The world needs Pnina Gewirtz Schacter's teaching

Published date06 November 2021
My mother, Pnina G. Schacter, was a principled woman of deep integrity. She lived an intentional life, guided equally by her belief in God and her belief in the goodness of human beings. She sought out opportunities to bring God's presence into the lives of those she encountered.

We are living in exceptionally polarizing times. In seemingly every facet of life, one faction is pitted against another. I especially notice this conflict between factions of pious religious people – who think God's rules matter more than anything in the world – and secular individuals, who think that people matter much more than an abstract concept of the Divine. Marking my mother's yahrzeit, I wish to share her story, a story of a woman who was both a devout religious woman and a devout humanist. In her life, neither side was compromised.

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My mother's belief in God manifested most noticeably through her deep love for the Jewish people. For six weeks in the summer of 1962, my parents traveled to Romania as official guests of then-chief rabbi Moshe Rosen and his wife Amalia. My mother looked forward to traveling with my father and meeting the Jews in what was then a communist country where being openly Jewish was problematic. My mother didn't trust the Romanian authorities, even the chief rabbi, since he was employed by the communist government and answerable to them. During their trip, she urged my father to spend some time away from the government-appointed chief rabbi and attempt to make direct contact with the Romanian Jews. Those opportunities were rare, as their visit was closely monitored by the communist authorities.

In the service of this goal, my mother innocently asked Rabbi Rosen if she and my father could spend a day on the beach and enjoy a day off, away from the many prying eyes and speaking engagements that took up much of my father's time. Rabbi Rosen agreed. Later in her life, my mother described that day as beautiful and sunny, as she and my father walked hand in hand along the shores of the Black Sea. At my mother's urging, she and my father spoke to each other in Yiddish, loudly, so that any passerby could overhear them. My mother explained her reasoning to my father. If a passerby was Jewish, that person would recognize the language. If the person needed help, he or she would feel comfortable approaching my parents safely.

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