Rebbetzin Sheina Golda Goldstein o"h, the eishes
chover of HaRav Tuvioh Goldstein, the late rosh yeshiva
of Yeshivas Emek Halochoh, passed away suddenly in the US at
the age of 84 last week.
Rebbetzin Goldstein was born in Kovna to the Zilberbergs, a
family of baalei batim who raised their children with
great mesirus nefesh.
She survived the Holocaust years valiantly in the confines of
the Kovna Ghetto, where the geonim and
tzaddikim, HaRav Mordechai Pogremansky and HaRav
Mordechai Zuckerman, were also in hiding. At night she would
sneak out to gather food in the fields in order to sustain
her parents and other family members. Whenever she heard
someone in despair she would rush to offer them words of
encouragement and bitochon, saying be'ezras
Hashem they would be saved from the jaws of death.
After the war she arrived at a transit camp in France
together with a large group of bnei Torah refugees.
Although she came from very humble origins, aspiring to build
a Jewish home with a talmid chochom she turned to
HaRav Pogremansky for help in evaluating prospective
chassanim.
While still at the refugee camp she married Tuvioh Goldstein,
a talmid of the great prewar generation of rabbonim at
Yeshivas Kamenitz and Yeshivas Baranowitz. Later he was to
found Yeshivas Emek Halochoh in New York, drawing some of the
leading perpetuators of the European Torah world and
poskim in the US.
A short time later they received US visas. Upon arriving
safely in the US, Rebbetzin Goldstein told her husband she
intended to work hard to support them and to ensure that he
could sit and learn undisturbed. This was in the aftermath of
the war years when the US was a spiritual desert, with few
yeshivas and kollelim.
She found a teaching job at a school and worked hard to
provide for the family. When her husband wanted to set up
Yeshivas Emek Halochoh he hesitated due to budgeting
problems, but the Rebbetzin said she would work overtime to
allow her husband to learn and teach, since her primary drive
was to lead a life of Torah and ahavas Torah.
Over the years Emek Halochoh earned a reputation as one of
the country's leading yeshivas and HaRav Goldstein had the
merit of teaching Torah to thousands of bochurim and
raising the standards of Yiddishkeit among numerous
baalei batim living in the neighborhood.
Already upon their arrival in the US, Rebbetzin Goldstein
formed a tight bond with Rebbetzin Feinstein. Later they even
moved into the same building where the Feinsteins lived and
HaRav Moshe Feinstein zt"l had a powerful impact on
HaRav Goldstein. Over the years HaRav Feinstein often had
HaRav Goldstein look over the rulings and responsa he wrote,
since HaRav Goldstein had a thorough command of responsa and
the works of the poskim. In Igros Moshe on
several occasions HaRav Feinstein writes, "Vechen shomati
miyedidi HaGaon R' Tuvioh Goldstein . . . "
In her husband's final years she cared for him with great
devotion, doing everything in her power to allow him to
continue his learning. Just under two years ago her great
husband passed away, to the great sorrow of his thousands of
talmidim. Since then her health began to deteriorate
and last week on Friday Erev Rosh Chodesh Adar II she
suffered a sudden heart attack, and passed away on the
spot.
The levaya set out motzei Shabbos from Yeshivas Emek
Halochoh in New York, where she was eulogized by HaRav Shmuel
Birnbaum and her sons-in-law, HaRav Yosef Marmelstein, the
rosh yeshiva of Yeshivas Novominsk, and HaRav Osher David,
the head of the kollel at Yeshivas Emek Halochoh. The
levaya continued Sunday night at Jerusalem's Shamgar
Funeral Center.
Rebbetzin Sheina Golda Goldstein o"h is survived by
her sons, R' Chaim Meir and HaRav Mordechai, the moro
d'asro of the Mishkenos Yaakov neighborhood in Beit
Shemesh, and her two married daughters.
