The festivities at Arugas Habosem were planned for March 20, 2018 (4 Nissan). That was the day that Rabbi Shaya Taub’s congregation on Clark’s Lane would pour the boros (pools) for its new mikveh. Unfortunately, the celebration was cut short when the sad news arrived that the Rebbetzin’s mother, Rebbetzin Chava Israel, a”h, was nifteres.
Rebbetzin Israel, mother of Rebbetzin Malka Faiga Taub, was a well-known figure in Williamsburg, where she was cofounder, along with Satmar Rebbetzin, Rebbetzin Alta Feige Teitelbaum, a”h, of the renowned Bikur Cholim D’Satmar, in 1957. In fact, decades ago, in recognition of her exemplary Bikur Cholim volunteerism, Rebbetzin Israel was asked to rise at a dinner held in the Waldorf Astoria, where she received a thunderous ovation from over 2,000 attendees, which included 99 Bikur Cholim volunteers.
Here, Rebbetzin Taub graciously shares a glimpse of her powerhouse parents and her childhood.
Miraculous Divine Providence
Rebbetzin Chava Israel (nee Fried) was born in 1921, in Kalev, Hungary. Her family spent their summers at the home of their wealthy but childless relatives in the town of Bater. Uncle Chaim and Aunt Malka were exceptional people, who founded Tomchei Shabbos, an organization that distributed food packages for Shabbos and Yom Tov to the needy people of their town. (After World War II, their relatives started Tomchei Shabbos in America, which continues to flourish today.) Little Chava adored her spoiling relatives so much that she ended up moving in with them and visiting her parents for vacation.
“It was a miracle that my mother did not live at home,” explains Rebbetzin Taub, “because when the Nazis, y”s, came into my mother’s town, they looked for families with no more than four children to send to a model concentration camp they were building to show to foreigners. Since my mother was living with her aunt and uncle, there wasn’t a fifth child in the home.” The Frieds’ internment in this relatively benign family camp prevented them from being deported to Auschwitz, where they surely would have perished. As a result of this miracle, the family survived.
Rebbetzin Taub’s mother was taken to Auschwitz (a story in itself!) and was later transferred to slave labor in a factory that produced radios for the Nazi army. She, too, survived, baruch Hashem. After being liberated by the British, she heard about her family and went home to meet them. From there, the Frieds went to a DP (displaced persons) camp in Austria.
Another person who came to that DP camp was Harav Avrohom Meir Israel, zt”l, the Hunyader Rav, who had served as the community leader in Hunyad, Romania. Like many men who were left widowers after the war, he had lost his wife and two children and came to that camp for a shidduch. Chava Fried was suggested to him. Chava’s father asked his daughter if she would consider a chasidishe rebbe for a husband. Her answer was “What would you want?” He said, “I would be very proud if the Hunyader Rav would be my son-in-law.” And so she agreed to meet with him.
“The rest is history,” notes Rebbetzin Taub, whose mother was well-read, cultured, and grew up going to the opera with her aunt in Budapest. “They were a powerhouse couple and worked very well together as a team, filling the needs of everyone who needed help after the war. My father was commissioned by the Joint Distribution Committee and the U.S. Army to be chief rabbi of the sheiras hapleita (survivors) in Vienna, to oversee the spiritual needs of the refugees in the Rothschild Hospital, a DP camp in Vienna.”
The Israels, together with their young son, immigrated to America in 1950, and settled on the Lower East Side, As soon as they arrived, Rebbetzin Taub’s parents started working with the Satmar Rebbe and Rebbetzin to set up the Satmar cheder and school. Subsequently, they moved to Williamsburg and then to Boro Park in 1963.
School Days
In Europe, chasidishe girls did not attend school. When the Satmar Rebbe started a girls school, he was very involved in every detail. As he expressed to the principal, “For boys’ chinuch I have a mesora (tradition); for girls, I don’t.” He paid very close attention to the staff he hired, making sure they were yirei Hashem. In fact, Rebbetzin Taub’s second-grade English teacher was former Baltimorean Leah Lando. Rebbetzin Taub recalls this interesting scenario from her school days:
In April of 1963, the Satmar school was in a building that the City condemned, and the principal asked the mayor to please allow us the use of the building till the end of the school year, since we would have nowhere to go. How shocked we were when we came back from Pesach vacation and saw a padlock on the school door while we were still negotiating. It was a very big, block-long building, with the entrance for girls on one side and on the other side for boys. The boys had no problem, since they were able to have their classes in shuls. But, what do you do with girls? Rabbi Frankel called us to school – he made sure that every single girl came to school – and made us sit in the street! When the City asked what was going on, Rabbi Frankel said, “These girls cannot stay home; their parents are both working after coming to America with nothing but the shirt on their backs, and these children can’t stay home. So, since you threw us out, you have to deal with it.”
Three days we were writing on each other’s backs – b”H, the weather was perfect! The media was there, City officials were there. You can’t imagine who was not there! Finally, the mayor came down and saw that Rabbi Frankel was serious. In the end, they gave us only three floors of a commercial building, and we had to go up by elevator. Rabbi Frankel’s biggest fear was that it should not be, chas veshalom, a chilul Hashem. Rabbi Frankel made sure that there was orderly conduct and that we greeted everyone in the morning when we went up on the elevator to the top floors.
Sewing was one of the main subjects that we were taught. The only thing Rabbi Frankel really insisted on was to have the sewing room transferred. The City couldn’t imagine why he needed the sewing machines. Rabbi Frankel told the City that it was part of the curriculum. We could eat in our classrooms and do other activities in the hall but sewing machines there had to be. Do you know that the City came three or four times, from April to June, to check if we were using those sewing machines! They wanted to make sure they weren’t being taken advantage of.
We only learned subjects that were required by the government, such as reading, writing, and arithmetic, and a little bit of history. But sewing was part of the limudei kodesh. It was one full session per week, either from morning to lunch or from lunch until we went home. Boy, did we learn how to sew! You couldn’t buy tzniusdik dresses in those days. Eighty or ninety percent of our clothing was sewn, from the time we were seventh graders. That was an amazing part of my school years. We had a really good sewing teacher. My mother also sewed, and we were always encouraged to sew at home, too.”
The Rebbetzin Meets Her Match
Not long after moving to Boro Park, Rebbetzin Taub was engaged. She got married before turning 18. She met her husband, Harav Shaya Taub, the Brider Rebbe, via a shadchan, and they had “besho” dates. These are sit-in dates in the home of the girl, unique to chasidishe shidduchim.
“I was a Satmar talmida, and the Rebbe was a Satmar talmid, and my father was in favor of the shidduch,” explains Rebbetzin Taub. “In those days, parents who lived through the war were not young people, and they wanted to see nachas from their children, so they married them off very young. Most of the girls my age got married between 17 and 19; there were some who got married even younger. We only had 11 grades of school, rather than 12. Those who wanted to higher education were able to go to a Bais Yaakov or continue high school by mail.
“We met more than once in my parents’ house. By the time we meet, with the shidduch that is redt, we know everything about the family, everything about who the mechutanim are, where the boy learns, and if he is going to be a longtime learner or not.”
Before moving to Baltimore, Rebbetzin Taub heard four women talking. They were saying, “We should start making shidduchim like the chasidim!” The Rebbetzin didn’t agree. She replied to them, “No, no, no. You can’t have a girl meet a boy and after two or three meetings get engaged. From the cradle, the children have to grow up knowing and feeling that their parents always have their best interest in mind. The truth is that the parents must be realistic as well. If a boy is going to sit and learn, they have to find a girl who can live with that arrangement.”
A House of Chesed
Rebbetzin Taub grew up in Williamsburg for the first 12 years of her life in a house that was always very busy doing chesed. “For example, when it came to raising money for Bikur Cholim, my mother was always there,” reminisces Rebbetzin Taub. “Volunteering 40 years in Maimonides Hospital, five days a week, tells you a lot.”
When it came to doctors, Rebbetzin Israel used to tell them she was sending them a patient but to send the bill to Bikur Cholim. “Do you know how many doctors never sent a bill to Bikur Cholim?” asks Rebbetzin Taub. “One time, my mother ran to find a big doctor who was doing rounds with his students in the ICU. She said, ‘Doctor, you have to come! A man is dying in the emergency room, and he can’t be moved because he is going to die on his way up. The doctor turned around and told his students very nicely, ‘When Mrs. Israel comes calling, you go!’ They went down and saved this man’s life.
“In another story,” Rebbetzin Taub continues, “a lady wanted surgery from a really big doctor who was at Mt. Sinai Hospital. My mother told this lady, ‘If you come to Maimonides, I can make sure they don’t charge you.’ The lady insisted on having that particular doctor, so my mother said to him, ‘This woman heard very nice things about you, and I did, too. But this is a charity case; she doesn’t have money.’ The doctor said, ‘Okay, my price is $10,000, how much do you think you can give me?’ My mother said, ‘I can definitely get you $5,000.’ My mother came in with the money and gave him $7,500: three-quarters instead of half. The doctor was surprised and said, ‘You told me you were going to give me $5,000.’ She told him, ‘No, I didn’t tell you I was going to give you $5,000; I said that much I know I can raise, but since I raised more, I’m giving you more!’ He was very impressed. A few years later, this doctor was transferred to Maimonides, and lo and behold, who does he see? Mrs. Israel making the rounds as a volunteer in the hospital. He told her, ‘Mrs. Israel, if you ever have another charity case, send it to me!’”
Rebbetzin Israel’s passionate Bikur Cholim volunteerism even extended beyond the Jewish community, to non-Jews. “One day while my mother was in pre-admission testing, she saw someone with a Hungarian name which she recognized,” relates Rebbetzin Taub. “They were from the same hometown, and she introduced herself. He was surprised to find out she had survived the war. As long as he was in the hospital, my mother took care of him as if he were the patient she was sitting and waiting for.”
Preparing for the Next World
When Rebbetzin Israel turned 70, she wrote a letter to each of her children and ordered her tachrichim (burial shrouds), which she always showed them, saying, “This is my box, and don’t forget, there is a letter for each of you.” After her petira, 26 years later, her children were amazed at her thoughtfulness. In her son’s customized letter, she even included a last-but-not-least mention of her son’s nephew, who was a yasom (orphan) of both parents and grew up in her son’s house!
Rebbetzin Israel’s involvement with the chevra kadisha was just as exemplary as her work for Bikur Cholim. Shares Rebbetzin Taub: “My mother’s involvement with the chevra kadisha was legendary. If someone passed away five minutes before a three-day Yom Tov, and a tahara (pre-burial purification) had to be made on the second day of Yom Tov, my mother would walk from her house on 50th Street and 18th Avenue to the Jeffers Funeral Home on 47th St. and Ft. Hamilton Parkway, to do it.”
Rebbetzin Israel’s devotion to the chevra kadisha had its roots in her concentration camp experience: “While she was in Auschwitz, she was ordered to remove the corpses,” says Rebbetzin Taub. “She was pained by the bizayon hames (desecration of the dead) and took it upon herself that, if the Ribono Shel Olam would help her and she got out of that gehenom alive, she would be osek in chesed shel emes (take care of the dead), and she fulfilled her kabala (promise).”
“There was one lady who came from Russia, when the Iron Curtain came down and a lot of Russians came to America. She passed away in the hospital and had no one in the whole wide world. Of course, the chevra kadisha took care of everything. My mother was there. When the others on the chevra suggested that they use the plain tachrichim for her, my mother insisted, ‘Whoever has relatives and goes up to Shamayim and doesn’t have the best tachrichim, that’s not my problem. But if somebody goes up when I am here, she is only going to go up in the most mehudardika tachrichim (best quality shrouds).’ The women said to her, ‘But, they are so expensive!’ And my mother replied, ‘What do you think the chevra kadisha is for?’ That woman was sent up in the best!”
In another story, the body of a nifteres (deceased) was found after a few days. “The halacha is that you don’t have to make a tahara in such a case,” says Rebbetzin Taub, “so that those who take care of the body shouldn’t become repulsed and turned off from doing taharas in the future. You simply put the body in a bag and bury it the way it is. My mother said, ‘No way!’ She gave everybody masks and gloves and put her away as a Yiddisher kind (Jewish child) should be.”
May Rebbetzin Israel’s exceptional legacy of chesed continue to live on in her descendants, and may her life work be an inspiration and zechus (merit) for klal Yisrael!
