My earliest memories of you, Zaidy, are through the magic of your Shabbos. I would bounce on your knees to the rhythm of your Shabbos zemiros, your voice alive with joy, your whole being wrapped in the holiness of the day. “Come,” you would say with a twinkle in your eye, “let’s say Good Shabbos to the trees”; “That rock, come let’s sing Good Shabbos to that rock.” To a child, it felt like a game. But it was nothing less for you than a spiritual worldview — inviting the world to join you in greeting the Shechina, teaching us that everything around us is to be elevated, sanctified and brought into the song.
But my memories crystallize most vividly around your Havdala. You would lean toward the flame with reverence, and as it extinguished, for a moment it felt like the breath had been sucked out of you too. Your shoulders would sag, a sigh would escape you, and in that moment, I imagined I was witnessing an intensely private encounter between you and Hakadosh Baruch Hu. A moment of genuine kabbalas ol — of surrender — as you braced yourself for the week ahead, a man readying himself to reenter the world, to carry its burdens, to continue to serve. But it was only a moment, and by the time I had blinked, you had steadied yourself, and were standing erect once more. Ready to return to your mission, your week, your work. It is not lost on me that you left this world just moments after Havdala.
When I told you that I was going to Israel after high school, you were very emotional. For you, aliyah wasn’t just a dream—but an inevitable endpoint of everything you had worked for, davened for and believed in. But at that point you had accepted that this was a Yarden (Jordan River) you would not have the opportunity to cross personally, that you would not make it to Israel. I was afraid my excitement might sting, might highlight what was lost for you. But your joy for me was full and honest and held only pride, only hope. On Fridays, I would Facetime you from Jerusalem and we would walk the stone paths of the Old City with you in my pocket, letting the silence speak between us. Words were unnecessary. Just the hum of your favorite city, the sound of footsteps, the knowledge that a piece of you had touched down where your heart had always longed to be. I would tell you about all the people I had met that past week for whom the Feuerstein name was legend and who were so excited to invite me to their Shabbos tables — to show me how their homes had been shaped by experiences at yours, how their songs were still sung in the tunes you had taught them, how their children were named after my grandmother, a”h, as a testament to your tremendous influence. And I would sit there, overwhelmed by the realization that I was carrying a name that had shaped lives across continents, that I was part of a story whose echoes I was only beginning to understand.
When I was a little girl, you brought an elderly man to stay with us. You introduced him as a dear friend—which made sense to me, because he was wearing your clothes. He stayed for a long time, that friend. He stayed through Purim, and, come Pesach, there he was, seated at your right side at the Seder table.
But he was not an easy guest. Years of hardship and failing health had left him with little patience for the rituals you offered with such love, no interest in the songs or the stories that meant everything to you. I remember holding my breath as he announced, in no uncertain terms, just how little he cared for what and who surrounded him.
But you didn’t flinch. You just placed a hand on his shoulder and smiled softly. Not out of dismissal—but out of gratitude. He felt safe enough in your home to be honest. Secure enough to protest. He had recovered his dignity enough to express his own agency, and you were so glad to see it. You weren’t insulted—you were honored, grateful even.
Years later, I began hearing more stories like his—shared by aunts and uncles, by my parents. In my naivete, I assumed it was always the same man, just following you around from Boston to Jerusalem, to Vancouver, to Teaneck. It eventually dawned on me that it was not one man but countless. You didn’t stumble across them. You sought them out. Or maybe they were drawn to you—because you saw them.
Not their pain, their defensiveness, or their sharper edges, but the real them—radiant with potential, cloaked in unspoken dignity waiting to be recognized.
It was this same hospitality that landed you on an episode of “America’s Most Wanted,” as unbeknownst to you one of the many characters who had knocked on your door one day and asked for a place to stay and some food to eat, who was welcomed in with as much fanfare and graciousness as any other guest, turned out to be a blacklisted neurophysicist wanted by the FBI for the trafficking of radioactive materials to terrorists. How were you supposed to know that the man living in your house for several weeks was an international fugitive? He introduced himself as a Jew who just needed some help. And that was all you could see.
In the hospital nurses would wake you up at every hour, they would poke and prod. But you would welcome them into your room as if they were the most holy of Shabbos guests. You would take them by the hands, look into their eyes and with every faculty Hashem allowed, you would use to communicate to them what good care they were taking of you, how grateful you were, how lucky. You would get to work trying to make them laugh, make them smile. With everything you had you needed people around you to know they were seen, they were appreciated. It didn’t matter that you were the patient— when your nurses left the room, they felt so big, so valued; it was they who were grateful for you.
I am not so old — but I have no doubt that I know what heartbreak looks like, and it was watching you realize that Torah and then Tefillah — lifelong companions — were slowly slipping from your grasp. You would get up every morning at five or six o’clock. Wearing a suit and tie, you would wrap yourself in your tallis and tefillin and prepare for your own personal milchemta shel Torah. You would sit for hours, fighting to hold on to the words that once came so easily. And at the end of the day, you would rise from your chair, heartbroken, dejected, in so much pain. We saw the disappointment, the exhaustion. We begged you—gently, lovingly—to let it go a little. To take up a hobby. To spend more time with family. To distract yourself with something simpler, something less painful.
But you looked at us like we were speaking another language.
It took Moshe Rabbeinu 40 days to receive the Torah, you reminded us. And not only that— but God made Moshe forget the Torah each night, just so He could reteach it the next day, over and over again. Why? Because, you insisted, Torah is not just information but a relationship. It’s longing. It’s love. And you loved Hashem enough to open yourself up to the devastation of failure. Every. Single. Day. You knew it might break you—but you could not be kept away, because if there was even the smallest chance that one more pasuk, one more sugya, one more tefillah, might bring you closer to the Ribbono Shel Olam, then how could you not try? It was this for which you were created.
I remember finding you one day with your head down on the table, silent, crushed—so at a loss for why Hashem was making this so hard for you. But the next morning, there you were again— Suit. Tie. Tallis. Tefillin. Ready for battle. To me you were Yaakov Avinu struggling in the dark with the angel of Eisav — suffering blows, but with all your strength insisting “לא אשלחך כי אם ברכתני ִ –I will not let you go until you bless me.”
I know you felt like you were losing. I know you felt like you were not accomplishing. But we were watching and we too were learning how to fight for what’s important.
Last night, as the chevra kadisha came to escort you, I opened up a Sefer Tehillim and could not help but be astounded at how I had never noticed that Dovid HaMelech’s words had been written just for you: “Gal Einai VAbita Niflaos Mitoratecha -— Uncover my eyes so I may look at the wonders of your Torah,” “Ger anochi baaretz, al taster mimeni mitzvotecha” -—I am like a stranger in the land; please do not hide your commandments from me” “Gar’sah nafshi li-taavah, el mishpatecha b’chol eit—Shattered is my soul with longing for Your Torah at all times.”
And we, in your shadow, learned what it means to love Hashem with everything—even when the gates feel locked and the heavens silent.
The sages teach: “Take care with the honor of a Torah scholar who has forgotten his learning” accompanying the statement with the evocative imagery of the broken shards of the first set of luchos stored in a place of honor in the holy ark, alongside the intact second set. Rav Avraham Yitzchak HaKohein Kook explains that the respect given to a Torah scholar is not because he is a repository of information; it is because he has elevated his character through his toiling to internalize the Divine message. He has shaped his soul through that struggle. And even if the precise words and concepts fade with time, the person he becomes through that effort—his refined essence remains, and commands commensurate respect.
This was the story told by your long dining room table, piled high with piles of sefarim—on Halacha, hashkafa, Gemara, Tanach—each one a window into a different journey you were trying to take. Each one evidence of another mountain you were climbing.
But you would look at all of it—the books, the notes, the outlines, the paperclips—and with a sweep of your hand would say, with quiet heartbreak, “I’m not getting anywhere with all this… I’m lost.”
It was here, in this very shul, when Rabbi Rothwachs gave a shiur in memory of a beloved chaver of this community, Shelly Mermelstein, zt”l—it was a shiur not on the complexities of a sugya, but on the courageous and sacred power of working on one’s middos, one’s character traits. You listened, your eyes filling with tears and you turned to us in a voice thick with emotion and said:
“I had dreams… dreams of getting somewhere with my learning. Maybe even to finish Shas. But maybe—maybe—I can get somewhere with my middos.” Like Hillel, pressed up against the window, at the mercy of the punishing elements, you found your ways to stay close to the Beis Medrash, even as you felt shut out.
It is not for me to try and understand the ways of God, and I do not pretend to have the answers to the questions we all had: why Hashem was making this so hard for you, why the gates seemed to close just as you reached them, why you had to walk this lonely path. But what you left us with is something better than answers. You left us a path— an actionable blueprint of what Avodas Hashem looks like. To walk with Hashem, to understand Kirvas Elokim as the very air that we breathe, and our sacred responsibility to uplift those around us.You showed us that gadlus isn’t loud. Sometimes it looks like tears in a shiur about middos. Sometimes it’s silence when insulted. Sometimes it’s just not giving up. Our Sages teach us that when Yaakov passed away, his deathbed was considered “shaleim” —“complete,” a description that is not awarded to any of the other forefathers. It is explained that this is because Yaakov merited to see all of his children by his bedside before he passed, confident that each one had grasped on to the faith of his ancestors, had committed themselves to continue carrying the torch of his ideals and aspirations. As my Uncle Yosef reflected this past week, as 35 of us gathered around your bed to spend your final week together with you: You had wondered where the success in all your learning had gone, but the success was all around you, singing your zemiros, sharing your Torah, each voice a confirmation of your unqualified triumph — that we will spend the rest of our lives attempting to approach the heights you reached, grateful beyond words for your demonstration to us of what is possible, of what is our duty and our privilege to uphold.
Bila hamaves lanetzach, umacha Hashem dima me’al kol panim—He has swallowed up death forever, and the Lord God shall wipe the tears off every face” (Yeshayahu 25:8).
Adina Feldman of Teaneck is studying psychology at Stern College.
