A Good Daughter...

B"H

...Makes Shabbos For Her Mama

But, there was no daughter, there were no children, and so Yosef lit the candles for his beloved Lina, he said the Kiddush, and he held the two loaves of challah close while he said the Motzi.  Lina always could speak to him on Friday night, ... to tell him good Shabbos... and she could always smile back at him when he kissed her a good Shabbos.  It was just the two of them.  And some rabbis tried to take even that away from them.  What had the world come to be?  

The Sad Man

B"H

With A Loyal Heart

The chasuneh is a personal day of atonement for the couple who stands under the chupah, the marriage canopy.  They fast like a Yom Kippur.  They wear white, like the shrouds that will cover their nakedness on the day of their burial.  And they get a new beginning ... together.  This is how Uncle Yosef and Polina, his Lina, began anew with lightening and fire. 

Bubbe Dana, of blessed memory, loved her Sonia and her baby Lina.  It was an emotion so concentrated and potent that even from the grave she was her Lina's shadchanes (matchmaker).  And what a good job she did.  She picked Yosef who loved the Sabbath and Lina.  In fact, Uncle Yosef was so loyal a soul that only an angel's view could reveal what a gift Bubbe Dana had bestowed upon her girls.  Uncle Yosef took care of his Lina and his mother-in-law.  And the women took good care of him. 

The Wonderful Man

B"H,

Football at N.U.

Uncle Yosef was a wonderful man.  But something troubled me about him.  Perhaps it was his sadness.  I trusted him and I enjoyed his visits to our home.  So did my parents. 

He was a Northwestern University alum and he loved going to their football games.  Who knew that they lost every game that they played!  As a gift to Baylyah and me, he promised us a football game up in Evanston.  Baylyah's turn came first because she was the oldest of us.  How exciting it was when she came home with Uncle Yosef and told us how N.U. won!  Even Uncle Yosef was ecstatic.  So, when it came to be my turn to attend a football game for N.U. with Uncle Yosef I was quite disappointed that they lost.  Surely Uncle Yosef would have told them that they had to win the game for me.  I was still young enough to know that everything happening in my life was thanks to and because of me.  No one ever corrected me of this notion so it was true.  Right? 
 

The Good Man

A Match made...

B"H, Uncle Yosef was a good man.  Uncle Yosef was the son of Bubbe Raisel's best friend.  She did not have many friends in the family nor out of the family, but, Uncle Yosef's mother, Irena, was very sisterly to her.  And I would imagine that in Bubbe Raisel's loneliness and loss that she was sisterly in return.  When Uncle Yosef was a young man he fell in love with the only child of a  survivor.  Sonia survived some dreadful pogroms, massacres.  Her only child came to her from a brutal rape.  So brutal that Sonia had been left for dead.  A peasant woman found her still breathing and nursed her back to life and health.  Polina was born nine months later.  The peasant lady, Bogdana, may G-d elevate her soul again and again, loved Sonia and baby Lina.  They made a wonderful family.  But, the world they knew continued to convulse.  Bogdana -- the healer, caregiver, home-maker, savior -- decided that she, Sonia, and Lina should leave all they knew and should walk, no run, far away from the madness.