Fred emails: "Are you on this LAJE list? It is put out weekly by Reuven (formerly Rob) Kershberg, a member of Anshe Emes. I love the personal story below and the reminders of his dead grandmother’s frumkeit, as if the story would lose its meaning if he didn’t take steps to call attention to the fact that she was shomer shabbos. I think the moral of the story is: If not for her baal teshuva grandson, if all grandma had to show for her years on earth was a family of secular Jews, then why bother surviving the Holocaust?" Kershberg writes:
She and my grandfather were the sole survivors of their respective families. Both Shomer Shabbos frum Yidden. ….In many ways, I feel like my grandparents survived the Holocaust JUST for me. In their lifetimes they were able to witness a grandson .. once assimilated into the American culture .. like the rest of the family .. come back to Torah Judaism. Enjoying Shabbos as she and her husband did in Poland before the war. She was able to see her grandson marry a Bas Kohain from a religious family.. Have a child with her. Raise another Yid as Hashem would have wanted. Because of her guts and instinct, and ONLY because of her, I was able to live, and come back to our rich tradition.
