G-d’s Angels

Today, as on the last couple of Sundays, I hitched my bike rack to the rear of my car to load my bike and then pick up my riding partner and hit Israel’s trails. I inadvertently over-loosened a mechanical arm that holds the bike in place, and it came apart. Not being mechanical, I was at wit’s end. It “just so happened” that a fellow wearing a kippa and a spotted mask walked by, and, although I didn’t know him, I asked if he could help me put it back together. He gave it a try and succeeded! He literally saved the day. It was as if G-d had sent an angel. And it made me think of angels in my past, especially the “invisible” and the unexpected ones – those messengers who worked behind the scenes. This article is dedicated to a few of these people: people who cared and who made a major impact on my life – some without me even being aware of it until years later.

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It was 1958. I was four years old and living on Milford Mill Road in Baltimore County. We had recently moved from Quantico Road in Lower Park Heights to this relatively new housing development spanning two blocks from Subet Road to Rolling Road. Just about all the residents of this development were Jewish. (The homes looked like some of those on Olympia Road off Nerak, with roof slanting downwards from left to right.) There were farms behind the homes. Our home was graced by a small patch of forest bordering our backyard. The area still had a rural feel to it. Beyond this two-block development were older homes inhabited by rednecks. They really came out of the woodwork on Halloween, when their hillbilly appearance and behavior became very evident.

I believe our home was the only one that had Shabbos candles Friday night and a kosher kitchen. We weren’t the only home to build a sukka, though. The “Heimsteins,” who were active members of a Reform congregation also had one, though it wasn’t kosher even according to the most lenient opinions! The rest of our Jewish neighbors I would call “unaffiliated.”

My father went to Beth Tfiloh to register me in their kindergarten. Mr. Eric Levy, the principal of the elementary school, “interviewed” my father. He took interest in a “refugee” who survived the horrors of World War II and the Russian labor camps. He wanted to know more about my father’s background.

My parents, like most Holocaust survivors from religious homes, were shattered by their experience. After suffering the traumas of losing their family members, starvation, and constant life-threatening situations over a period of years, they were not mentally or emotionally capable of going back to their previous level of observance. The fact that they were determined to keep some traditions and affiliations and not chuck the whole thing is a great testament to them and their loyalty to the Jewish people.

My father must have told him about his chasidic parents and upbringing because when he was finished listening to my father, Mr. Levy said to him: “Mr. Finkel, Beth Tfiloh is not the proper school for an einikel (grandson) of a Belzer chasid. You should enroll him in the Talmudical Academy.” And my father went ahead and took his advice. 

In TA, I started becoming more observant in second grade, thanks to the marvelous rebbe, Yechezkel Stern. By fourth grade I had become shomer Shabbos. If it weren’t for Mr. Levy, it’s a good chance that I wouldn’t be observant today. It was only after Mr. Levy had passed away that a daughter of his told my sister, who told me. I had seen Mr. Levy many times – he lived only a few blocks away – but he was too modest to tell me. He put my grandfather’s legacy before that of the school he worked for.

But it goes much further than that. Every single kid I knew from that neighborhood on Milford Mill – without exception – intermarried. I had been snatched from the intermarriage inferno of America.

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The following years were not easy ones for me. I got into a lot of fights with my parents over religious observance. I couldn’t invite any classmates over because our house was not shomer Shabbos. I walked to shul (Woodmoor Hebrew on Coronado Road) alone.

Although, by now, my father had his own business, becoming shomer Shabbos was very difficult. All the lumber businesses in the state of Maryland were open on Shabbos – and practically all were owned by Jews. Most of my father’s business was in retail, and the vast majority of customers came on Saturday. And who would have cared on Milford Mill Road? In addition, very few members of the shul we belonged to were shomer Shabbos.

So, I couldn’t understand why Dad suddenly decided to start phasing out his business on Saturdays. For a number of years, he began to close early, at 3 p.m. Then at noon, and finally, the store was closed completely on Shabbos.

He told me a number of times that closing the store on Shabbos probably lengthened his life. With the mental and emotional strain he endured running such a business, the extra day off was a real life saver.

My parents had a friend whose name was Menashe Schamroth. Menashe was also a Holocaust survivor, a former inmate of Auschwitz. Menashe had a photographic mind and could have become a professor. He sold shirts. He was a very funny man. Perhaps he used humor to survive the trauma that always bedeviled him. He was the gabbai at the Hertzberg shul. One time, I took a friend to “experience” the unique atmosphere that was Hertzberg’s. We were in the middle of Pesukai Dezimrah when Menashe walked over to us.

“Semmy, is anything the matter?” he asked in his European accent.

“Why are you asking, Menashe?” I wasn’t sure what he was getting at.

“Because you guys aren’t you talking during davening!”

Another time, Menashe said to me, “Semmy! Do you know that your father is greater than the Maharal of Prague?”

I said, “Menashe, what are you talking about?!”

He said, “Semmy, let me explain. The Maharal made a golem who couldn’t talk, your father made one who could!” (How I miss the Holocaust survivors. They were the sweetest, warmest people I ever knew!)

After Menashe passed away, I paid a shiva call to his family. One of his daughters asked me, “Did your father ever tell you how our father got him to close down his business on Shabbos?” I gave her a perplexed look. She asked, “You mean, he never told you? It was my father. He said he told your father that he thought it must be very hard for his son to be in a yeshiva day school, TA, where all his classmates’ families were shomer Shabbos and his family wasn’t. He kept tugging at your father’s heart until he gave in.”