My mother came to live with us from her home in Pennsylvania in 2019 when she was 93. She loved the German Colony in Jerusalem and often treated us to lunch or invited us to join her for a cup of coffee at one of the many sidewalk eateries.
Around the corner from our Wedgwood Street apartment is a small drug store called Mazor. The Hebrew word mazor means “remedy” or “healer,” and this place of healing has been a neighborhood fixture, bringing healing to the German Colony since the time of British rule. The Kimiagarov family bought the pharmacy in 1981. Eliyahu and his sons Moshe and Menachem are the staff. Eliyahu was from Samarkand, where only a few hundred remain of the Jewish community which numbered about 40,000 in the 1950s.
When a Super-Pharm branch opened directly across the street from Mazor 12 years ago, many locals were concerned. What would happen to this tiny family business when the selection of products would be so much greater 20 meters away?
Somehow, thus far, despite the competition and its recently being made obscure by the impending light rail’s fencing, Mazor has managed to survive. My mother and I frequently visited, as pharmacies seem to be some sort of magnet attracting senior citizens.
We would regularly stock up on some of the supplies and drugs my mother needed. When she died in November, at age 100, we had some of those items still unopened and brought them back to Mazor. They wanted to give us a refund, but we told them to sell them and do something good with the money. We did not want my mother’s death to be remembered as bringing anyone any inconvenience or loss.
My brother, in our hometown of Scranton, Pennsylvania, put up a yahrzeit plaque for my mom in the shul where my parents had been founding members in 1968. Both my parents were activists in the Jewish community, serving on many committees and philanthropies, local and for Israel.
Last month our daughter Kim, creator of the In Jerusalem crossword puzzle in this section, was sent a message from Menachem of Mazor. It was a beautiful, majestic picture, 200 cm. x 70 cm. (about 80 in. high by 30 in. wide), showing the Children of Israel crossing on dry land between the waters of the Red Sea. In the upper-right corner of the picture was a plaque which said the picture was a gift to the shul in memory of Miriam Mashe Glassman, of blessed memory – my mother.
Kim was stunned and wanted to know where this shul was and who did this. Menachem told her they had done it with the help of the items we had returned. They had been appreciative of my mother coming to Israel at such an age and at our family’s dedication in making a comfortable place for her, where she would be with family rather than in a home for the elderly. They put this in the Seiva Tova Synagogue in Jerusalem, an active place of davening and study, as an inspiration to all who see it of what it means to show respect for parents.
The truth is, my family was blessed to have my mother with us for the past six and a half years.
Imagine. The Mazor people did this wonderful, generous thing. We were speechless. My mother had a long and full life, and she left a void in our lives. We needed to see what this was. We needed to take a walk to this shul in the Bukharan Quarter.
Menachem gave us directions to Beit Knesset Seiva Tova, which is located at 1 Israel Aharon Fischel Street, about a 10-minute walk north of Davidka Square. On entering the lovely shul, we were startled, amazed at the beauty and placement of the picture.
What a wonderful way to memorialize, and to show appreciation for, my mother, an elderly wheelchair-bound woman, an acquaintance, a customer, a neighbor, who lived through World War II, the founding of Israel, and who joined her descendants in making aliyah to participate in this latest chapter of the story of the Jewish people!
How to make Passover's Seder even richer than the year before
EVERY YEAR as Seder approaches, we all look for inspiration in how to make our Seder even richer than the year before.
We ask ourselves once again: “What is the Seder all about?” The Seder is a handbook on how to teach our children gratitude, by means of a musical with wonderful songs. And the most memorable? “Dayenu.”
It is the “thank you” song of a grateful people which, 3,500 years later, is still singing with Miriam to God. We thank Him for our ability to get up in the morning, for family, for springtime, and for bringing us back to our beloved ancient homeland.
We look at our children and think of those who are not here, and sing – with smiles and tears in our eyes – over and over again, repeating “Di…Di…yeinu!”
No, we do not really know Menachem or his brother, Moshe, or their father, Eliyahu. We only know them as the people behind the counter of Mazor. Just as we know the grocer, florist, barber, butcher, and so many others who are part of the fabric of our lives. We don’t know them, but we are fortunate to have them as a part of our story. And sometimes they amaze us and remind us that “all of Israel is responsible one for the other,” and how fortunate we are to live in such a land among such a people.
We live on a street full of charm in the lovely German Colony. As one enters the neighborhood via the circle near the Pinsker building, there is a monument to Yehuda Amichai, Israel’s poet laureate. His poem “Tourists” speaks of a guide who brings his visitors’ eyes to a Roman arch by pointing and saying that it is just above that man with the two baskets. Amichai says the day of the Messiah will arrive when the guides point out instead that just below the arch is a man with two baskets, an Israeli, living once again, proud and free, in his own land, just as was promised by his creator. And that promise was repeated by Ezekiel, by Isaiah, by Jeremiah, by Amos, by Zechariah, and by Theodor Herzl.
That picture of the Israelites crossing the seabed was a miracle, just as was what my mother saw in 1948, and what we are privileged to be experiencing right now.
This year when we sing “Dayenu,” about gratitude, we will think of our men and women in the IDF and, yes, the people who study Torah for us, and for our neighbors, and our druggists, and all the people on the street who wish us a chag kasher v’sameach, without whom our lives wouldn’t be complete.
And maybe this will help us to get across to our children and our families, and to ourselves, the meaning of the Seder, the meaning of gratitude, and why we love this country so very, very much.