Until This Day: Reflections at My Mother’s Matzevah

Last week, our family gathered at Agecroft Beis Hachayim in Manchester to set the matzevah for my mother, Mrs Eva — Chava bas Reb Shlomo Osher — Guttentag, a”h.

In Jewish tradition, a matzevah is not merely a marker upon a grave. It is an act of honour, memory and love — an attempt by transient human beings to ensure that a life of dignity and goodness continues to speak ad hayom hazeh, until this very day.

My mother’s life was not public or self-advertising. Yet she was born into a remarkable family of Jewish scholarship and leadership. She was the daughter of Dr Shlomo Osher Birnbaum, the distinguished scholar of Yiddish and Hebrew palaeography, and the granddaughter of Dr Nathan Birnbaum ztzl, the Jewish thinker and activist who gave so much vision and leadership to Klal Yisrael.

But her own greatness was of a quieter kind. She was born in Hamburg, into a world of Jewish learning, language and culture. Her father held a university post the first ever post in Yiddish at Hamburg in the late 1920’s. There was stability, dignity and the prospect of a secure future.

Then, when she was five years old, that world disappeared. Her parents saw what was coming in Nazi Germany and fled — first briefly to Holland, and then to London — to begin again as refugees.

From childhood, my mother learned that homes, countries, status and security can be taken away. But real life must be carried within.

In English, “life” is singular. In Hebrew, life is chayim — plural. There is the physical life of the body, and there is........

© The Times of Israel (Blogs)