Teaneck—Philyss Seidenfeld was outside last Shabbos morning, talking to a friend who was waiting for her son to return home from shul.
She heard two women as they were chatting.
There was talk of something tragic that happened in Flatbush. She heard something about a fire.
“So this lady tells the story of the Sassoon family and the seven dead children,” recalls Seidenfeld. “My face turned white. I’m surprised I didn’t collapse on the pavement. I tried to mind my own business, and it was very difficult to fall back into step and go to someone’s home for lunch.”
The news she heard was way too close to home. Ten years ago she lost four of her seven children, also to fire, in her Teaneck home. For the Sassoon family, the deadly fire started from a hot plate used to keep food warm over Shabbos. Philyss Seidenfeld lost her children to an overloaded circuit in a basement freezer in her former brick Tudor home at 501 Rutland Ave. She first reported the smell of smoke to the Teaneck Fire Department. Their first responders didn’t find what would become a deadly fire.
Since Shabbos, she’s been asked by many what advice would she offer to the grieving husband and father Gabriel Sassoon, who was away last Shabbos. He’s lost seven children, and another child and his wife were in critical condition fighting for their lives at this writing.
What would she say?
“You have to understand, in my story my children were put to rest. I had a clear path in front of me. I didn’t have to go backwards like Mr. Sassoon with his wife and daughter critical. In three days I was already home from the hospital.”
Seidenfeld said she figures “it will be at least three months before Mr. Sassoon will even want to talk to someone. He doesn’t want me talking to him right now. I’m not on his radar. I’ll be ready for him if ever wants to talk. People who go through such a loss like this are in a gray zone for a very, very long time.
“I didn’t want to engage in conversation with people, email or anything,” she continued. “You have no energy to even have a conversation. Mr. Sassoon’s wife (Gayle) and daughter (Tzipporah) are fighting for their lives now, there’s no place for me now.”
Ten years ago, Seidenfeld lost Ari, 15; Noah, 6; Avira, 5, and Natan, 4. Her daughters Aviva, then 7 and Zahava escaped with the help of a neighbor using his ladder. Her oldest Helena was 17 that horrific March 22, 2005 day, and was learning in seminary in Israel. Seidenfeld, divorced from her husband, was first listed in critical but stable condition at St. Barnabas Hospital in Livingston. The fire was called in at approximately 1:45 a.m. while the family was sleeping.
“I have to say I count my blessings,” she said. “It’s bittersweet to say that.”
Seidenfeld and her family were awakened by the shouts of a live-in nanny, who was sleeping on a downstairs sofa.
The issue of alleged faulty smoke detectors or none at all, which has come up as a question in the Sassoon tragedy is one that she finds unfair.
“We had some smoke detectors,” she said. “Maybe some had batteries not up to snuff. At the end of the day, what is done is done. We don’t know the bigger picture. So it’s not as simple as smoke detectors. I’ve heard some heartless comments about this. But you plan and you plan and Hashem has his own agenda. It was meant to be for however it ended up.”
With her children gone, Seidenfeld has for every one of those 10 years turned her grief into chesed. Since recovering from her own serious injuries from the fire, Seidenfeld, a registered nurse, and a nurse administrator for the developmentally disabled, has raised thousands of dollars for non-profits such as the Jewish Association of Developmental Disabilities, Yeshivat Noam in Paramus and others.
“I can’t explain how it is that my children were taken,” she said. “But I can tell myself that if I can leave a legacy of who they were on this planet, then somehow I can justify them having left. When this happens, and I am able to live their memory every day, not just once a year, then I know I’ve made this world a better place, because they were here. I can’t bring them back now. But I can make something good.”
Her son Natan, a child with Down syndrome had, in his own loving way, motivated his mother to look at the lives of the developmentally disabled. Seidenfeld asked anyone who would listen what happens when a child’s parents become too old to care for them or even pass away? Is it too burdensome to leave a developmentally disabled adult in the care of a sibling?
With the involvement of two partners, Seidenfeld looked at the facilities of Camp Hill, a village that provides a rustic, healthy, useful lifestyle for adults with developmentally disabilities.
This is what she wanted, a Jewish special needs village, and she and her partners have identified camp land which would be ideal for ANAN KVODO. It is located in upstate New York. The first name is the first initial of her four deceased children. The word Kvodo is for the cloud that protected the Jewish people fleeing Egypt and slavery. It was a cloud of glory.
ANAN KVODO has a Facebook presence and can be reached at [email protected].
“We’re not on a level to ask HaShem why these fires happened, or why we lost our children,” said Seidenfeld. “For me the question is what can I do now that they’re not here anymore to make me more at peace for the rest of my years here? What is it that I can do to memorialize them?
“That’s how I live.”
By Phil Jacobs
