Dancing with Hashem - R. YY Jacobson - TorahAnytime.com

my grandmother my mother's mother her name was taebel lipsker luba alta taiba three names luba alta taiba which means an old love bird luba is love alta old toiba is a toy by bird old love bird or love old bird luba alta taiba or table she passed away a number of years ago at the age of 94. the 25th day of shavat she this is a personal and fascinating fascinating story about my grandmother i said my mother telanga young and her mother she was a very special woman you know the matriarchs of that generation who went through unfathomable turmoil and agony and she was a refugee she lived in georgia in southern russia hitler could not get there because of the kafka's mountains the caucasus mountains they could not get there the germans could not get there so the jews were safe but they were living in stalinist russia under the soviet communist regime it was not an easy life and then after the holocaust like many russian jews they escaped through false passports because stalin allowed the refugees citizens of other countries to leave russia so they forged their passports and my grandfather my grandmother and their children who were still who were young the oldest my mother who was a young girl they left russia and you know they went to the dp camps this place person camps my mother told me they were given an apartment with one room and you're talking about a mother and a father with quite a few children they had five or six children at the time with one room and you know you went from one place to another place one place to another place thank god they were alive that was itself was a great miracle they were thankful for being alive until finally in 1947 they arrived in the united states of america my grandmother once lamented to the laboratory that she suffers from depression she's she's not in a good mood she's anxious she has anxiety and she has some form of melancholy depression today you know they sent you off to a therapist but this is the days when you know the jewish world was somewhat different this is a survivor's generation who didn't have anxiety i'm laughing who didn't have anxiety who didn't have trauma i mean the trauma was endless the question you had to ask yourself was do we move on or do we wallow in the trauma but very few people were those who didn't have trauma but very few but she once told us to the rebel what do you think that ever told her he gave her a fascinating instruction my grandmother was a very good dancer she was an exceptional dancer so the lobov chair ever suggested to my late grandmother that she should go to as many weddings as she can not just relatives or friends weddings of jews and dance dance at the wedding and bring joy to the color to the relatives to the family to the community and this my grandmother did for 40 years for approximately 40 years whenever she could she went to a wedding not weddings of friends or relatives for sure she went to friends of her weddings of friends and relatives she herself married off nine children but she went to any possible wedding she can invite her she would go and she would dance and dance she could get danced and get on stage she was a really good dancer a skill dancer and everybody knew taiba lipsky is here it's about zayn lebadek very few people knew the reason she's doing it she's doing it because she's trying to find her own reservoir of joy but in that process of bringing joy to so many people she herself found the fortitude the courage the resilience the resolve that she needed to be able to live a noble life a dignified life a moral life a life of deep commitment dedication and love and she would dance i remember as a child you know i would sometimes uh if i was at the wedding you know my grandmother so to speak stole the show and she wasn't that star she didn't have to steal the show but she would start dancing with other now with other women or herself for a very long time and then she would go home but she would dance to the point of exhaustion until she couldn't dance anymore first of all i have to say it was very good exercise it was probably very good for her health too the rabbit killed two birds with one stone besides that there was the benefit of what it did for her what it did for everybody else particularly her dancing came to very special use at certain weddings she lived in crown heights section of brooklyn many weddings were people who were balichuva young women and men who grew up in secular jewish homes and then came back to yiddishkeit and then chose to get married and they got married very often in crown heights section of brooklyn or nearby dozens and hundreds over the years now they did not have large extended families sometimes the families were broken sometimes the families wouldn't even come but even if the families would come remember their parents and grandparents sometimes they were not jewish sometimes they were very alienated from the jewish people they didn't even know the traditions and the customs of a jewish wedding and it's not like these girls and boys grew up you know in large classes and communities and 100 relatives and 300 relatives like some of you and everybody was at the wedding they didn't have those families you know sometimes you had a little nuclear family one or two or three people and maybe one uncle or one aunt so these weddings could have been a little on the dull side and my grandmother when she heard that abaltruva is getting married this was her wedding she would go and she would dance away and it was really really beautiful why am i telling you the story my uncle my mother's brother married off his youngest child this is 12 years ago 12 years ago he married off his youngest child this is my mother's younger brother and uh i came to the wedding i had a lecture i had a sheer that night so i was somewhere else i came late i came very late to the wedding i was coming towards the end of the dancing i would be at the end of the dancing and and the benching the chevy brooks you know the last dance of the wedding when it's empty i come to the wedding it's close to midnight and uh i see something strange my mother is not there my uncles are not there my aunts are not there the only one who's there is the father of the groom and his wife and the whole family is gone i'm wondering i call my mother like what happened everybody everybody uh they're all at the wedding like what happened everybody ran away from this wedding nobody's there nobody's there okay it was very strange to me but i went in i i i gave mazel tov you know did some dancing and uh and i stayed until the end of the wedding i leave the wedding and i hear what happened my grandmother who was 94 years old she was home and the last few years she was basically home and that night in the middle of the wedding she wasn't feeling well she had a hard time breathing so the assistant the person who was there you know helping her medically called the a cousin of mine who's at salah came over said she has to go to the hospital so they took her to methodist hospital in brooklyn my mother is the oldest daughter and she was at the wedding so my cousin from outsolder right away called my mother and his mother-in-law my mother's sister and said that your mother was taken to the hospital and it's a difficult situation so my mother told her siblings and at some point the middle of the wedding they all checked out and they went to methodist hospital they didn't want to tell the brother who was a son of my grand who is a son of my grandmother because it was his child's wedding they didn't want to schlep into the hospital it would have been inappropriate but they all you know sneaked out hoping it wouldn't make such a ruckus and they all rushed to methodist hospital my grandmother was taken to the icu unit and all of her children most of her children went into the room with their spouses or also came from the wedding and then some grandchildren who heard about it and they also rushed to the hospital so there were around 40 people in the icu around her bed the doctors and nurses were quite perplexed of this scene but they allowed it they allowed it she was having a difficult time breathing but here's the most fascinating thing they all came from the wedding so everybody was wearing wedding gowns beautiful fancy wedding girls beginning with my mother all the way all the children you know the grandchildren the granddaughters the sisters-in-law daughters-in-law of my grandmother everybody with wedding gowns because they were coming from the wedding of my first cousin all wedding gowns and my uncles and cousins started to sing songs and they started to sing beautiful beautiful jewish tunes heartwarming and heart stirring melodies including leviticus happy songs wedding songs which my grandmother cherished now the nurses were rubbing their eyes that like 40 people in wedding gowns or or kapotta's peckish's suits with you know dressed up that's how you come to an icu it was like you put on a wedding gown because your mother and i see you they didn't realize that everybody was coming from a wedding and as they were singing these beautiful songs my grandmother returned her soul to its maker the middle of the night the 25th day of shabbat 12 years ago and when my mother shared with me i wasn't there because i came late to the wedding and i found out later that she just passed away so i already went only afterwards but as the next day we all went to the funeral and hundreds of descendants escorted my grandmother and they interred her into the manta fury cemetery in queens just a few feet from the burial place of the la bava cerebra i thought to myself wow she spent 40 years bringing joy to brides and grooms at weddings she would dress up in a beautiful wedding dress or gown and she would go dance away and when she returned her soul to its maker as she left the world she was surrounded by children coming from a wedding dressed in wedding gowns quite literally quite literally singing wedding songs celebrating her life and that's how her shama went back to be embraced by its father in heaven and remain in his bosom because the way we live and the way we interact in our lives it doesn't only impact the people that see it of course it also creates very deep influ it has a tremendous influence on the energy of the world and our own energy and sometimes it's expressed itself and expresses itself in fascinating ways you