Getting to Know Each Other : From Buenos Aires to Baltimore: Meet Rochel Berman

When I asked Rochel Berman if I could interview her, after being tipped off by a mutual friend about her fascinating story, she immediately took me up on my offer – with a disclaimer. She didn’t think her life was anything fantastic. Now that I know her life story, though, I’d say it could be the subject of a movie or a book. What do you think?

Déjà Vu

Rochel Berman was born and raised in Buenos Aires. Her parents, both natives of Poland, were Holocaust survivors. When they met and married in Paris, her father had papers to go to America, and her mother had papers to go to Argentina. They decided on Argentina, where they eventually did very well.

“My childhood was very beautiful,” reminisces Rochel. “It was frum and Zionistic. The house was always full of people because we kept kosher, and all my parents’ survivor friends would come over to eat my mother’s goodies. Our home was busy, exciting, and positive – amazing for Holocaust survivors.”

To give me a better picture of what her father was like, Rochel backtracks to recount his meeting with Pope Pius XII in 1946, when he was 26 and single. “After the war, my father made his way to Rome, where he was a cook in the DP camp. He really wanted to go to Eretz Yisrael. He had no idea if any family members survived the war; he couldn’t locate anyone. Pope Pius XII wanted to meet 12 Jews, and my father was chosen as one of them. The Pope, as is the custom, put out his hand to each of them so they could kiss his ring. My father was the only one to refuse. He told him, “I am a Jew; I believe in G-d and I don’t kiss the hands of any other kings.” Her father and the rest of the group were also taken on a tour in the subterranean grounds of the Vatican to see all the artifacts stored from the Beis Hamikdash. “My father felt that the Catholic Church was boasting or making fun of them by doing this,” explains Rochel. “As if to say, ‘You see, you poor things; you barely survived, and we still have all your precious things from your Second Temple.”

Rochel reverts to her teenage years in Buenos Aires. The Bais Yaakov in Argentina did not have a full-day program. Students either attended the very intense program from 8 a.m. to 12 or from 1 p.m. to 5 p.m. Rochel attended public school in the morning and learned at Chazon Ish high school in the afternoon. It was then that anti-Semitism reared its head in the country.

“The biggest honor a student could have in our public school was to raise the Argentinian flag in the morning or take it down in the afternoon,” says Rochel. “I had been getting phenomenal grades, but I purposely made sure that my grades went down when the anti-Semitism started. I wanted to make sure that I was not looked at, seen, or paid attention to, since I was Jewish.”

Although Rochel was not a direct victim of anti-Semitism, she relates that the children of the Argentinian military formed a group called Tacuara. Their emblem was a swastika, which they would wear on a necklace. They attacked groups of Jewish kids, so the Jewish teens started going to a JCC-type school, where they learned self-defense.

“The last two Rosh Hashanahs that I was in Buenos Aires,” says Rochel, “the police said they didn’t have enough personnel to protect us, but they allowed the shuls to protect themselves with rifles and guns. I was a 14-year-old girl and didn’t have any of those things. My mother and father, being survivors, said, ‘We are not going through this again!’ So, they sent me to America, to safety.”

A Warm Bais Yaakov Welcome

“I was not a happy camper, being sent away at such a young age,” says Rochel. Although she had taken two years of “British English” in school, when she got here, everything sounded like “potatoes” to her.

Rochel settled in Baltimore, in 1963, where her uncle, Chaim Wizenfeld, lived; she received a warm welcome from the Bais Yaakov principals, Rabbi Steinberg and Rabbi Diskind, z”l.

“Bais Yaakov of Baltimore was wonderful; back then, it was at the old campus,” says Rochel. “The English teacher was told that they should tutor me while the other girls were taking French. One teacher told me to watch all of the interviews of President Kennedy since he had a Boston accent and I would understand him better. She also told me to walk around with a Spanish-English dictionary and stop people I spoke with to look things up and say the English words. And, I did it.”

Rochel’s warm memories of Bais Yaakov also include this recollection: “I was looking out the window in school during our Chumash class with Rabbi Wolk. He said to me in Yiddish – because that’s what I spoke – ‘What are you staring at?’ I said, ‘I don’t know; what is that?’ He said, ‘Snow.’ I told him I had never seen snow, so he opened the window, made a tiny snowball, and threw it at me. The whole class – including me – just laughed and laughed! I will always remember that.”

Life in the Big Apple

Within two years, the rest of Rochel’s family joined her in America. Her father was the first to come, when she was almost 16, and she moved in with him in Williamsburg, in New York. “I remember screaming from surprise and excitement when I got off the bus,” says Rochel. “I had only seen chasidim in pictures; I didn’t know they still existed! Eventually, I calmed down.”

Rochel’s father had gotten a job in a sweater factory. Unable to accompany her, the morning after her arrival, he said, ‘Go get yourself a school.’ So she did. The first school she went to refused to accept her without a parent coming with her to register. The following day, someone advised her to take the bus to Manhattan to Esther Schoenfeld High School. Recalls Rochel, “The principal, Rabbi Garber, said, ‘Sure, honey! Come on in! Your father will come and register you whenever he can.’ This would not happen today.”

Rochel was very bright and graduated high school at age 17. She was ahead of most girls in math and sciences. Although she was accepted in Brooklyn College, she wasn’t old enough to promise that she would become an American citizen, and she didn’t have parents who were in the States legally. They let her attend, non-matriculated, for a year, after which she could officially be matriculated.

From Secretary to Advisor

In the meantime, Rochel took a speedwriting course, and the first job she got was as a secretary for the founder of the National Council of Synagogue Youth (NCSY), Rabbi Pinchas Stolper.

“I developed a long love affair with NCSY,” says Rochel. “When I switched to a full-time school schedule, I continued to work there part-time. Rabbi Stolper was short on girl advisors and asked me to be one.”

Although Rochel initially told Rabbi Stolper that she didn’t feel she was qualified to be an advisor, he said, “Rochel, you have to come help me. You know your brachos, you know how to wash your hands for Hamotzi – anything you know, you teach the girls.”

“It was an unbelievably exciting time, traveling to NCSY Shabbatons and conventions! The neighbors didn’t know what to make of me. I would walk out with a suitcase every Friday morning and not return until Sunday night.” For the first three years, Rochel traveled to all the NCSY regions, she was the unofficial coordinator for the Chicago region, and she was the director of National Torah Fund. It was an amazing experience for an immigrant kid, says Rochel. She got invited to all the OU conventions and would go to Washington, D.C.; she was flying everywhere. She found it fun and made lifelong friends. Not only did Rochel become a big macher in NCSY but through her work ended up meeting and marrying Nate Berman, an NCSYer. Although their shidduch may have seemed like a most unlikely one, they actually shared similar upbringings – both of them coming from families that excelled in the midda of chesed and a love of Yiddishkeit.

A Cleveland to New York Commute

Rochel got her BA a couple months after she married Rabbi Nathan Berman, z”l. Two years later, they moved to Montreal, where he was a rebbi and NCSY advisor. They ended up in Cleveland a year later. Rochel wasn’t able to have children right away and decided to go back to school for a masters in social work at Case Western Reserve University. She subsequently worked for Jewish Family Services. The Bermans were childless for ten-and-a-half years.

“If I had known it would take me so long to have children, I would have gone to medical school,” says Rochel. “But my father, z”l, was never worried; my mother was a wreck about us not being able to have kids. I asked my father once why he was so calm. He told me that he always goes to the Gerer Rebbe when he is in Israel. The Rebbe told him, ‘It is going to take her a long time, but she will have children.’ This is an example of my father’s total emunas hachomim. B”H, I ended up with three kids.”

Living in Cleveland for many years, Rochel got involved in the Chevra Kadisha and Bikur Cholim. When their daughter entered 12^th grade and their sons were in yeshiva out of town, Rochel suddenly got two simultaneous job offers. One was to work in New York with Rabbi Dr. Aharon Hersh Fried, a Ph,D. and chasid with a specialty in special education. The other job was in the mental health department of a community health center in Cleveland, which needed a Spanish-speaking social worker four hours a week. With her sons away at yeshiva and her daughter about to leave for seminary in Israel, she took both jobs and flew to New York once a week.

“I wanted to explore working with my people – my roots – and I also wanted to use my Spanish,” says Rochel. For 20 years, before retiring full-time two years ago, she worked two days a week in the community health center and two-and-a-half full days a week in New York. “In between,” says Rochel, “I somehow had a private practice. I was pretty busy putting in 50 to 60 hours a week. My work was so challenging and enriching; I had so many unbelievable experiences.”

Rochel became a “multi-culturist,” working with chasidim, Sefardim, Iranians, and others. The New York-based referral agency, RELIEF, started referring clients to her who were living in distant locales, such as Mexico, South Africa, and Belgium, that had no frum therapists. She was counseling via telehealth, long before it became necessary with Corona.

The Great Man behind the Great Woman

Rochel’s husband was niftar six years ago at the age of 67. About five or six years before, they had the opportunity to travel each summer. Rochel continues to travel, mentioning the blast she had attending a bar mitzva in South Africa, which included a safari. She also enjoyed touring Hawaii, Norway, Copenhagen, and Iceland.

“You know what they say: Those who work hard, play hard!’ chuckles Rochel. “I love to see what Hashem’s world has to offer. I have continued traveling with frum touring groups, as I did with my husband, which provide a minyan and Daf Yomi – not that I need them, but that is what I am used to; I enjoy the lectures and shiurim.”

Two years ago, Rochel decided to relocate to Baltimore so she could enjoy her children and grandchildren. She also has her Baltimore NCSY friends and has met a lot of people at WITS. Her neighbors have been welcoming and wonderful as well.

Rochel eventually got her Maryland social work license. She presently works part-time for Shalom Tikvah in addition to counseling private clients. In her spare time, Rochel does a lot of cooking, which she distributes to her family and friends. She loves to read and garden, and enjoys shiurim and good conversation. She stays in touch with many friends in Israel and her cousins in Argentina.

“I also spend a lot of time researching my family roots,” notes Rochel. “When I go to Israel, I work 10 to 12 hours researching our genealogy at Yad Vashem; I hope to publish my findings for our family.”

Looking back at her life, Rochel concludes, “I’ve moved around a lot in my life and taken a lot of chances. My husband was my mentor and totally encouraged and helped me. None of this would have happened without his help and support. He was my full partner in life.”