I had planned to begin by enumerating the things I miss most about my mother, but I changed my mind when I realized how impractical it would be to list all 2,000. Suffice it to say that the pain of missing her on the first yahrtzeit is just as acute as it was 12 months ago.
My mother often said, “Nobody cares how much you know until they know how much you care.” Judging by the hundreds of letters we received during shiva, and for many months after that, lots of people must have cared about how much she knew and known how much she cared. People were simply amazed by the breadth and depth of her knowledge. It occurred to me that she cared precisely becauseshe knew. (Another of her oft-quoted lines was “ignorance is bliss,” but, clearly, she wasn’t okay with bliss.) With that knowledge came a deep sensitivity for others and the ability to empathize. At the hespedim held at Bais Yaakov last year, we shared several stories about the way she reached out to her students, noticed nuances in behavior and character and style, and complimented readily. On the flipside, she knew becauseshe cared. She made it her business to know. (If there was something she didn’t know, she’d ask my father. Between the two of them, they really did know just about everything.)
When I was in high school, my mother would often remind me of “noblesse oblige” (nobility obliges). In that context, she meant that my teachers were her colleagues and friends, so regardless of what type of antics my classmates might be up to, I was not to participate. But the truth is, that was her personal standard. That’s why she expected it not only of her children but of Jews, in general. That’s also why history was so important to her. We, individually and collectively, have such a golden legacy to perpetuate and so much to be proud of, and that should be recognizable in our bearing. She wanted us to act refined, speak refined, walk refined. She really believed that if you understood the past and, better yet, knew how to link it to the present, you could not help but be a better person for it.
Rumor has it that, in recent years, my mother would often begin her classes with a joke (or two or five). If she didn’t have any of her own (supplied most often by a particular eight-year-old grandson), she’d resort to using Laffy Taffy jokes (supplied by, um, one of her daughters). To me, that speaks volumes of her as a teacher – and as a person. She did this not just so that they would be receptive to the coming lesson, although that was certainly part of her motivation, I’m sure. It was also because she wanted to connect with her girls, to give them pleasure, to set them at ease, so that students of varying capabilities would start class on equal footing. She would tell them, “That’s why my course is called ‘Global Studies’; we cover all sorts of topics and tangents!” That’s also why she shared personal stories of her childhood in Hungary, how her parents risked everything to escape a government that was overtly anti-religion when she was 10 years old, and the struggles she faced as an adolescent immigrant in New York. She succeeded in giving her students a sense of who she was, what it means to be a link in a chain, and why history matters.
And connect with her, they did. There was the class that greeted her every day with a poem written on the blackboard that she would read aloud with pleasure when she entered the classroom. There were the students who plastered the school hallways with her quotes. And, most telling of all, the class that, literally, rolled out a red carpet in her classroom and officially crowned her “Queen of the World.” (I observantly noted that that position is hereditary, so look out.)
There were several recurrent themes and words in every letter we received. Themes like “she opened my eyes,” “she taught me about life,” “she taught me not to waste the margins on my paper,” “it was obvious that she cared about us,” “she connected every secular date we were learning about to what was happening in the Jewish world during that period,” and “she taught us not to waste time, to say some tehilim instead.” Words like “passion,” “compassion,” “rigor,” “style,” “talent,” “fun,” “huge smile,” “mentor,” and “role-model. But there was one repetition that surprised me each time I read it. So many of you said, “Thank you for sharing her with us.” I suppose I never realized I was sharing her with anybody. To me, she was always my mother: drawing mitzva notes and report covers, making elaborate dioramas, baking birthday cakes, dragging me to museums, being my personal shopper, making me read newspaper articles, sending funny postcards to my nieces and nephews, etc., etc., etc. Nothing was ever lacking in my world because of what she was giving to others.
At the Shloshim seudah, 11 months ago, one of my brothers shared a dilemma he had faced the first time he said Birkas Hamazon during shiva. When he arrived at “Harachaman Hu yivareich...imi morasi ba’alas habayis hazeh,” he was unsure of the halacha: to say it or not to say it? He concluded immediately that he would say it, because our mother would always remain his teacher and the irreplaceable molder of the Lefkowitz home and family. That meant a lot to me, because it was exactly the same question that had occurred to me, and exactly the same conclusion I had arrived at. All six of us are products of the home she built, together with my father, ybl”ch, and that’s something that will never change. (Indeed, with a little bit of research, we discovered that many have the minhag to add the words “b’gan eden” to the end of the verse. The concept of Hakadosh Baruch Hu [G-d] blessing the neshama is very much a valid one.)
I want to close by again thanking all those letter writers who shared pieces of themselves with us. Your zechus (merit) is far greater than you know. While Miechal and I were very aware of what my mother meant to Bais Yaakov and to her students, having experienced it ourselves, my father and my brothers were less so. As the letters began to pour in, they came to know and admire and respect her in a way they hadn’t before – at a time they needed it most. In honor of the first yahrtzeit, we bound the letters into a book and gave a copy to each of my brothers so that they and their children can read and reread them (as I have done) and feel the surge of pride anew each time they do. May Hakadosh Baruch Hu repay our wonderful community with shalom and nachas and simcha until the time when His ultimate promise is fulfilled: Umacha Hashem dima me’al kol panim.
