During her entire life, my wife Leah Marsh, a”h, was permeated with a love for Torah and mitzvos that was transmitted to her by her parents, z”l, Avraham Yeshayahu and Shifra Botwinick, who both came to America as children in the 1920s. Mr. Botwinick was born in Rakov, in Russia, and Mrs. Botwinick (nee Mirsky) in the Bais Yisroel section of Yerushalayim. Leah always strove to follow their example and to practice all the hanhagos they observed.
Until Leah was a teenager, her family lived in a small apartment in a tenement building on Madison Street on the Lower East side, where they gladly gave the best room to Leah’s grandmother, an almana. This delivered an unspoken lesson in kibud av v’eim which Leah never forgot. Within the family, her mother relied on Leah’s help in bringing up her younger brother, and she developed the sense of responsibility that became a key part of her character. Mrs. Botwinick always said, “If you need a job done properly, give it to Leah.”
Starting when Leah was eight or nine years old, she traveled each day by subway and bus from Manhattan to Boro Park to go to school. Because of her always aristocratic bearing, Leah’s fellow students from Brooklyn thought her home in Manhattan was not the humble Madison Street but the more prestigious Madison Avenue. While the early morning trains traveling from Brooklyn to Manhattan were packed with commuters, the one Leah took in the other direction was empty, making the long trip a terrifying experience for a little girl traveling by herself. On one occasion, a massive blizzard closed down the city, but her father felt that Leah’s chinuch was so important that she should not miss even one day. However, when she finally arrived at school, she found that none of the students from the neighborhood were there. Trained in this manner, Mrs. Marsh remained undaunted throughout her life by any difficulty when she felt it was her duty to do something.
Leah worked as a teacher and held a number of administrative jobs before her marriage to Yaacov Marsh in 1969. After her children started school, she worked part time as a tutor and substitute teacher, putting the same effort into these tasks as she did with everything she undertook. The great devotion she always showed to her students was always reciprocated. This was most evident during the final year of her life, when Leah tutored boys in the lower grades of Yeshivas Chofetz Chaim-Talmudical Academy of Baltimore in k’riya, and after the first few lessons the young boys vied to be first to be sent to her class. Noticing the great difficulty she had climbing the stairs, one of her students told a teacher that the school should install an elevator for her. When the boys heard she was in the hospital, they davened intensely for her, and one boy, who was seen to be crying, explained, “When you cry, Hashem listens to you.”
My wife was a consummate balabusta and a wonderful cook. These activities, like everything she did, were pursued leshem shamayim. Her major culinary efforts were directed at preparing superb meals for Shabbos, Yom Tov, Rosh Chodesh, and the siyumim she delighted to in celebrate in the home, whether in commemoration of her and her husband’s parents’ yahrzeits and other occasions marking the completion of masechtos by various shiurim. These always featured lavish meals, and the large amount of food left over was distributed among the participants. At one Daf Hayomi siyum seuda, which Leah made just two weeks before Pesach, the appreciative magid shiur remarked that she should go into the catering business, then hastily corrected himself, saying, “It would never work out, because Mrs. Marsh would give all the food away.”
Leah was a great baalas chesed. In his hesped, her brother Rabbi Dr. Aryeh Botwinick described her as someone who totally identified with anyone for whom she could do good. When shopping in the local kosher supermarket, she was known to give money to the store to be used to pay the bills of families unable to pay. Every week without fail, even when she was going away for Shabbos, she would prepare a full Shabbos meal for one of her friends, an older giyores living by herself. Whenever meshulachim came to the house, she would invite them to sit down to eat and drink something. If they declined, she would put the food in a bag and insist they take it for tzeida laderech. If they left while she was in the kitchen preparing the package, she would run out of the house to make sure they took it. On many occasions, when they were out of sight, she would get in the car and drive around the neighborhood looking for them.
In Igeres Haramban, the Ramban advises his son that whenever he learns something new, he should seek ways to put it into practice. Leah exemplified that midda. Whenever she heard of a hidur mitzva, she would seek to adopt it immediately and enthusiastically.
Nothing was too hard for Leah. When our son Moshe Zvi, learning in Lakewood, was looking for rare and out-of-print sefarim, she would be on the phone for hours, scouring bookstores across the U.S., in Eretz Yisrael, and all over the world in search of the elusive volumes. On one occasion, she tracked down the son-in-law of the mechaber of a long out-of-print, 30-year-old sefer, and obtained a copy from him. Another time, after she learned that a certain sefer might be available in England, she rose at 3 a.m. so she could call the store the minute it opened. In his hesped, Rabbi Elya Kanarek, Rosh Yeshiva of Yeshivas Ohr Hameir of Peekskill (a mechutan), described Mrs. Marsh’s respect for sefarim: “Every word in every sefer was kodesh kodashim.”
Mrs. Marsh was best known for her unique degree of devotion to tefila, which she inherited from her mother and grandmother. She spent hours each day reciting tehilim and had a long list of cholim for whom she davened. Starting 25 years ago, she began to go to shul every morning to daven with a minyan. A few years later, she began to do the same for Mincha and Maariv. This practice continued for the rest of her life, until the day she went to the hospital. Because the ezras nashim of Agudath Israel was kept locked during the week, the mora d’asra, Harav Moshe Heinemann, arranged to give Leah her own key. When he came to be menachem avel during shiva, and this was mentioned, he said, “Of course I gave her a key. The ezras nashim was built for her.” Many women who had observed the kavana with which Leah davened, and which she also expressed in the way she made all her brachos carefully and out loud, told the family during shiva that they had been inspired to try to emulate her.
During the final months of her life, Leah grew very frail. It became increasingly difficult for her to follow her regular routine, but until she was taken to the hospital, she insisted on maintaining all the activities she was accustomed to, especially preparing for Shabbos, including baking challa every week, something which she had learned to do extremely quickly and efficiently during 35 years of weekly practice. Now, however, because of her weakened state, it took her the whole night.
Leah went in to teach her students until the last day it was physically possible, even though she had to be assisted to climb the steps and even to get into the car to be driven home after school. The next morning, she was taken to the hospital, where she remained, surrounded by her family, until her petira on the third day of Shevat, just three days after her birthday.
The levaya in Baltimore was attended by hundreds of people, both men and women, and hespedim were delivered by Harav Mordechai Shuchatowitz, mora d’asra of Agudath Israel of Greenspring, who described her extraordinary tzidkus and constant pursuit of every davar shebekedusha as something befitting one from an earlier generation; Harav Elya Kanarek; Dr. Yaacov Marsh; Rabbi Dr. Aryeh Botwinick; Rabbi Dovid Naiman (son-in-law), who described her passion for finding ways to attach herself to Hakadosh Baruch Hu, and the remarkable kavod she always showed to talmidei chachamim; and Rabbi Moshe Zvi Marsh (son).
R’ Moshe Zvi cited the midrash which tells how Yaakov Avinu davened to Hashem to bring sickness into the world so people could be prepared for death and say farewell to their families, and was rewarded by becoming the first person to receive this gift, as described in the opening pesukim of Parshas Vayechi. It is noteworthy that Leah, who was always acutely sensitive of the significance of the Hebrew date, was taken to hospital on erev Shabbos Vayechi. Rabbi Marsh movingly described how the final two weeks his mother spent in the hospital provided time for the family to say goodbye. Her survival during this period was beyond the doctors’ ken, showing how it is possible for a person to survive on mazon ruchani (purely spiritual food) alone. In fact, during Leah’s entire life, it was mazon ruchani that sustained her.
Leah Marsh is survived by her husband, daughter Mrs. Esther Naiman, son Rabbi Moshe Zvi Marsh, and her b
