During the two Shabbatot before my beloved husband, Alexander, passed away, I had the good fortune to receive gifts of delicious sourdough from my friends Rabbi Dr. Ari and Chana Sytner. During those brief visits to deliver the loaves, I expressed to them that I felt overwhelmed in many ways during Alexander’s four-year illness that his collection of seforim (holy books) and Jewish books in English were too large for our home to manage comfortably. My mind was very cluttered with the physical work of having a sick husband—at that point, capably looked after at Care One at the Cupola in Paramus (an assisted living facility), in addition to managing 24-hour private aides—and needing to raise our three children; I felt all I could do at that moment was complain a little and let off some steam. I felt lucky that the Sytners listened patiently to my “woes” about bookshelves quite literally collapsing from the weight of the seforim.
During Alexander’s illness, his kindness, his yearning to learn and teach, his brilliant, analytical mind, and gentle, loving personality ebbed away until his family became strangers to him. As he was moved from the hospital to assisted living, all that remained of him in our home was this vast collection, and the beautiful spirit behind it.
Little Mincha books, benchers or English books with nuggets of Jewish wisdom were wedged into bookcases, closets, shelves and even boxes in the basement alongside entire sets of gemaras, as well as various Mishnayot collections and biographies of major rabbinic figures. The ArtScroll Daf Yomi gemaras always took pride of place in our home, as Alexander fully completed the Daf Yomi twice (two seven-year-cycles back to back), the most recent of which I was able to join him at the Siyum HaShas in 2020 at the MetLife Stadium. I enjoyed sitting in the press box and writing an article about it for The Jewish Link.
But in recent years, instead of taking comfort in the books with which Alexander had filled our home, I felt there was little use for so many of them. My children, who are aged 14 (twins) and 11, have grown up among these seforim and they have looked at the various titles and know their topics, but have had little opportunity yet to delve into them deeply. (Don’t worry, I am not getting rid of them.)
Rabbi Sytner and Chana were also present at Alexander’s levaya (funeral) at Eretz HaChaim Cemetery in Beit Shemesh on the next pre-Shabbat Friday … It was the third time in a row we had met on an Erev Shabbat, and neither the Sytners nor I believe in coincidences. We had the honor of Rabbi Sytner being one of several inspirational speakers at the levaya, which also included one of Alexander’s last chavrusas at Yeshiva University, Rabbi Zachary Rothenberg—formerly one of two shiur assistants from Rabbi Zvi Sobolofsky’s semicha cohort and now studying at Gruss Kollel. Also speaking beautifully was Alexander’s sister, Eva Kaplan, who spent the last 11 days of his life with her brother and was a great comfort to my family.
In his hesped (eulogy), Rabbi Sytner addressed my sense of feeling overwhelmed regarding Alexander’s seforim, and then in typical master-orator fashion, turned my view on its head.
“What a person collects tells you a lot about who they are,” he said.
Dr. Alexander Kratz, an MD (from the University of Vienna, in Austria), a PhD (from Yale), a MPH (Master of Public Health, also from Yale) and resident, chief resident and then a practicing physician on the medical staff at Harvard Medical School/Massachusetts General Hospital and then for the last 15 years of his working life at Columbia Presbyterian Hospital, collected one thing: seforim.
“Through collecting our holy books, Alexander was working to carry forward the legacy of our mesorah [the transmission of our Jewish tradition], not just for his own children but for his family and his entire community,” said Rabbi Sytner.
That rang true to me, because it wasn’t just new seforim that Alexander bought at the YU Seforim Sale, or Judaica House in Teaneck, or West Side Judaica in Manhattan, or the Israel Book Shop in Brookline, Massachusetts. Everywhere Alexander went, especially in his hometown of Vienna, Austria, or his mother’s birthplace in Budapest, Hungary, he would rescue Jewish books and bring them home wedged into his suitcases. He didn’t want those books to be forgotten, discarded or God forbid, thrown away without a proper shaimos burial. In our house there are many with German and Hungarian translations.
Another heartfelt anecdote along the same lines was shared by Rabbi Rothenberg, who grew up in Rabbi Sobolofsky’s shul but met Alexander more formally after he had retired from Columbia and entered Yeshiva University’s RIETS Chaver program, a unique and small pathway which admits selected college graduates or professionals to sit in the beit midrash and hear lectures from YU roshei yeshiva alongside rabbinical students. Rabbi Rothenberg said that Alexander returned to the YU beit midrash in 2023 after we had celebrated the bnot mitzvah of our daughters in Israel, and didn’t open any seforim related to the shiur that he would attend later in the day with Rabbi Sobolofsky. Instead, he opened up the Pesach Haggadah.
“Dr. Kratz, we have a few months to prepare for the Seder,” Rabbi Rothenberg recalled saying to his friend. “You have time to learn so many other things before Pesach.”
“No,” my husband told Rabbi Rothenberg. “I have to prepare the Pesach Seder for my children. I am having a problem with my memory and I need to do this. It’s the most important thing.”
Indeed, Alexander did have a problem with his memory. By the time Pesach arrived in April 2023, I had to conduct the Pesach Sederim for Alexander and our children. It was difficult but it seemed I was not given a choice; I was quite literally forced to rise to the challenge.
Alexander had young-onset dementia, a fast-moving, unpredictable disease that we never really understood. It was four years almost to the day from his diagnosis to his death. He had no family history of dementia; usually one or both parents have to have had Alzheimer’s for a person to develop a young-onset version of the disease. His mother, aged 88, may she live until 120, is doing well. His father, z”l, passed away at the age of 81 of cancer.
We humans, and particularly Jews, never really know why accidents happen or why families are struck with illness. We might have suspicions, but we sometimes just have to make peace and live within our realities. When I learned Sefer Iyov through 2021 and 2022 with my Shabbat chabura, we learned how Hashem does not believe we have the need or capacity to understand why bad things happen to good people, or why good people suffer terrible illnesses. We do not and cannot fully understand the machinations of His majestic and awesome universe.
What we can do, however, is appreciate the love and support that surround us in times of crisis. The Kratz, Book, Kaplan, Novikov, Lupia, Miller and Kislik families have surrounded me and my children with familial love. The Moriah School, where my three children attend, were sensitive, caring and professional in preparing the entire sixth and eighth grades to deal with the loss of a school parent, with most parents taking their children individually to a classmate’s shiva house for the first time, and then with their teachers bringing six individual sections of students encompassing all of my kids’ classmates, to our shiva house. Virtually every teacher, tutor and school administrator my children ever had at Moriah was at our shiva house. And we remember all of them and love them each for their kindness.
There are several other organizations and people that have been invaluable in helping our family during our four-year crisis. iShine, a project of Chai Lifeline, has been an intensively helpful and positive camp-style getaway experience for my children during two weeknights a week, with many of the iShine high school seniors building friendships with my children well beyond their years as their counselors. At least half a dozen of them attended the levaya since they were in Israel, and if they were local, they visited our shiva house. Rebbetzin Michal Zahtz, who has been with us as iShine Teaneck’s director every step of the way, was also at the levaya sitting directly behind us and providing physical and emotional support to our family.
Jewish Family & Children Services, of Teaneck, has been an immense and integral part of my ability to manage the crisis in which I found myself back in 2021. The team of social workers there has helped me more than anyone will ever know, helping me prioritize my tasks and process my grief. This is an organization worthy of every community member’s support.
Regarding Rabbi Sobolofsky, Rabbi Yaakov Neuburger, Rebbetzin Peshi Neuburger and Rebbetzin Efrat Sobolofsky: I could not have survived the last four years without their wise guidance and loving attention to each and every question I or my children asked. I will never forget the grace with which Rabbi Sobolofsky took me through each halachic question; I learned more about halacha and halachic decision making than I ever thought possible.
WhatsApp groups, started by my friend Sara Diament, initially with about 10 women, ballooned to more than 40 women during the last month of Alexander’s life, making sure our family’s every need was met. She also created a WhatsApp of the roster of men who learned with and visited my husband during the various stages of his illness. That WhatsApp group has now been recreated as a group to help my son make it to Maariv nightly, as my rabbeim agree that at 11 years and 10 months, he is ready to learn for his bar mitzvah and is the only truly obligated person to help say Kaddish to elevate Alexander’s neshama (but don’t worry, he has many backups). I am also grateful to many members of the community for an immeasurable amount of small and large kindnesses, and I apologize if I missed anyone’s name.
I am also exceedingly grateful to my colleagues and friends at The Jewish Link, who have let me be with my husband and took over all the editing during the last several issues of our paper. I appreciate them not just for their friendship, but for their true concern and compassion.
I only hope that someday I can use what I have learned from this experience to give back. I will never forget the kindness that this community has shown me and my family, allowing my husband’s life and legacy to be imbued with the greatest gifts our world can offer: dignity and kindness.
May Moshe Yaakov ben Asher Zelig’s neshama have an aliyah and may we all know no more sorrow.
Elizabeth Kratz is editor-in-chief and associate publisher of The Jewish Link.
