Not much has been written about Rebbetzin Tamar Shteinman,
and that which I have read did not do the personality of this great woman
justice. It is therefore an honor to bring the life story of Rebbetzin Tamar
Shteinman to light.
For this article, which is part of
a series about the wives of Gedolim, I was zochah to get to know
Rebbetzin Sarah Yisraelzon, the daughter of Harav Yosef Shalom Elyashiv, zt”l. It was Rebbetzin Yisraelzon who
put me in touch with a granddaughter of her dear neighbor, Rebbetzin Tamar
Shteinman, a”h. Rebbetzin Shteinman’s granddaughter was able to paint a
very warm and vibrant picture of her beloved savta. It was also a real
privilege to speak to Rebbetzin Tova Shapiro, the only living daughter of
Rebbetzin Shteinman.
An Upbringing of Simplicity and Limud Torah
Rebbetzin Tamar Steinman spent the
first 34 years of her life known as Teima Kornfeld. Teima’s family were Gerrer chasidim who lived in a small town near
Krakow called Wolbrom. Teima’s father, Reb Shraga Shami Kornfeld, was a learned
man and devoted Gerrer chasid who was
a descendant of Reb Moshe Chaim Rotenberg, the brother of the Chiddushei Harim.
(The Chiddushei Harim was forced to change his last name from Rotenberg to Alter
in the year 1830.)
Reb Shraga Shami struggled to
support his family in Poland and so he moved his wife Sarah and their two
daughters, Teima and Rochel, to Antwerp, Belgium, where he worked as a diamond
dealer. His efforts were met with success, and in Antwerp Reb Shraga Shami was
able to comfortably provide for his family. Interestingly, despite their
wealth, the Kornfelds were determined to raise unspoiled daughters who had
their priorities straight and were not blinded by materialism. While speaking with
the Shteinman family, the word moisros (luxuries) comes up again and
again. Rebbetzin Shteinman’s granddaughter told me how, when she lived in
Belgium, her grandmother never had more than one Shabbos dress and two weekday
dresses. Even when her mother had a new dress sewn for her, Teima was never
allowed to keep the old dress and thereby increase her wardrobe. Since it was
still in good condition, it would be given away so others could benefit from
it. Along with the value of being mistapek b’muat (being satisfied with
little), the Kornfelds impressed upon their daughters the need to always be
sensitive to the financial reality of others and to make every effort not to
flaunt their wealth.
The Kornfelds’ chinuch of
pashtus (simplicity) was
very successful – and for a time it seemed that perhaps it was a bit too
successful, for Teima had an exceedingly difficult time with shidduchim.
She was a bright young woman who knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that her time
in this world was not meant to be spent in the pursuit of materialism. She
admired her father’s Torah learning and was determined to marry a man who would
devote his entire life to the exclusive study of Torah. Her father understood
her she’ifos (aspirations) yet was at
a loss to help make her dream a reality. The concept of a longterm learner, a
man who would spend his life in the beis medrash after marriage, was not
a reality in their circles at the time. So while Reb Shraga Shami would have
happily taken such a son-in-law for his daughter, there were simply no such
young men to be found in Belgium then. The bachurim in their family’s
community with the loftiest she’ifos would perhaps learn for a year or
two after their chasana before joining the workforce.
Perhaps it was the exposure that
she had had back in her county of birth that gave Teima the hope that she would
be able to one day establish a home with a man who had no other ambitions than limud
Torah, or perhaps it was the great impression made upon her by the Rebbes
of Ger who would stay at the Kornfeld home while visiting Antwerp. Either way,
while Teima’s noble she’ifos were very admirable, they were perhaps not
realistic for that time and place.
While Rebbetzin Shteinman was what
we would today call an “older single,” neither her daughter nor her
granddaughter had much information about how old Teima was when she married and
how she filled her time before the outbreak of the Second World War. We do know
that Teima was an intelligent and capable young woman, a leader who attended a
Bnos Agudas Yisrael group on Shabbosos and Sundays before the war. In fact, a
childhood friend of hers later told Rebbetzin Tova Shapiro that she remembers
the exact perek in Sefer Yeshayahu that her mother had been
teaching their Bnos group before it disbanded with the invasion of the Nazis.
Teima was also exceptionally short, and when a train conductor in Europe
mistook her for a child, Teima managed to set him straight in such a way that
the impressed conductor called her “a small lantern with a great light.”
Perhaps it was the loneliness of
those years that later made Rav and Rebbetzin Shteinman so sympathetic to the
pain of older singles. Reb Shteinman’s children and grandchildren living half a
world away were well aware of the shidduch crisis in America and would
remember Reb Aharon Leib sighing in pain when the name of an older girl in
America would be mentioned to him. He was heard saying that the shidduch
crisis in America “is mammash a gezeira (evil decree) of the dor (generation).”
War Brings a Shidduch
According to
Rebbetzin Shteinman’s granddaughter, “It took Hitler’s invasion and the
subsequent worldwide upheaval to make Zeida and Savta’s shidduch.”
The king of
Belgium was sympathetic to his Jewish subjects and so he publicly made an
announcement welcoming Hitler, which was his way of hinting to the Jews of his
kingdom to flee. Teima and her parents managed to cross the border into France,
while her younger sister was safely out of danger since she had married and
settled in Eretz Yisrael before the war. The Kornfelds were interred in a
refugee camp in France, from where Reb Shraga Shami was nearly deported on a
number of occasions. It was Teima’s resourcefulness that saved her father from
deportation when she managed to bribe the right people with diamonds she had
hidden in her socks.
She also displayed
incredible mesirus nefesh for shemiras Shabbos while in the camp.
Everyone in her age group was forced to work on Shabbos, but Teima refused. The
camp commander told her that if she did not want to comply with orders she
should pack her suitcase and they’ll happily send her back to Hitler. Teima
packed her suitcase. When the commander saw her determination, he told the
whole camp that this young woman was a true Jew and therefore was exempt from
working on Shabbos.
Tragically, Reb
Shraga Shami lost his life while interred in France. Teima tried her utmost to
save him, going so far as to plead with the Nazi to kill her instead and spare
him. But Hashem willed otherwise, and Reb Shraga Shami was murdered in 1942,
while Teima’s life was spared.
Subsequently, her
sister Rochel was able to get her mother out of France and bring her to Eretz
Yisrael, while Teima successfully crossed the border into Switzerland, where
she found refuge with her childhood friend Recha Shternbuch. It was in
Switzerland that the shidduch between Reb Aharon Leib and Teima finally
materialized.
Reb Shteinman had
legally entered Switzerland back in 1938 to serve as a maggid shiur in
order to escape the draft back in Brisk. At the time of their marriage, Reb
Shteinman was nearly 30 years old while his kallah was closer to 35. She
was the product of a chasidishe home,
and Reb Shteinman had grown up in Brisk. The differences between the cultures
that formed them, their ways of life, and their socioeconomic background were
significant, but they shared the same lofty she’ifos (aspirations), and
to Reb Aharon Leib and Rebbetzin Tamar, that’s all that mattered.
The Rebbetzin
later related that during those catastrophic times, she hadn’t even thought to
ask how old Reb Shteinman was before marrying him! When they later got off the
boat in Eretz Yisrael, Reb Shteinman told her that they would be met by his
friend and peer, Reb Velvel Eidelman. When Reb Eidelman greeted the Shteinmans,
the Rebbetzin was taken aback by his long white beard and began to wonder just
how old her husband was. Reb Shteinman assured her that he was not yet 30. His
friend’s beard had literally turned white overnight, and its color had no
bearing on his age.
Two Paths Converge to a Simple Life
When I asked Rebbetzin Shapiro
about how the differences in her parents’ backgrounds shaped their life
together, she said that there was never any indication that her parents had
anything other than the deepest respect for the communities that each had come
from. Her mother had some surviving relatives that belonged to the Gerrer and
Belzer communities in Antwerp, and their families always shared a beautiful
relationship.
“My mother never spoke about the differences in their
backgrounds. She never said anything to indicate that she felt that she had
made any sort of sacrifice in order to marry my father,” she clarifies. Her
granddaughter said that perhaps the only real adjustment that her grandmother
had to make was to the difference in the length of the Shabbos seudos. While
Reb Shteinman did sing Shabbos zemiros, he spent less time singing than
his father-in-law had, and their seudos were significantly shorter in
order to allow Reb Shteinman to maximize his time for learning. Yet her savta
would say, “The sweetness of Zeida’s voice while learning Torah was kenegged
hakol (made up for everything).”
Simplicity was very
important to both Rav and Rebbetzin Shteinman, and they were incredibly careful
not to live with luxuries. The Rebbetzin said that her ability to live
with so little was due to the chinuch she was raised with, and she
wasn’t able to take personal credit for it. Both her daughter and granddaughter
mentioned that Rebbetzin Shteinman had excellent taste. She appreciated fine
jewelry and nice clothing, but while she would enjoy looking at jewelry through
the window of a jewelry store, she never felt that she personally needed it.
Likewise, she would have pleasure from seeing someone dressed beautifully but
had no need to wear such clothing herself. The Rebbetzin would jokingly tell
her granddaughter a Flemish story in which a woman was trying to decide what to
wear. “Should I wear my blue skirt or my black skirt?” she asked while standing
before her closet that held one lone green skirt. Then, after carefully
considering her options, she decided, “I’m going to wear the groene rok
(the green skirt)!”
She was like the woman in the story
the Rebbetzin told her granddaughter, who explains that she understood this to
mean that she owned only one Shabbos dress by choice, and she “chose” not to
wear any of the other “options” and was honestly content with her one and only
dress. Her granddaughter says that her savta took much more pleasure in
giving than in owning nice things. So when Rav Shteinman would give her money
to buy herself a dress for Yom Tov, she would give that money away to others,
which gave her more pleasure than buying something for herself.
Before a simcha, a friend of
Rebbetzin Shteinman’s once presented her with a synthetic wig as a gift. Sheitels
were not common in Eretz Yisrael in those days and most women wore either hats
or tichelach. When the Rebbetzin heard that someone had commented about
her sheitel in a way that indicated that she was jealous of her wig, she
decided to never again wear a sheitel. The thought of causing another
Jew to feel jealous of her was so distasteful that she willingly gave it up.
Her parents had truly shaped her life by training her to be content with little
and to avoid arousing jealousy.
In keeping with their value of
living without luxuries, the Shteinman home was furnished very simply. The
wooden shipping container that Recha Shternbuch organized for the Shteinmans
when they immigrated to Eretz Yisrael was used to build their furniture. Slats
from the container were turned into bookshelves and an improvised table, while
orange crates were used as chairs to complete their dining room set. The extra
space between the lowest bookshelf and the floor was covered with curtains and
used as additional storage space.
One day, Rebbetzin Shteinman
suggested to her husband that they paint their walls. He answered, “It would be
chaval if [indulging here] were to diminish our Olam Haba.” The
Rebbetzin was then perfectly content to leave her walls as they were. A baby
picture of a granddaughter taken in the Shteinmans’ living room shows the walls
displaying the very same paint job that graced them some 50 years later.
Despite their simple lifestyle, the
Rebbetzin was far from simple. “She was well aware of what was going on in the
world and even commented on the latest styles despite the fact that she herself
had no interest in such things. She once told me how she thought the latest sheitel
style (at that time), when women were wearing wigs with lots of hair falling
into their faces, ‘was a good style since it allowed women who weren’t happy
with their looks to hide behind all that hair.’”
Loss of Sense of Smell…by Choice
It is well known that both Rav and Rebbetzin Shteinman
were unable to smell. This was due to their tefillos back when they were
living near a church in Switzerland and were concerned about deriving benefit
from the smell of the incense that would emanate from that house of worship.
They therefore davened to Hashem to take away their sense of smell.
Today, in 5782, the inability to smell is something that many of us who were
exposed to COVID are able to relate to. It was interesting to hear how Rav and
Rebbetzin Shteinman lived their lives without the ability to smell by choice.
Their granddaughter recalls coming
over one day to find her Zeida washing out a bottle that had been used
to store olive oil, since he wanted to use it for wine. He asked his
granddaughter to smell the bottle and tell him what it smelled like. “After
carefully sniffing the bottle, I told my Zeida that the bottle didn’t
smell like anything. He was happy with my answer.” This wasn’t the only
occasion that their grandchildren’s olfactory abilities were put to good use.
Their granddaughter remembers being asked by her grandparents on many occasions
to tell them what different things smelled like. She in turn asked them how
they were able to make brachos while raising four young children if
neither of them was able to smell. She was told that they were makpid to
always check diapers before making brachos.
Independent, Energetic…and Not Simple at All
“Once she moved to Eretz Yisrael,
my savta was able to bring her mother to live with her,” says her
granddaughter. “When her mother was older and feeling unwell, Savta took her to
the doctor, who inquired about the elderly woman’s daily schedule. The doctor
told her that she was working too hard and had to begin slowing down and
resting more. Savta said that she saw her mother literally age overnight. After
that fateful doctor’s visit, my great-grandmother’s health and functioning
began to decline, a fact that Savta felt guilty about for decades to come. She
would tell us often to make sure not to do that to her, to make every effort
not to deprive her of her independence and ability to function in her old age.
She felt that once people stop using their kochos (abilities) they begin
to lose them. Baruch Hashem, my grandmother was extremely independent
and was able to do her own shopping, cooking, and cleaning into her 90s.
“In fact, my parents would send us
over to my grandparents to ‘help,’ while in reality we actually were taught how
to clean. Savta was such an energetic housewife that she was able to show us
how to get all the dirt out of the corners when washing the floor. She
definitely taught us more than we helped her. And seeing her dance at a wedding
was unbelievable; she danced with the energy of a 20-year-old. In truth, I
didn’t really realize how unbelievable it was, because I actually had no idea
how old she was. Once I accompanied her to the hospital and when the doctor
came in, looked at her file and asked her if she was really 87, I was shocked
when she said yes! I had heard that she’d married older, but I had no idea that
she was in her 30s when she married Zeida.
“There was something about her
demeanor that allowed Savta to lead people to think that she was just a simple
woman, when in fact that was very far from the truth. Savta was not at all
simple; she was intelligent, powerful, and had a lot of personality, but due to
her anavah (humility),
she allowed people to see her as simple. At the end of her life, she knew full
well what was wrong with her even though, in deference to her wishes, no one
ever told her straight out since she had made it clear to us that she never
wanted medical professionals to set limits for her.”
Rebbetzin Shapiro adds, “Abba would
tell us how, back in their days in Switzerland, Ima was the center around which
all the girls would congregate. It was she who breathed new life into the
battered survivors of the Holocaust. Although my parents were not into flowery hespedim
(eulogies), Abba told us to
write on Ima’s matzeiva (tombstone)
that she was mechanech bnos Yisrael (taught Jewish girls) to yiras Shamayim (fear of Heaven),
did not seek honor, and was mekabel (received) everyone with a pleasant countenance.”
Sterling Middos
Her granddaughter says that
Rebbetzin Shteinman had incredible middos and was very careful not to
slight anyone. On one occasion, she recalls her making a significant detour on
her way home. It turned out that she was concerned about passing a woman on her
street without having any money to offer her. She didn’t want the woman to
think that she didn’t want to give her money, when in fact the truth was
that she had no money on her to give. So instead of walking past her on her way
home, she went out of her way to avoid slighting her.
Once, when her granddaughter was at
her bedside in the hospital, a staff member came in and began asking the
Rebbetzin many questions. Her granddaughter wanted to know why. It turns out
that this woman was some sort of intern studying geriatrics. She said, “I’ve
spoken to many elderly people but have not found such interesting material while interviewing other patients as I did
when speaking with your savta.”
“I actually suggested that Savta
should end the interview, but she felt that it was a chesed to answer
the questions and so she continued to speak with her.”
When her granddaughter was with her
in the hospital during her final illness and she was no longer up to accepting
visitors, a woman claiming to be her friend stopped by and asked to see the
Rebbetzin. When she heard that someone wanted to see her, she instructed her
granddaughter to fix her up so that she would look more put together. Her
granddaughter wanted to turn the woman away, but she wouldn’t hear of it.
“My grandmother never lost sight of
her true goals. She was very careful about not owing people money and would
literally have trouble sleeping if she owed someone money,” says her
granddaughter. “She was fully cognizant of the fact that her sojourn in this
world was only temporary and that the true world was the next one. This
realization helped her to keep her focus on what was truly important to her.
She once fell and fractured her hip while my Zeida was giving a shiur in
the other room. Not wanting to disturb the shiur, she lay there on the
floor and refused to make a sound until the shiur was over.
A Devoted Couple
“Savta was in her 90s when Zeida made his first trip to
chutz la’aretz in order to strengthen the Jews in America. She was very
supportive of his decision to accept the invitation to come and encourage the
people. My grandparents felt it was their utmost responsibility to do whatever
they could to that purpose. I remember how hard Savta worked to pack Zeida up
for his trip. Zeida then commented, ‘If we must work so hard to make sure that
we have everything we need for such a short trip, can you imagine how much we
need to pack when we prepare for our journey to the next world?’
“When Savta was diagnosed with her
final illness,” her granddaughter shares, “her doctor insisted on speaking with
Zeida, even after it was explained to her that Zeida didn’t conduct
face-to-face conversations with women. The doctor said that there was no
choice. Since the family had told her not to share the diagnosis with Savta,
she was ethically obligated to speak with her husband. It was decided that
Zeida would sit in the room facing the wall with his back to the door and that
the doctor would stand behind him and tell him the diagnosis. Despite the
unusual arrangement, just being in Zeida’s presence made a deep impression on
the doctor. She told her granddaughter that she had never in her life met a
woman as refined as her grandmother. Later, after her petira, the
concerned doctor wanted to know, ‘V’eich hasaba hagadol himshich l’tafkeid?
How has your distinguished grandfather continued to function?’
“In truth, Zeida deeply mourned the
loss of my savta at the ripe old age of 93, but his loss did nothing to
stop him from functioning. Zeida was all of 88 at the time of Savta’s petira
and Klal Yisrael was zocheh to have him at the helm of Torah
leadership in Eretz Yisrael for almost another 15 years.”
Penina Neiman is a
feature writer living in Beitar Illit. She has been granted the honor of
interviewing the family members of some of Eretz Yisrael’s Gedolim, and is
currently working on a book about the wives of Gedolim. This article is reprinted with
permission from Binah magazine, where this article originally
appeared.
