Remembering My Grandmother

Tech Tribe Dispatch #96.5

My grandmother Tzivia Feiga Dorfman passed away earlier today.

She was 88.

She was my link to Judaism - both quite literally, my mother's mother - but more importantly spiritually. She had a love for Yiddishkeit that inspired and directed her entire family, each in their way.

She was tenacious and proud - living through personal turmoil and crisis, growing in her faith and dedication on the way.

It's was an attribute she got from a long line of stubborn and proud women. Her mother's family was from Mohyliv-Podilskyi, Ukraine. A city she never saw, but painted an image so real in her mind, that as her memory faded with Alzheimer's, the disease from which she ultimately passed, she seemed to be living in. In our final conversation, in a moment of semi-lucid clarity, she described the banks of the Dniester river, as if instead of sitting in a room in a hospital on Montreal, she stood with her feet firmly implanted in the ancestral homeland that had nurtured her family for centuries, before rudely belting them out. The founder of the Chabad Movement, Rabbi Shneur Zalman of Liadi lived in Mohyliv on the Dniester for close to a year. I would like to imagine that one of my ancestors served him and learned from him during that time. I know if I had ever told this fact to my grandmother, she would have insisted that indeed that was the case.

They were salt of the earth people, who survived the Russian Revolution and ensuing pogroms. Fleeing the oppression of the Soviet Union, they arrived in Montreal - sponsored by a cousin who worked at, ran or owned a chocolate factory (depending on the telling of the story.) An uncle, her mother’s brother Tevyl Yesovitch, was unable to leave, having been sent to Siberia.

In Montreal they found a home. There my grandmother was born in the old Jewish neighborhood. Her grandmother, Dina Yesovitch had asked that all of her kids be named after her late husband, Tzvi Hersh Yesovitch - a butcher (or shochet, depending on the telling) who had passed in Ukraine. Her father’s family insisted that she be named Feiga, after someone from their side. A family dispute broke out about her name, and so days went by without naming the baby. She became sick. Panic stricken, someone ran to a local rabbi, who told them to end their fight and name the baby. She was named Tziva Feiga — a name for both sides of the family.

She famously met my grandfather under the table. Distant cousins, they met at a family gathering and played together as small children.

She was active in addiction education, speaking with the late Rabbi Abraham Twerski, she and my grandfather were involved in opening JACS - Jewish Addiction Community Services – in Montreal.

She sent packages to her cousins, trapped in the Soviet Union, and sponsored a Persian Jewish family to help them escape Iran when the Shah fell.

She had a sharp tongue and a quick whit. Her comments could be biting. She was frugal. She famously kept a slice of strudel, the last batch her aunt had made with a secret family recipe, hidden in a freezer for twenty years. She kept it hidden in a container that said “Liver.”
Her love was abiding. Everything had to be special, because *you* were special.

She lived her Jewish pride. She was probably a member of at least three synagogues and would check off rabbis by name. And she had a special love for Lubavitch, for the Rebbe and his shluchim - his emissaries. She went to her favorite kosher butcher, run by Belzer chasidim, and introduced me to them, whenever I went shopping with her, “this is my grandson - he’s a Lubavitcher.” as a distinct mark of pride. She kept track of some of the yeshivah bochurim that knew her - posting pictures of their families on her fridge.
She had a wealth of family history. Sometimes her stories would grow with time - but the core was there.

In this week’s Torah portion we read about the building of the Tabernacle, “And they shall make Me a sanctuary and I will dwell in them.” The Chasidic masters note, that it does not say “I will dwell in it” in the Tabernacle, but rather “I will dwell in them” - in the hearts of each and ever one of us.

At one point, many many years ago, when I was getting my bearings on life, I remember my grandmother telling me: “You’re a Jew. Your body is a Temple. A special soul is in you. You need to make sure you treat it that way. Make in yourself a place for G-d.”

She’s survived by my mother, Mushka Lightstone, uncle Eric (Yechiel) Dorfman and grandchildren and great grandchildren in Canada, America and Israel.

The Funeral will streamed on Zoom at 10am EST

Please feel free to share any memories or thoughts in the comments