Chabad Family Blog

DAVID AND LINDA ROITMAN

By Helen Belitsky

                A nascent ambition and determination spurred David Roitman early on, though he grew up in the steadily declining 1940’s Boynton Avenue Bronx neighborhood , with its pre-war apartment buildings and neglected playing area benches.

                David was inspired by a hard-working, ambitious father, who, after working in the family paper business, went into business for himself.  He prospered, finally merging his new business with the family business and becoming its president and major partner.

                “It was his life’s work,” recalls David.  “It was always a struggle, and it was no life of luxury.  Like many businesses, it exposed the seamy side of human nature, but my father, along with many other Jewish families, managed to maintain his values, though many of them did not know from where the money for food would come.”

                David loved Hebrew school and was drawn to yiddishkeit.  In his neighborhood Hebrew school, boys started cheder when they were 10, which David did.  In his last year of cheder, along with the other boys studying for their bar mitzvah, he remained after class four days a week, to review and be tested for the event.  He was the first in his synagogue to both recite the haftorah and daven all of shacharis.

                The ambition and discipline with which David was blessed expressed itself in his school career as well.  “As I moved from class to class,” recalls David, “I realized that I had nothing in common with my junior high school classmates.  I knew if I stayed there, I’d be pulled down, rather than moving ahead.  Kids who wanted to get ahead,” he continued, “moved into music class.  I decided to audition, with thoughts of playing in the brass section.”

                As it turned out, the brass section was full, and David auditioned for the string section – successfully, and became a viola player.  He became proficient, and playing a Haydn sonata, he auditioned for a music scholarship at the Manhattan School of Music.  He won a scholarship to a famous music camp, and auditioned successfully for the All City Orchestra, which played once a year at Carnegie Hall.

                Music was magic for the young boy.  “I marveled at composers who could hear these sounds and write them down,” he recalls with feeling.  “I fell in love with opera and with the familiar stories on which the operas were based.  I came to see Bach as pure math.”

                Linda, David’s wife of 43 and a half years, grew up in Queens, the daughter of immigrant parents from the Ukraine and Austria.  Her father, Benjamin Lomazoff, she says was “a real neighborhood pharmacist on Fulton Street in Brooklyn.  Among her warmest memories are of the times she spent at his old-fashioned soda fountain counter.  Members of the Forest Hills Jewish Center, the family moved to a private home in Queens when she was 5.  Her parents observed the laws of kashrut and attended High Holy Day services.

                Linda planned to prepare herself for a teaching career, and her mother urged her to attend Cornell University, which had an excellent child development program.  She received her B.S. in child development, and went on for a Master’s in early childhood education at Columbia University.

Cornell, which had one of the finest engineering programs in the country, was the pinnacle of David’s academic aspirations, and he was gratified to gain acceptance.  His family couldn’t afford the tuition, and his father refusing to apply for financial aid, took out a loan instead, as did Linda’s parents.  They were both awarded regional and state scholarships that covered 20 percent of tuition only.

                While in her second year at Cornell, Linda met David, a third year student.  It was bashert.  They clicked on the first date.  They were married in December 1966.

                David dropped his engineering aspirations after three semesters, finding it too confining and unexciting.  He transferred to the liberal arts curriculum, majoring in economics.  When David was in his senior year, his father begged him to go into the business he had so assiduously built.  David  acceded.  Living with Linda in Queens, he traveled up to two hours each way in rush hour traffic, and joined his parents in the business, which was then in Brooklyn.

                As an ROTC commissioned officer, David went into the Service in March, 1968 as a second lieutenant.  “It was different, it was interesting, it was fascinating,” he says, looking back on what became a challenging and at times dangerous venture.  He escaped a one-year tour of Vietnam by volunteering for what was billed as a “3-year luxury assignment in Panama.”  He accepted it because the first alternative would have been a separation from Linda, who was pregnant with her first.  It was with the understanding that he would later serve in Vietnam, which extended his army obligation by a year and three months.

                The assignment turned out to be with the Green Berets, a challenging and dangerous venture, which required parachuting into South American and Latin American territory from time to time.  It turned into a life transforming experience for David.

                 “My dangerous assignment with the Green Berets,” he asserts, “taught me that we were capable of more things we ever could have dreamt of, and shattered forever any images the world harbored of the helpless Eastern European Jews who were led to concentration camps.  This is not who we really are, I told myself.  We can rise and find the strength and wherewithal to do what any other people can do.

                “A Green Beret has to be in perfect physical condition at all times.” Continues David, describing the challenge.  “He could be called to readiness in the jungles of Panama that are geographically more challenging than Vietnam.

                “I did get through Green Beret training,” David recalls proudly, “though the days were grueling.  At the end of the day, I could barely crawl the stairs to my home, shower and go to bed, watching as Linda assiduously polished my brass belt buckle night after night.  When you think things are insurmountable, you learn you can do it.”

                 “And along the way,” he continues, “we became more committed Jews and more sensitive to our Torah experience.  It was a transforming experience – I was no longer just a sheltered Jewish boy from the Bronx.  The Green Berets taught me to handle mental stress.  I became more worldly and more in tune with the non-Jewish world.”

                Linda and David moved 13 times in 6 years.  They developed a special family closeness granted to families who are forced into a unique self-sufficiency.  Their oldest son Brian was born in Panama, the only white baby in the nursery.  Mitchell was born in Oklahoma and Ari in Cherry Hill.  “Those years are filled with good memories,” says Linda.

                Life took on a different hue for David and Linda when they moved to Cherry Hill in January, 1972, both professionally and religiously.  They were well-primed for their new responsibilities in both arenas.  David’s dad had purchased the Grant Paper Co. in Philadelphia, and David became involved in all aspects of the business, as his Dad began wintering in Florida.

                “I had to run the business,” recalls David, “which had encountered badly muddled accounting problems.  I struggled to get it going – and I met the challenge of rescuing the business from crisis, though it took several years.”

                 Cherry Hill offered new religious opportunities for the family.  Their Jewish life, Jewish consciousness and Jewish practice flourished.  “We didn’t plan a Jewish life,” says David, but we drew closer and closer to tradition.”

                David and Linda joined Beth El, enrolled their two children in the Kellman Academy nursery school, and developed an increasing circle of warm friendships.

                And then a new presence arrived on the scene, which was to dramatically alter the lives of Linda and David and their family.  Rabbi Mendy Mangel established the first area Chabad in a storefront in Cherry Hill, and David began what was to be a lifetime of inspiration and study with his religious and spiritual mentor.

                “I was totally captivated the first time I met Mendy,” says David.  “He fed into my own early learnings.  His depth of knowledge is extraordinary.  No matter what challenge you offer, he not only has an answer but a persuasive solution.  All of this – and his style is almost self-deprecating.”

                Though it took Linda a while to feel comfortable with the mechitza, the warm welcome the family received from Dinie and Mendy – including an invitation early on to their Seder – far outweighed any initial adjustments.  The Mangels were kind enough to make Sheva B’rachos for, our children, Mitchell and Jamie,” Linda recounts.  “I will always remember Dinie pushing her stroller that bore bagels and challahs for the Kiddush.  We began to come on a regular basis.”  When the present Chabad synagogue opened, David walked the 2.3 miles each way every Shabbat.

                “Once the new building was established,” continues Linda, I really go into the work that needed to be done, including painting the walls.  This was now our spiritual home and we came to Chabad exclusively.  I accommodated to the service, and I welcomed the shul’s diversity.”

                 “I feel I owe everything to Mendy,” David says.  “He made Judaism beautiful, and was the greatest support in my life during the two-and-a-half years of my grandson Kerav’s illness.  He allowed me to talk bluntly and challengingly during those years.”

                Kerav was both the greatest miracle and the greatest tragedy of David and Linda’s life.  The child, born to Brian and Sonia in 2006, had non-functioning kidneys.  The wonder child survived for two-and-a-half years with the benefits of pioneering medical treatments never before ventured, including a home dialysis protocol specific to hospital use, which Brian pushed the FDA to achieve.  Living and enduring day by bay and month to month, Kerav was a pioneer, and the wonder of doctors.  Each month of survival had the doctors baffled.  Their belief in miracles was born.

                “One thing that always struck us,” says David, “was this baby’s personality.  He smiled and hugged and did the sign language for love.  He was affectionate and happy, could squeal excitedly when we benched after meals.  He was a very spiritual baby.”

                Brian and Sonia were at Kerav’s did for the months and years of his survival.  David and Linda lived in Connecticut with the family, Rebecca, Max and Ben, for seven and a half months.  “For two-and-a-half years, Mendy and I talked about the miracle of Kerav’s survival,” says David.  “Sonia and Brian’s faith was superhuman.”

                On the first day of the Nine Days of Av, Kerav was taken by God.  Bruised and heartbroken, David says, “I was angry, trying to understand why G-d brought him through agonizing crises to this end.  But I realized that Hashem was acknowledging in many ways that Kerav was very special to Him.  The first of Av was, after all, Rosh Chodesh, and in this case, Shabbos as well.!

                The walk to the gravesite was dampened by a sprinkling of rain from the heavens.  “I’ve never seen anything like it,” Mendy told David.  “G-D’s tears were falling for your grandson.”  As the entourage left the gravesite and walked back to the cars, a magnificent rainbow appeared.  “I felt Kerav was smiling at us,” says Linda.

                On the first of Av this past summer, the family observed the baby’s first yahrzeit.  The child’s memory has been honored in extraordinary ways.  Brian and Sonia and the children received consistent support during the life of Kerav from the Stamford Jewish community.  The Roitman family, with contributions from the Jewish community, donated the Keravtanu Chaim Roitman Children’s Library at Stamford Chabad.  The Young Israel of Stamford commissioned a Torah in Kerav’s memory.  The children, bruised in so many ways during the tragedy, began to heal.

                “It is so gratifying to see how close the children and their families are,” says David.”  On the same day, on January 22, a new miracle was granted to the Roitman family.  Keren Temimah was born to Sonia and Brian, and Ari and Rebecca celebrated the birth of Benjamin Lev, their first.

                There is a chapter in David and Linda’s life that is perhaps now known in it entirety, but it is one that speaks to the couple’s charity, compassion, diligence and wisdom.  The tireless work they did on behalf of Cherry Hill’s newly resettled Soviet Jewish ‘émigré’s in the early 90’s is not chronicled in any official document.  But it is indelibly recorded in the hearts of those psychologically wounded families, whose morals were destroyed by 70 years of an abusive Communist regime, and who struggled with the difficult physical and psychological adjustment to their new country.

                David and Linda were among the volunteers recruited by the Jewish Family and Children’s Service and by their synagogue, Congregation Beth El.  In 1988, David had retired from the business, and he and Linda’s work with Soviet Jewry took up their entire day.  They prepared living quarters for numerous families, obtained furniture, filled their refrigerators with food and their pantries with supplies, and shopped for clothing.  They set up medical appointments, helped with laborious job searches, and schooled them in their new language.

                “The Russian books I inherited from my father came in handy,” recalls Linda.  “David started studying Russian in order to communicate with the families we helped.”

                “There was so much need,” David remembers, “and we just kept on going.  We became the program.  We helped the young ones with scholarships so they could enter the Solomon Schecter School.  And we realized that the critical need centered on the 16-and 17-year olds.  They needed to get into college, for they would be the future support of their families.”

                And so began the work of enrolling these young people in college, work that David took on his own shoulders.  “I took over their lives one by one,” David recalls, “and they literally lived here.  I picked them up at school, we went into my computer room, and worked until it was time to go to bed.”

                Over the course of several years, David used all of his university connections, and sometimes battled the administration, and got four young people into Cornell University.  “You’ve got to take a chance on these young people,” I urged.

                Where are these young people now?  They are attorneys, businessmen, architects and nutritionists.  Many are still in touch with the Roitmans, as are their families.

                David and Linda have many accomplishments, but of their work with Soviet Jews they say, “This is the best work we’ve ever done.”

                The families they helped would agree.  Ann and Mark Vershinin emigrated to Cherry Hill in the early 90’s with their sons Alex, 17 and Vlad, 10.  “David,” Anna recounts, “offered us all kinds of help, but all we wanted was education for Alex.  Linda and David adopted him.  It was so amazing to receive help from people who live not just for themselves but for other people.  We came to America and knew nothing.  Every single day they took care of us – and not just us – they did it for so many people, without formality, but from the bottom of their hearts.”

THE ROSENFELDS

By Helen Belitsky

If you had visited the storefront in the Cooper Corners shopping center, Chabad occupied up until 2001, at 9 a. m. on a Shabbat morning, you would have witnessed a bustling duo getting ready for the Shabbat minyan. Chairs had to be set up, crackers had to be put out for the

Kiddush, and most important in those days, men had to be rounded up to make a minyan. Martin Rosenfeld and Mendy were on the job….

Today, the storefront has been long abandoned, the chairs are already set up, and the Shabbat minyan is going strong. But Helen and Martin Rosenfeld are still on the job. The dynamic duo have been counted on through the years for the daily, Shabbat, and yom tov minyanim, women’s programming, kiddush reservations, JLI classes, men's club events, and women's studies, just to list a few.

Philadelphia natives, Martin and Helen are, respectively, second and third generation Philadelphians, raised in Winfield and Oxford Circle respectively, predominantly Jewish neighborhoods where the school principal at each of their elementary schools would visit classrooms before not only the high holidays but Sukkot and Simchat Torah as well, asking if anyone would be in school (not, according to Helen, who would be absent!)

“Anyone who is familiar with Philadelphia neighborhoods  knows how separated one section of the city is from another, recalls Helen. “Yet, without my knowing it, Martin lived across the street from my grandmother. I remember the corner candy store where he hung out.” Bashert? We’ll soon find out.

Both went to B’nai Brith dances, both went to Temple University, but it wasn’t until May, l971, when a friend invited Helen to a singles night for Jewish professionals at the Woodbine Inn that the two met. “Five weeks later we were engaged,” says Helen. “And five months after that we were married. So much for my wild single life.”

Their Cherry Hill life began, and so, too, did Helen’s career, as a mother and math teacher, later educational administrator.  Daughter Naomi was born in 1974.  Helen taught statistics at Peirce College, in Philadelphia where she remained for 23 years, retiring in 2001, having risen through the years to the position as vice president for enrollment.  Martin worked for the Department of Housing and Urban Development for 38 years progressing through various positions from appraiser to financial analyst before retiring in 2005.

The Rosenfeld’s path to a spiritual and religious life was fraught with exploration, adventure, courage and change, ending in a deep commitment to ritual, study and synagogue affiliation at Chabad.  When daughter Naomi was 5, they joined Beth Jacob-Beth Israel synagogue in Merchantville. “I had never belonged to a synagogue, and Martin was skeptical, to say the least,” recalls Helen. “But being Martin, he decided that since he was paying dues, he was going to get his money’s worth,” she laughs.

“We went to a Friday night service one week,” she reminisces. “ It was nice. The next Friday night, I saw Martin getting dressed up after dinner. I asked him where he was going.” “We’re going to services,” he answered promptly. “But we did that last week,” I countered. “Shabbos comes every week,” he explained. “Oh boy. The first step in what has turned out to be a wonderful journey,” laughs Helen.

Like many families today, the Rosenfelds journey to an observant life was inspired and reinforced by their daughter Naomi’s journey, which began at age 8 in Camp Ramah. Enthused by Judaism, she became an active USY’er, serving as president of her chapter at Beth El and going on to leadership at the regional level. By the time she became a senior in high school, recalls Helen, Naomi knew she was ready for a more serious Jewish experience. She found it at Binghamton University, and was the first in the family to have a significant encounter with Chabad.

Through her relationship with Rabbi Aaron and Rivky Slonim, Chabad directors, her knowledge, commitment and level of observance deepened, relates her Mom. “Rivky Slonim became her mentor and second mother,” asserts Helen.

As part of Naomi’s bashert university experience, she met an attractive young man with the same last name as hers, Ari Rosenfeld, during her first year at the university. Ari grew up in Flatbush and had graduated from the well-known Yeshivah of Flatbush. “He’s all around terrific,” says his mother-in-law. They married six years later. “They live in Livingston, N. J. and have two adorable children,” says Helen. “Just ask me.”

A big step in the Rosenfeld journey to observant Judaism was the decision to keep kosher. Anyone who has made that commitment, knows how important and difficult a transformation that is. The Rosenfelds were no exception.

Anyone who has accepted Rosenfeld hospitality will attest to the fact that Helen is a really good cook, but Helen demurs. “I wasn’t then, and still am not, much of a good cook.  I am totally intimidated by kosher butchers. So I resisted the change at first. But one  day in 1989, I was in Shop Rite and noticed an array of Empire chickens all wrapped up just like the non-kosher brands I had been buying. Okay, now what excuse could I use?  So Martin and I threw out all the dishes, utensils and pots, read how to kasher the appliances, and started all over again. I felt like a bride!  

The next significant step in the Rosenfelds’ journey to observant Judaism came when their synagogue, Beth Jacob-Beth Israel folded.

They joined Beth El, but a serendipitous ad in the Voice about the opening of Chabad in its early storefront location caught their eye. Chabad, of course, was appealing to the Rosenfelds given their daughter’s experience at college. Martin decided to check it out. He went once—and never looked back.

“I started to attend shortly after Martin,” recalls Helen, “but I wasn’t a regular by any means. At first the mechitzah bothered me. I was used to sitting with Martin and relying on him to help me follow the service. Now I had to fend for myself. But Mendy was so welcoming and not at all intimidating. I was sold.”

By the time Mendy moved Chabad to Kresson Road, the Rosenfelds were completely entrenched in the Chabad family. They treasure their Chabad connection, in all respects.

“We’re delighted by the warm and friendly people we have met, the encouragement and opportunity to learn in a relaxed, interesting setting, the traditional approach to Judaism that enriches our lives. Mendy and Dinie have become a vital part of our family. All of this we have found at Chabad.”

For the Rosenfelds, their Chabad adventure has marked significant “firsts” in their lives: a first wedding, as Naomi’s wedding was the first time they married off a child, and the first time Mendy officiated at a wedding; a first funeral, when Mendy officiated at Martin’s father’s funeral ll years ago; a first time dining at a sukkah, which also turned out to be Dinie’s first time hosting a dinner in their family sukkah. “Who was more nervous?” recalls Helen. “Me.”

“While incredibly rewarding for us as a family,” Helen says, “our spiritual growth has not been an easy journey. We had to cope with family and friends who were less than supportive, and with a work environment that didn’t appreciate that we now needed more time off for religious holidays and Shabbos. We made the adjustments we could at the time, but were never really satisfied. We needed to wait for retirement to do more.”

There were other difficult hurdles, she recalls. “Our parents never really accepted the change in our lives, and we no longer see most of the friends we knew from the first half of our lives. “Is it worth it?” she asks herself from time to time. “I wish it could  have been easier—less conflict and strife.

“But without a doubt, a resounding YES,” she answers.

        Through the eyes of a child and the memory of an adult, Lora Hellman pictures her home in the Republic of Dagistan in the Southern part of Russia-its glistening crystal chandeliers and wine goblets, its ornate carved ceilings and Persian rugs, its fruit trees and vegetable gardens. "We grew chickens in our yard, which my mother took to the Rabbi for kosher slaughter. My father made wine from our crop of grapes, peaches and pomegranates." Perhaps, in reality, the home and the yard were not so big, but as always, through the eyes of a child, and to this day, they seemed so.

        Socially isolated as Jews, Lora and her four siblings formed their own little group, playing together in their free summers and visiting their mother's parents, who lived l5 minutes away and whom Lora loved. "My parents, Rafael and Margaret Azizov, were good earners and we supported my
grandparents."

        "I was one of two Jewish girls in our class of 30, but my only friend was Muslim," Lora recalls. "I didn't really know I was Jewish. On Pesach I brought matzoh to school, and they made fun of me, accusing me of using the blood of Christian children. I didn't know what they were talking about."

        There were other memories, too, of the late 60's and early 70's in Communist Russia-the long bread lines Lora stood in for a loaf or two of bread, and the hungry men lying in the streets, starving. Lora's parents, NAMES, who had both studied in Moscow Univeristy, aspired to more, but the dream was 7 years in coming.

        A serendipitous lecture by a Moslem professor at Moscow University about Golda Meir's political victory in Israel  changed the destiny of the family, and spawned their dream of moving to Israel. "Look what Golda Meir has accomplished as a woman," Lora's mother said to her husband, thinking of her daughters. "If we stay in Russia,our daughters will marry and move to a far off place. We must go to Israel, where the family will always be together in that small country, no matter where they move to."

        In l974, the family emigrated, settling in a tiny, three-room apartment in Netanya. Once in Israel, another child was born. Her mother, now age 70, still resides in Netanya, where five of her children live nearby. It was in those years that Lora learned valuable lessons of hachnasat orchim, the mitzvah of hospitality, from her mother. "In a whole year," she recalls, "I think I only slept in my own bed 20 times.  My mother, who worked full-time as an accountant for City Hall in Netanya, was always entertaining. In our tiny little apartment, with six children and one bath, my mother fashioned a feather mattress out of feathers she brought with her from Russia. That is what I used to sleep on. Guests get the best,' she taught me. 'And only good will come from good'. I follow that to this day. Because of my Mom, I learned that hosting is exciting and fulfilling, and gives a wonderful sense of fulfillment." Today, Lora and her husband, Arthur, are the host family for visiting guests at M'kor Shalom. With her first income as a nurse in later years, Lora bought herself a big, beautiful mahogany double bed with drawers and a mirror!

        Lora met her husband, Arthur, who was training as a surgeon, in l982 at the Hadassah Hospital, where she was studying nursing. They knew each other 9 months when they married, and moved to Houston,
Texas, where he pursued additional training as a thoracic surgeon. They celebrated their 25th anniversary last December.

        Life was incredibly lonely for Lora in her new surroundings. She knew no one and didn't speak the language. She spent the days and nights doing rounds with her husband, listening to TV with a dictionary and reading the newspaper. "My husband was on call every third night. I knew no one, so I went with him. I didn't know how to drive. I survived one day at a time."

        Lora had decided that despite the fact that there was no observance in her home, that when she got married she would seek a spiritual center to her life. Lora decided to observe family purity, and the mikvah in Houston was at Chabad. She became friendly with the Chabad rebbitzen, began to attend classes and fell in love with Judaism.

        Lora and her huband are pioneers at Chabad, from the time it was a storefront in a small shopping center. "I grew in my Judaism," she says, drawing richness from Mendy's Tanya classes, where she learned a new way of thinking about Judaism and relating to God. "My mother taught me that education was the most important thing in life. 'You'll never suffer from being educated,' she used to say." Lora, who has been a pre-school teacher at Temple Beth Sholom, is studying for a Master's in Education at Nova Southeastern University. She will complete her studies next year.

        "Chabad reaches out to so many people without preconditions," she says. Like so many others who have found a home in Chabad, she says, "They accept you unconditionally and have done so much for Jews around the world. "

        Lora and Arthur have two children, Sarah, who is studying business at the University of Pennsylvania, and Moshe who just finished 8th grade and won the Mensch Award at Politz

             Eddie Nathan was a man without a shul when he first set foot in a Chabad minyan  ll years ago. “Chabad was a simple storefront,” he recalls, “formerly home to an adult movie store. The Torah rested on a makeshift wooden architect’s table. We had to ask the bagel guy in the shopping center to help us make a minyan. It was informal and haimish, and Mendy was young and idealistic, wound up as on a spring, on a mission and ready to go.”

            Many milestones have been celebrated since Chabad’s early beginnings—from Lazar Mengel’s bris to the dedication of Chabad’s current home. Eddie has been there to celebrate them all.

            Eddie is a towering figure in Chabad right now, not only because he is head and shoulders above nearly everyone, but because of his towering contributions to our shul. He’s a regular baal tfila--a musaf specialist-- and the chief chef on Lag B’Omer. He helps

out in numerous men’s club events, brings his son Ezra to complete the minyan on Friday nights, and lends his strength and talents to putting up the sukkah every year. According to another old- timer, Martin Rosenfeld, who joined Chabad within a few weeks of Eddie, “He’s been an asset to the shul from its very beginnings, always willing to lend his talents whenever and wherever they’re needed.”

                        Born in Nottingham in l964, to a single mother, Eddie was adopted in London by Donal Nathan and his wife Sonja when he was three months old. He grew up in London. Visible as he is, his family history is probably little known. About that history he says, “We’re poster boys for the wandering Jew. Anything that happened in Jewish history in the past l50 years, my family was involved in.”

             Arrested by the Nazis, his maternal grandfather Leo Alpern was thrown out of Germany and exiled to Poland. Unwanted there, he was exiled to a no man’s land between Poland and Germany. Eddie’s mother, Sonja, took an historic journey at the age of 4, sent with her brother and sisters on the first Kindertransport to a foster home in England. His grandparents went along as chaperones, settling in Devon. Considered hostile aliens in the new country, his grandfather established himself nevertheless, as so many thousands of Jews were wont to do in so many cities and  countries to which they were exiled, working first as a chazzan and caretaker in a shul and then as a bellboy in a hotel in Devon. After the war, he was reunited with his children.

            Eddie’s father, Donal Nathan, was born and raised in Cork, Ireland, where Eddie still has cousins. Donal met his wife, Sonja, in London, where they settled until Eddie was 5. In 1970, Israel beckoned, and on the last voyage of the famous Zim line’s ship THE DAN, Eddie and his parents and his younger brother and sister, left Marseille for Israel, settling in Kfar Chabad. “It was an ideological move,” Eddie says, who recounts that the family moved from there to Rechovot, ending up in Gush Etzion. Growing up in Israel, Eddie had an thoroughgoing Jewish education through high school, He served in the Israeli Army from, l983-86, the tail end of the war in Lebanon.
 
            The summer of l987 was a landmark year in Eddie’s life. It was a year in which the Jewish concept of bashert found its mark with Susan, 25, a schoolteacher and an American volunteer from Vineland, New Jersey and the 23-year-old Eddie. “My father,” recalls Eddie laughingly, “thought Susan said she was from IRELAND, mistaking her VINELAND for my father’s birthplace. He invited her for Shabbat dinner.”

                        The rest is history.  By December of that year, Eddie’s family legacy –the speed with which his ancestors uprooted themselves and settled in a new land—took hold for the young couple. Unable to bear the separation from Susan, Eddie packed his meager belongings and his life savings and flew the now defunct Pan Am to New Jersey to reunite with Susan. They were married that spring.

             Susan and Eddie have two children, Ezra, fifteen-and- a- half, and Ilana, fourteen- and–a-half. Both attend Cherry Hill East. Eddie has been assistant store manager for Rite-Aid for the past l7 years.

              “If my children presented me with the same romantic scenario as I presented to my parents,” laughs Eddie, “I’d say to them ‘good luck’. I’d offer them the same opportunity my parents offered me.”

             What was Eddie looking for in Chabad? And what did he find? “When I was 8 or 9 years old,” he recalls, “my dad and a few other men were starting a shul, Ohel Shai it was called, named after the late chief rabbi of our kibbutz. I had the same feeling about Chabad that I remembered about that minyan—the small group developed, the core got bigger and bigger, but it remained very personal… with Dinie and Mendy warm and understanding  and open to whoever and whatever you were. Thank you very much for helping me with my personal growth.”

It is many miles and many worlds from the bitterly cold, fireless winters in the  4-room stone house in Czestchowa, Poland, where Simon Birnbaum grew up, to the still solidly towering Provincial Apartments that  rise in the shadow of the Cherry Hill Mall—the site of Simon’s first construction investment in this country.  But those are the miles and the worlds that Simon traveled, surviving with courage and cunning five years in the death camps of Nazi Germany and four wars in Israel .  Through the years he took with him the lessons of kindness he learned from his mother, and the work ethic he gleaned from a father who bought and sold horses to support his 9 children. His mother was killed by the Gestapo. His father perished in Auschwitz.  Simon was liberated by the Americans in l945. Thirteen years later, he was to make America his home.

In l947, after the war, Simon married his cousin Dora, whom he had known all his life. She was the love of his life, and they were married 62 years.”She was the best woman in the world,” he says. “Whether I got up at 3 a.m. or 4 or 6, she was always up making breakfast, always helping people, always cooking for Tami and Morris and baking babka for her friends.” She passed away recently, in his arms, at the age of 83, and he is in deep mourning for her. He says Kaddish for her twice a day in the synagogue.

It is not surprising that the boy who grew up hated by anti-Semitic Poles, their cry of “Don’t buy from a Jew” echoing in his mind for years;  the boy who had braved the walk to school and to cheder  in the protection of groups to avoid the beatings , yearned after the war for his own country. He and Dora made aliyah in l949. With an entrepreneurship that presaged his future professional success, he left Europe with a dismantled truck, which he put together when he arrived in Israel, launching a trucking business which he continued to expand. In l949, a daughter, Tami, was born to the couple, who had settled in Ramat Gan.

But  Simon was to know and battle enemies even in his new homeland. Joining the army he fought in the Sinai, the Suez and the War of Independence. Injured, he spent four months in the hospital.

Constantly reinventing himself and with the need to make a living, he emigrated to Cleveland and then to Toronto, where he lived for 3 years.

‘When you live through Auschwitz and other concentration camps, you have the courage to do anything,” he says. “I took care of dogs for the Nazis in the camps. They brought me meat for the dogs. I ate the meat and fed the dogs garbage.  I survived.”

In 1958 Simon came to America and with $50,000 in savings, he joined with his brother, two nephews, a cousin and a friend, investing in a piece of ground in Cherry Hill and building the Provincial Apartments.  In l964 the partnership split up, and he joined his brother in the construction business , building apartment houses in Cherry Hill and Delaware. “I loved the freedom and I loved making money,” he says. 

But courage and authenticity, which had guided his life heretofore, propelled him on a different path once again. “I can’t continue to borrow money without knowing what I’m doing,” he told himself about the construction business. He enrolled in Temple University School of Architecture, attending classes from 6 to l0 p.m. “I didn’t need a degree’” he says. “I needed to know what I was doing, without bluffing it.” And so commenced  the round of long days that began at work at 6 a.m. in Delaware, and ended at night school in Philadelphia. He is now in partnership with his son-in-law, Morris Starkman.

Simon, a member  of Sons of Israel for 42 years, was invited  to Chabad  several years ago by his son-in-law, Morris. “I came and I loved the friendliness. And Mendy is such a mensch.”  

Simon has 3 grandchildren, Randi, Jason, and Ari who is married to Natalie. His granddaughter, Randi, is married to Craig Stoopler. They have two children, Sidney, age 4 and  Jake, age 1.

Asked what message he would want to leave for his children and grandchildren, he says with gusto, “I don’t have to tell them anything. They’re doing great!”