Recently, our community lost a beloved member, Mrs. Sabina Bodenheimer, a”h. Mrs. Bodenheimer came to Baltimore from Venezuela many years ago and married Louis Bodenheimer. She came from a traditional Jewish family but embraced Yiddishkeit here in Baltimore, She was very careful about keeping all the halachos that her husband taught her, and she accepted the troubles in her life with emuna and bitachon (faith). Although the Bodenheimers never had children of their own, they became honorary members of many Baltimore families.
Mrs. Bodenheimer, otherwise known as Sabina, started her “career” of chesed as a babysitter for a number of Baltimore families. She treated the children for whom she babysat like her own. She celebrated their every milestone, and when they outgrew her services, she continued to participate in their lives by attending their bar mitzvas, graduations, and weddings. When the children grew up, they brought their own children to visit “Bubby Bodenheimer.” One mother recalls, “I remember Sabina buying toys for my kids and making chocolate chip cookies. She asked for their pictures and put them on her mantel. Sometimes she took the children for weekends when we went out of town.”
The families reciprocated and included the Bodenheimers in their lives. Some families called them Uncle Louis and Aunt Sabina.
I got to know Mrs. Bodenhiemer later on, when she had already retired from babysitting. I always found it fascinating that Mrs. Bodenheimer seemed to have so many friends. A person who does not have family connections and is without children is often very lonely. But from the time I started to visit the Bodenheimers, when they lived on Ethelbert Avenue, and later in the Windsor House, her home was the place to be on Shabbos afternoon.
By that time, her husband was already disabled by a stroke and in a wheelchair, but she would welcome everyone who came to the house. I’m not sure what attracted people to her. Perhaps it was because she radiated acceptance and love and appreciated everyone who came. She would never ask you why you hadn’t come before or criticize you in any way. The talk in her house was always about upcoming simchas or events and never involved talking negatively about others. She simply enjoyed your company and accepted you just as you were.
When Mrs. Bodenheimer moved into Tudor Heights assisted living and I went to visit her, I heard one of the aides mention that Mrs. Bodenheimer had more visitors than any of the other residents! She seemed to collect visitors.
Mrs. Bodenheimer took great pleasure in giving brachos to people who needed shidduchim. She took this job very seriously, and every time a single boy or girl visited, she would say, “Don’t worry, soon he or she will come, and I will dance at your wedding.” The visitor would shrug and smile, but there was always the hope that the bracha would come true. New kallas would make a special point of going to tell the good news to Sabina as soon as it became official and often brought their chassanim along.
Sabina felt great joy in every simcha that she heard about and made sure to share each simcha with all the other visitors who arrived. Some families brought her pictures of their children’s weddings, and she loved to display them on her walls. Even at the end of her life, when she was living in Levindale, her walls were covered with pictures of the people she cared about.
Although Mrs. Bodenheimer was not actually anybody’s bubby, she became the bubby of the whole community. She will be missed.
