[A more comprehensive article will follow next week IY"H]
There was no time to say thanks for the wonderful
shiur you gave us -- all of us who still remember it
like the back of our hands... Just a few parting words.
It was truly `by accident' that I happened to meet you. I
moved to a new neighborhood in Yerusholayim and wanted to
begin an English speaking shiur. I wasn't sure
exactly what kind, how often, when and who would give it.
But at least I knew `why.' `Why' invest extra time, money,
phone calls and efforts on a shiur? I wanted my own
children to feel that our new home would become a beis
vaad lechachomim, a gathering place for sages, for Torah
study. One of my friends told me: Try Shemiras
Haloshon.
"Who will give it?" I asked.
"I don't know," she said, adding, " but why don't you ask
the organizers of the yearly Yom Iyun?"
"Good idea."
I phoned Mrs. K. in Mattersdorf.
"You want a shiur in Shemiras Haloshon? Then you need
Tzippa Weinberger. She doesn't go by her English name,
Carol, any more. She's the person for you. First of all, she
knows the subject backwards and forwards. And she lives it.
Every second of her life. Besides, she'll never refuse an
invitation to speak because she says it's a zchus.
Try her. She's an amazing, wonderful human being."
So I did. And that's how it all started. I discovered a gold
mine in you. You immediately agreed to give the
shiur. The topics were chosen, the dates arranged and
the crowd appeared. Intent. Ready to listen and absorb.
Interested.
I was waiting for those first words. But instead, you just
smiled. A really warm, wonderful smile. Heart and soul.
"Thank you for asking me to speak to you," you began. It was
just beautiful. Soft, sweet, modest and melodious. A `thank
you' right at the beginning. Thank you at the end. Lots of
gratitude and humility. The middle was dotted with learning,
thinking and expanding our horizons. The Chofetz Chaim's
halochos, true stories of gedolim, little
anecdotes of bitochon and views in hashkofa.
But always, always, a focus on personal growth and maturity.
You always directed our thinking to this end.
"How can we grow from any given unpleasant experience? How
can we become better people?"
Better people? Yes. That was your pet subject. We must
become better and better and even better. Because life is
essentially an upwards spiral staircase and in order to move
upwards, we must always reach inward. After all, isn't that
really the purpose of life? The reason we were brought here
in the first place!
"Improving our Relationships With People Using the Chofetz
Chaim's Guildelines." That was the title of your spring-
summer series which aptly corresponded to the time of the
year: Sefiras HaOmer and the Three Weeks. Just the
right time for augmenting domestic peace. No more
quarreling, no more putting people in their places. We need
not always have the last word. We don't always have to show
off our brilliance, fame, charm, success. It's O.K. just to
be humble, nice and approachable. Caring and interested.
That's how we truly build relationships. "Walk humbly before
your G-d." You spoke about mother-in-law -- daughter-in-law
relationships.
"All of this preconceived stereotyping comes from the
goyim," you said. "Your mother-in-law is your
husband's mother! She's a real live woman with
feelings and a heart. Love her and she'll love you back in
return."
I was impressed by your clarity, impressed by your depth and
impressed by your knowledge. But it was much more than that.
There was a sincerity, deep- seated sincerity. Each time I
called you to confirm the following shiur, you always
told me, "I think I'll prepare a little extra, just in case
we finish off the other material faster than I expect." All
of this dedication to `prepare' a shiur, a
shiur for which you never received payment for --
except from Him. The shiur to which you had to
travel, and spend hours away from the house.
Hours out of the house. Little did we understand at the time
how you were running an empire out of the same house -- all
of the people who came for advice, all of the people who
needed a "home and a heart." We just didn't know. We only
found out after you departed for a better world. And we're
still finding out more and more as the days go by. More
stories, more vignettes. How you touched lives, how you
touched souls. And you turned around entire families. Entire
communities. Just by bringing more peace.
Entire communities. How many neighborhoods in Yerusholayim
were changed by your engineering the yearly Shemiras
Haloshon Rally. And it was your singular idea to include a
rally in English. Today, the project has become a national
and international Kiddush Hashem, with many dozens of
lectures taking place in dozens of locations, in five
languages. Thousands of women and girls of all ages
participating (with separate rallies for men and for boys).
Every level, every age, any background.
And they were all taped! Thousands of tapes! All because of
you; you were the very one who started the Shemiras Haloshon
Tape Libraries. I am sure that in shomayim, you must
be surrounded by thousands of tapes which brought millions
upon millions of holy words to many starving souls.
And they're still playing, Tzippa. Your tapes are sitting on
the kitchen shelves of may homes, bringing chinuch, diyun
lechaf zechus, middos, shemiras haloshon to the kitchen
table. What a brainstorm! What a zechus! What a way
to spend a life. Running around the city to tape every last
shiur with equipment that was your own financial
investment. Amazing!
Before you left us for a better world, you tried to create a
better world for us right here, in the Holy City that
thrives on guarding its tongue, judging favorably and
preserving everything you stood for. You created an empire
of tapes and shiurim, of memories and messages that
will continue to play and replay as you reap the well-
deserved reward of your prodigious efforts.
As for the rest of us, we will continue to strive to follow
in your footsteps...
*
`FARNEM'
Your editor cannot help adding several thoughts that beg to
be expressed.
As I was following behind the funeral procession, along with
the hundreds of others who had known Tzippa, I saw a
familiar face.
"All the way from Beit Shemesh?" I asked the young woman
pushing a stroller and evidently in an advanced stage of
pregnancy. I also knew that she had close to a dozen
children at home!
"Carol was my birth coach," she told me. "She spent hours
upon hours with me, before and after. We had a very close
relationship and she helped me in so many other ways as
well."
I was amazed by this other side of Tzippa and wondered how
many more facets this diamond of a woman had. Perhaps all
fifty-two (or is it 56?), and each of them sparkling true. I
can only touch on a few, but I am sure there are many that
were known to only these and those and still others, each in
their area of need.
My memory goes back to when our children were together in
school and Carol's incredible talent in sewing was in the
forefront. She coupled it with her built-in farnem, a
word that denotes scope and vision, but only touches on the
actual scope of that scope. She drove that talent to its
limits: organized sewing classes, which my daughters took,
created a factory in her own home to produce school uniform
skirts in masses, at prices that anyone could afford. Her
children recall the factory overlock machines, the bolts of
material, the pre-cut skirts that could be assembled by
women of lesser talents, who needed a means of
livelihood.
Production, marketing, teaching, providing jobs, providing a
needed commodity at the cheapest possible price. And that
was nothing compared to her pet project of traveling all the
way to Zichron Yaakov, a two-hour trip easily, week after
week, where Ohr Somayach had a colony of its married
students, to teach and provide them with a livelihood. I
can't help remembering with humor what my daughter once told
me: one of the Weinberger girls came to school with a new
skirt, casually mentioning that the other had been in the
laundry and her mother had quickly sewn her a new one that
very morning!
Few people know about this project of hers, which she did
with her typical panoramic farnem. Because while she
did things big, she did them quietly, too, and you rarely
knew who was creating the whirlpool of ideas and activity,
and implementing them so capably.
There was the matter of marriage counseling, of which I was
barely aware. But at the shiva, one person wrapped it
up in a nutshell. She attacked this tremendous challenge, of
helping families in distress, as a gemilus chessed in
the true semantic sense of the word: she WEANED them of the
need for counseling. She took couples and within a dozen
sessions, had put them back on their feet so that they did
not need years of follow-up. She must have helped many, many
dozens of families and made them independent so that she
could go on to her next project.
The world is already accustomed to the yearly Shemiras
Haloshon rallies, whose organizers are always shrouded in
anonymity. Well, she was one of those anonymous dynamos
behind the scenes, and all the credit for the tape
libraries, the idea and the implementation, go to her, and
much more. I personally remember the very humble beginnings
in Mattersdorf, when we sat on low kindergarten chairs,
feeling the Nine Days very strongly. Our souls were yearning
for this, and time was on our hands, since there was no
laundry to do. It was Tzippa, who had close friends in
Mattersdorf, who decided that the idea must be expanded to
other neighborhoods and later, to other languages, to a
grand climax in bigger and bigger halls, from wedding halls
to Binyonei Haooma, and then to ALL THE AVAILABLE HALLS in
Binyanei Haooma. And then to other cities, countries,
continents. Her pushing did it.
That's how her mind worked. An idea flashed, it incubated,
and then, all of a sudden, it burst forth in all its
practical glory, with all details ironed out. Sewn custom-
made, cut, tailored -- just perfect to the last detail.
While few knew to give credit to that aspect, the tape
libraries were definitely her baby. Only angels could have
helped her produce hundreds of copies of the lectures given
the very day of the Yom Iyun -- for the thousands of women
who flooded the auditoriums in the evening of that same day.
The logistics of the project are so mind boggling that they
defy description, so we leave it at that. It was
miraculous.
There were dozens of other types of involvement,
completely different faces and facets in which she excelled
equally. Each person saw a different side of an exemplary
woman: wife, mother, counselor, friend, lecturer. I have
barely begun to do her justice. And that is where I must end
-- at the beginning.
As I read this over, I am suddenly reminded of her catering
efforts, at which she equally excelled in a very big way. To
create beautiful and inexpensive simchas, and to earn
money to keep the men of the family in learning -- which was
her overriding priority in everything she did! But -- no
room here. Just another `small' expression of
Farnem.
Tzippa, may your shining example continue to bear beautiful
fruit till the end of days.
