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Passover fundraiser includes sale of a book of
witty, inspiring lessons and memories.
Shelli Liebman Dorfman | Contributing Writer
R
some restrictions apply
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1-800-HAGOPIAN
(424-6742)
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Kaddish For My Mother
2078380
uchie Weisberg’s mission to pro-
vide shoes — and later, monetary
gifts — for the Detroit Jewish
community’s needy before Passover has
grown to include proceeds from her
recent book, written about the woman
who inspired it all.
Kaddish For My Mother is a tribute to
the late Chana Rosenberg, a Holocaust
survivor who Weisberg calls remarkable,
strong and courageous, and
tenacious and resilient.
What began as a short
story became a key chap-
ter about Rosenberg as
a young girl in a small
Czechoslovakian village
whose parents could not
afford much-needed foot-
wear before Passover.
In each brief section of the
book, first-person narratives
and memories build on the
reader’s glimpse into who Rosenberg was,
her relationship with her daughter, where
she came from and the lessons she taught.
With wit and insight, Weisberg of
Southfield meshes current events with
historical detail of her mother’s life, per-
sonal interpretations and reactions.
“My mother thought nothing of bang-
ing on a teacher’s door when she felt a
grandchild was wrongly judged or calling
an overnight camp to remind the coun-
selor that a grandchild wasn’t feeling well,”
Weisberg wrote of her mother.
Of her softer side, she wrote, “My
mother would befriend anyone who
ever worked for her — the gardener, the
plumber, the mailman — always offering
encouragement and a delicious piece of
kokosh (babka-like pastry) or gefilte fish.”
STRONG FAITH
“My mother was a survivor who never
lost her belief in God,” Weisberg said
of Rosenberg, who was interviewed
and filmed for Steven Spielberg’s Shoah
Foundation in 1996.
Describing her mother’s optimism,
drive and independence, she said, “My
father passed away in 1962 and my moth-
er, a very talented seamstress, worked in
a high-end men’s clothing factory and
raised my brother and me on her own.”
Devastated by her mother’s 2011 death,
work on the book was “cathartic relief
over the sadness and loneliness I felt,” said
Weisberg, who is married to Itzy and has
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56 April 14 • 2016
four children and 11 grandchildren.
All proceeds from Kaddish For My
Mother go to Weisberg’s Y’shoe-ah
Foundation, whose name is a collec-
tive play on the words ‘shoes’, ‘Shoah’
(Holocaust) and Rosenberg’s oft-used
Yiddish expression, “Yeshuah (help from
God) will come when least expected.”
Foundation funds — now providing
monetary gifts before Passover and also
Rosh Hashanah — are admin-
istered through the Southfield-
based Matan B’Seter Detroit,
a volunteer-run, charitable
agency providing financial aid
to those in need in the local
Jewish community.
The 96-page paperback
book (2015, CreateSpace
Independent Publishing
Platform), Weisberg’s first, is
now in its fifth printing. She
studied English literature,
American literature and creative writing
at Wayne State University in Detroit and
taught Hebrew school for more than 20
years.
She also just completed a book for chil-
dren about sensory issues and is currently
working on Junking for Judaica, “about
my years of collecting old and interesting
pieces of Judaica.”
Weisberg does not take for granted
growing up with new shoes when needed
and wrote that she wanted to make sure
“other children feel special, too, with a
brand new pair of shoes.”
“Because my mother was a huge believ-
er in tzedakah, she never had fewer than
four tzedakah boxes in her house at any
given time,” Weisberg said. “It just struck
me that if I ever published a book, all the
money would be given to tzedakah and,
in particular, for shoes. I knew she would
have loved the idea!”
*
Kaddish For My Mother is available at
amazon.com, Borenstein’s Hebrew
Books and Music Store in Oak Park
and Spitzer’s Hebrew Book and Gift
Center in Southfield. $18.
Donations to Matan B’Seter may
be sent to Rabbi Shaul Broner,
25971 Stratford Place, Oak Park, MI
48237, and earmarked, Y’shoe-ah
Foundation.
*