The Torah tells us specifically in Genesis 24 that marriage involves leaving your mother and father and cleaving to each other. But cleave it or not, at the same time they leave the nest, the couple marries into each other’s family. Like it or not, the newly married now have siblings, aunts, uncles and sundry other in-laws that unlike outlaws, are not always wanted.
My wife Annette and I both came from very small families that were largely matriarchal, both our fathers having died before we even met. Upon marrying, we each “inherited” a sibling, a mother, and a bevy of aunts, uncles and cousins. In this exchange, we both were winners although I would say unquestionably I won the largest jackpot. That was when I was first introduced to the incomparable Florence Epstein Lesser, my wife’s aunt. When she passed away recently at age 101 (although she would argue heatedly that she was only 99), her family, me included, felt a profound loss.
What was so extraordinary about this woman whom we called Tante Faiga? For one thing, although she was the descendant of renown rabbis as well as the famous Epstein/Rivlin family, pioneers in the land of Israel in the early 1800’s, my wife’s aunt grew up in abject poverty in a cold water flat in Chicago during the height of the depression. My parents and aunts and uncles were also immigrants or the children of immigrants. I have described in earlier writings how difficult it was for my mother and aunts to grow up on a farm in the Jewish colony of Edenbridge in Saskatchewan, Canada. They had to endure frigid cold weather or intense heat, depending on the season; and getting to school was a several miles trek. But at least they had education, Jewish culture, family and daily food and sustenance to help them survive.
Florence had a father who was a brilliant scholar but who was essentially preoccupied and away from his family for most of her formative years. As the youngest child in an essentially single parent family of three children, Florence spent many days and nights hungry and cold. But from an early age she demonstrated the will and grit to rise above the challenges of her life. As one of her sons said in his eulogy, “she was very determined in her life to achieve success in her goals. She wanted very much to rise out of her hardships and to raise a family who would not experience, as a child or young adult, the poverty she experienced.”
Rather than receive encouragement from her family, Florence was pressed to find a job and/or a husband and to forget about going to school. But Florence showed a drive to succeed that would not be blocked by what others thought. So stealthily she enrolled and subsequently graduated from IIT, the Illinois Institute of Technology in 1944, one of the few women in her class. Her next goal was to become a doctor and to marry someone she loved, not some pious scholar picked out for her by the family or a matchmaker.
Legend has it that Howard and Florence met on a train one afternoon, and there was mutual attraction from the start. Both had to overcome resistance from their families of origin. True, Howard was Jewish; but to Florence’s family of rabbis and scholars, this unobservant and uneducated man was not kosher! Howard, an only child of a physician and a woman who had been raised in a wealthy debutante lifestyle, was marrying a poor girl below his class, the Lessers thought.
Florence and Howard had two sons, Steven and Robert (Yossi), both of whom grew up to be doctors like their father. Because she was too poor to go to medical school, Florence concentrated on being a wife and mother although she also worked at times as a travel agent and as a biology teacher.
It was obvious from an early age that my wife Annette was precious to Florence. Her sons have said she loved Annette as the daughter that she never had. Tante Faiga was always there for Annette whenever she needed her. In her own family, my wife was like Rodney Dangerfield. She got no respect. Her father, who made a living as a mohel (one who performs circumcisions) wanted a boy, and he reportedly hung up the phone when he was told this he was a she. When Annette was a toddler, her parents placed her in an orphanage nursery in Chicago so they could concentrate on her sister’s medical issues. Tante Faiga found out and rescued her, she forced Annette’s parents to take her out. Another time her parents arranged to have a photograph taken of her sister, but they didn’t want to pay for Annette to be photographed. She was four years old. Her aunt found out and came over and did her hair and made sure that the photographer stayed and took her picture which she has to this day thanks to her aunt. From Tante Faiga, my wife always got love and respect.
Throughout Annette’s life, it has been her aunt who has introduced her to the beauty and glory of such cultural events as the Philharmonic Orchestra, the Metropolitan Opera and the wonderful museums in New York. Annette learned style in art, clothes, entertaining, and housekeeping from her aunt’s examples and from the times they would go shopping together. When Annette still lived in Chicago and her aunt and uncle had settled in Brooklyn, my wife visited her aunt in New York in the summer. Florence made sure to take Annette to the beach, and my wife developed a love of beaches and waters. After that when Annette moved to New York for college and then to settle into married life with me, there were many times that my wife and her aunt went together to the beach in Bell Harbor. Florence loved listening to the waves in the water as Annette does, although the former was an excellent swimmer, and the latter never learned to swim!
How do I fit into this picture? Well, anything Annette did was fine as far as Florence was concerned. But when it came time for her gorgeous niece to look for a serious relationship, I imagine she expected her to choose a chic, good looking future doctor with a strong Jewish background, someone like our future son-in-law, Dr. Yosef Kilimnick! But Annette chose me, even though I was none of those things. How can I be a physician if I hated hospitals and the sight of blood? And I was colorblind to boot. Of course, that meant that I wore clothes that didn’t match, and I had no fashion sense and no definite career path.
Frankly, I was intimidated by Annette’s elegant and well-to-do aunt and uncle, and I thought they would never like or accept me. When I was invited to meet them for the first time, I wanted to impress them with a special gift. So, I went out and bought them a waffle iron. You heard me right; I bought them a frigging waffle iron. I don’t know what prompted me to make such a purchase unless subconsciously I wanted to show them that Annette and I were not going to “waffle” in our choices.
In the end, the box with the waffle iron was still unopened when her sons cleaned out her house almost 60 years later. But Howard and especially Florence did open their hearts to me over the years, especially when we raised our children whom they came to cherish like their own grandchildren. When I saw the usual stern and stolid Uncle Howard shed tears of joy at my daughter’s bat mitzvah, I knew I had finally won him over. I felt that Florence became a fan of mine even earlier, and I always enjoyed and felt welcome at her annual Thanksgiving parties. I got to see close-up how she never waffled in her values and how she impressed on her sons, on Annette, and even on me her ironclad determination that you can succeed in anything you set your heart to do.
Above all, she loved the Jewish people, and she loved the land of Israel. Although she was not fully observant, her sons remember that every Friday night, she lit Shabbat candles. Every Passover when they were young, she shlepped her boys to Chicago or to Uncle Jacob in Syracuse. When Steven, who now lives in Israel, was 5 and his family was in Germany where Howard was an army doctor, Florence took him for a tour of the concentration camp Dachau. When Yossi was 10 and Steven was 13, she took them to Israel. She wanted to etch into their minds the Importance of Israel as a place to ensure the safety of Jews from the enemies that arise in every generation.
Florence was always someone who accepted people and encouraged them. She was even doing this in the last years of her life in the nursing home. She never protested when her sons became religious or earlier when they went through a period of rebelliousness. She only wanted them to become educated, to go to college, and to fulfill their own dreams. After Howard passed away, she enjoyed spending Sabbath and holidays with Yossi and Carol or with me and my wife.
Florence and Annette loved visiting places that I don’t think Howard would have ventured to see had he been alive. On one of the last trips to Israel that we took as a family, Florence and Annette told everyone they were going to a day spa. Instead, they went to see Petra. We are talking about one of the great ancient cities that lies half hidden in the wind-blown landscape in southern Jordan. You heard right, two Jewish women traveled alone to Jordan! Nothing untoward happened because as usual, Tanta Faiga had everything carefully orchestrated and knew what to do in a pinch (and they had a few near emergencies). Nonetheless, it was one of my wife’s peak experiences.
.Back on the home front, we spent countless Sabbaths, high holidays, and Passovers together; we always had a fun time. While she was the epitome of elegance, she was also very down to earth and was comfortable in our mostly relaxed, informal home atmosphere. We loved talking to her about anything because she was so well read and versed in so many things. She always gave unconditional love, but she could grill us like a prosecuting attorney if she didn’t agree with what we were saying. To my wife, she was the ideal Jewish female role model, committed to family, to education, to Israel, and to preserving traditions, along with being part of modern secular society.
The past five years she experienced continual decline in her mental capacity. The family was no longer able to ensure that she was safe and well fed at home, even with round the clock aides. The last two years of her life she spent in Gurwin Assisted-Living, specifically, the Memory unit. The staff was wonderful, and she had company every day with all the other residents. Even when she was in the nursing home, she would often sing Yerushalayim shel Zahav (Jerusalem of gold) and other Israeli songs that she still remembered.
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