A tribute to my Bubby

Devorah Greenberg, the woman I am honored to call Bubby, passed away last summer at age 85. As her first yahrtzeit approaches, I am filled with sadness and yet grateful to my maternal grandmother for the incredible life lessons she modeled by the way she lived her life. I have much to be proud of, and more to live up to. 
Born in 1938 in Odessa, Ukraine, Bubby entered a world about to go crazy. The oldest of her parents’ children, the young family suffered tremendously from the lack of food and terrible living conditions that was the reality of Communist Russia, and in deep fear of Stalin’s persecution of religious Jews, and so-called anti-communists. At any given moment they could have been arrested, never to be heard from again, simply for living life as Jews.
When she was only 3 years old, Germany invaded the Soviet Union and her father was drafted to the Russian army. The rest of the family fled the German onslaught and met back up deeper into Russia, spending the rest of the war years in Uzbekistan. 
Eventually, they moved to Moscow, where she spent the remainder of her childhood and young adult years, under a harsh, unforgiving regime of religious persecution. There she married my grandfather Moshe, himself a recently freed seven-year prisoner of Siberia for the crime of desiring religious freedom. With no choice, they sent their children (my aunts and uncles) to the mandatory communist, atheist school, and endeavored, successfully, to build their children’s Jewish backbone strong enough to withstand the bullying and hate from both their teachers and classmates. 
Ironically, my Bubby received an honorary recognition from the Soviet Union, I believe it might have been the “Mother Heroine” award, after giving birth to her sixth child there. When her family was finally granted permission to leave the Iron Curtain in 1964, they immigrated to Israel where they started a new life. In 1982, my grandmother received an award from Israel’s Prime Minister Yitzchak Shamir for her “Mishpachat Mofes - Wonder Family.” My Bubby deserved these awards, as it no doubt took superhuman strength to raise a family as she did. 
The key to my Bubby’s ability, I believe, lies in the trust she had in G-d; that if He brought her to it, He will bring her through it. Bubby didn’t have big plans to achieve a specific goal, it was simply her profound trust in G-d and the awareness that He knows what is best for her, that enabled her to create the life she had and the family she led.
An unassuming woman who always indulged in her granddaughter's silly complaining, it’s hard to believe she lived through so many challenges. I always marveled how her adult children were so passionately opinionated about every topic under the sun, and Bubby would just listen and laugh, as if she didn’t have anything to share, to counter. So self-assured was she, that she didn’t need to constantly add her voice in dissent. I always admired her ability to hold healthy boundaries in so many facets of life, in the many relationships she held amongst her immediate and extended family. 
After her passing, I learned that while the family lived in Communist Russia, my grandparents held clandestine High Holiday services in their home. At the time, going to Synagogue was dangerous, tantamount to rebelling against Mother Russia. So while my grandfather led the prayers for the few brave souls that gathered at their home, my grandmother would sit by the window, with one eye in the prayer book and another looking outside, to alert the other worshippers if someone would approach that looked like a KGB informer. 
That story made me think of our High Holidays in South Dakota, and I couldn’t help but juxtapose our two experiences, how different they were, and yet also how similar. 
I, too, host services in my home together with my husband. And while my husband leads the prayers, I also have one eye in the prayer book and another outside the window. 
Unlike Communist Russia, I am lucky to live in a place and time that values religious freedom, where we don’t need to worry about the KGB coming toward our home, we still, unfortunately, have security guards anytime we hold services. So I stay near the window to let the officer know who I recognize, so they can enter without unnecessary questions. 
The long-standing traditions of Torah, and the ways throughout history in which the Jewish people have held on so strongly, no matter what challenges came their way, is incredible. Like my Bubby played a role in the continuity of Judaism in her time, I too have a role in our time. Indeed we all have an equally important role in this never-ending chain. What are we doing about it? 

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