Spring came to my mother’s little village. Flowers were in bloom, the grass smelled sweet and fresh. Fruits were ripe for the picking. There was much activity during Chag HaAviv; the house had to be meticulously cleaned for Pesach; the wood stove cleaned of all chometz; the kneading board had to be replaced with a freshly cut piece of wood.
My mother remembered all this with much fondness as she told us about life on the farm in the spring before Pesach finally arrived. But truth be told, she said, this was not the only reason for her excitement and anticipation. No, for my mother it meant new shoes! Her mother would travel to Prague and buy her family new spring clothes and shoes for the holiday. This year was my mother’s turn—her year to get new shoes. She fantasized about how they would look, what color, what style. She hoped they would not be the same utilitarian, ugly brown oxfords that she had worn through until the soles of the shoes were almost transparent. Their wear couldn’t be helped, of course, when she had to trudge through mud and dirt to feed the chickens, but at least for a while they would be new and she would try her hardest to keep them in mint condition. Maybe, she fantasized, when she went to shul all dressed up and wearing her new shoes, she might catch the eye of the young chassidishe boy that she secretly had a crush on.
She told no one because she knew that if she told, her sisters would tease her relentlessly and her brothers would torture her with their taunts. Only her mother knew. Her beloved mother, Leah, gently reminded her that she was too young to entertain such thoughts. “A few more years, Mamaleh, when you turn 18, we can speak of it again.”
“Mama,” she said, “next year Moshiach will be here and we shall all have as many shoes as we could possibly dream of.”
The awaited day finally came. Her mother traveled to Prague the day before and was scheduled to return that afternoon. My mother tried to keep busy with all her chores, but every once in a while she would run to the door awaiting her mother’s return. And return she did, with a new pair of suspenders for Simcha, a new yarmulke for her brother Pesach. Avrohom received the desperately needed new pants and for the older girls, a blouse for Sarah and some new stockings for Baila.
My mother waited patiently until her mother’s gaze fell upon her beloved Chana, her dutiful daughter. “Chanala,” she said “I ran out of money and the shoes were so expensive, I just could not buy them. You’ll see we’ll polish yours up really nicely and I will crochet a new collar for your blouse. You will look like a princess, and next year, I promise, you will be the first on the list.”
As my mother told this story it was clear that her pride far exceeded her disappointment. “Mama,” she said, “next year Moshiach will be here and we shall all have as many shoes as we could possibly dream of.”
Last year, a few weeks before Pesach, I decided to do something that would be a z’chus for my mother’s neshama. I contacted Rabbi Shaul Broner and asked him if he, as a representative of Matan B’seser, would distribute funds that I collected from family and friends to large families so that their children would have new shoes for Pesach. I called this project the “ Y’SHOE-AH Foundation” in memory of Chana Bas Yosef.
From Kaddish for My Mother by Ruchie Weisberg
