegel, and to make a long story
short, they were married in 1930 in front of the Adas. One of the boys holding
the chuppa poles was the late Matthew Bennet, who told me about it. It was
miraculous that Chester
and Rosalyn, both born in America
before there were yeshivos and Bais Yaakovs, were staunch in their shmiras Shabbos and never wavered
despite years of yearning for a child. Then, after 18 years, Rosalyn got
pregnant and carried the child till she entered the hospital for a C-section.
The nurse gave her the wrong medicine, which killed the unborn child.
It is hard to imagine the anguish they must have suffered. My
mother-in-law told me that she would hear the other women whisper when she
walked by, “Nebech, she will never
have any children.” But she did give birth to a daughter, Feigi, and then to a
son, Chaim. Her first cousin, Rabbi Shmuel Dovid Siegel, told me that the
entire frum community of Baltimore was overjoyed.
It was a simcha for the entire town. It really was a nes, a miracle, that Feigi was born and grew up to become the woman
she is today.
Our shidduch was
suggested by three people independently of each other: Rabbi Hirsh Diskind,
Mrs. Borchardt of Washington
Heights, and Rabbi Boruch
Taub, who later became a rabbi in Toronto.
We have been married for 50 years and have been blessed with amazing children,
who give us so much nachas and many einiklach, every one of whom attends a
Jewish school.
Last August, our 12 children came to Baltimore for Shabbos and celebrated our
anniversary. They took care of everything; we were guests. The meals were in
the Heather Ridge clubhouse, and they planned other
activities. We were overwhelmed by their care and concern for every detail.
They came up with the idea for all of the Oberstein Tribe to wear identical T-shirts
with a big O. The theme was Ober, and it was a play on Uber. Even now, we get
pictures on Whats App of various grandchildren proudly wearing their Oberstein
shirts.
* * *
Miracles
never cease. In December, Feigi was in great pain. We went to several
doctors and heard various possibilities, but no one figured it out. She even
went to the Emergency Room, but they couldn’t diagnose it either. Several
days later, she was finally admitted to Sinai Hospital,
where an MRI showed that she
needed delicate neurosurgery on her spine because of an infection pressing
against the spinal cord. Sinai made the decision that this was very delicate
surgery for them. We benefited from the help of Dr. Ringo and many other
wonderful people at Sinai. My friend and colleague, Rabbi Leib Hoffman, called
the Chief of Neurosurgery at Johns Hopkins, Dr. Brem. He wasn’t there, but his
secretary pulled the right strings, and Feigi was not only admitted but was
operated on late that very evening by an entire team of the very best, world-class surgeons. Each
of them remarked to me, “You are Dr. Brem’s friend.” I
believe that Rabbi Hoffman’s call to Dr. Brem’s secretary was essential. It was indeed very delicate surgery on three places along her
spine and other places where the sepsis had spread. Baruch Hashem, the surgery was successful, but the recovery was
long.
We once again saw what wonderful children G-d has blessed us with.
Before she woke from surgery, that very evening, our son Sruly got on a train
and came in from New York
and our daughter Shani drove up from Richmond
to join me in the waiting room. Then other children came in. Our children
in Eretz Yisrael, New York, and Toronto, on their own, came. Feigi was never
alone, 24/7, in the three weeks she was in the hospital. Our four married
children who live in Baltimore
were there for us whenever we needed anything.
Today, after six months and a return to Johns Hopkins for Thoracic
Surgery, Feigi is pretty much back to her old self. We appreciate the tehilim, the tefilos, and the love and concern of so many people in the Baltimore community. This
is really a special kehila.
One of these days, when the pandemic is over, we hope to be able
to make a seudas hoda’a. We pray that
we will all overcome this wretched Corona
virus and that life will return to normal. We look forward to a day when we can
travel to our children, and they can travel to us. Both Canada and Israel have
closed their borders to us, but we do see them from afar. One of these days, we
will even be able to hug our grandchildren. Hashem has been good to us. Shehechiyanu vikiyemanu vehigianu lazman
hazeh! We truly are a miracle.
