A beautiful thing it was that Ida Goldberger was not a contradiction.
Observe:
She was always deferential to the rabbinic presence and purposes of her husband, the very public and beloved figure Rabbi Daniel Goldberger. She was the supportive rebbetzin, making sure that the rabbi received from her everything he needed for his rabbinic leadership. This made hers a job unto itself inasmuch as Rabbi Goldberger grew two congregations at a phenomenal rate.
Yet — there was a yet. Ida Goldberger had her own career. She was the first rebbetzin of a major synagogue in Denver to have her own career. She did it not to make a statement. She did it because she loved it. She loved to teach. She specialized in a new field and developed a cutting edge expertise in special education. She won awards.
She was a deferential and behind-the-scenes person — while also out in front in a different realm. Yet, Ida Goldberger was not a contradiction. She melded her different foci as a unified personality.
Observe:
Ida Goldberger was busy with a large family, and this at a time when there was, for the first time in Denver history, Jewish day schools in town. Her children were not automatically sent off to public school, relieving the parents of major decisions. Rather, decisions had to be made and unprecedented issues addressed — a critical component of family life that Ida Goldberger had very few contemporaries with whom to share the issues.
Yet —there was a yet. She was deeply involved in the families of seemingly countless others. Remember, her husband’s Beth Joseph Synagogue in the 1950s grew by 100 members a year! To Ida Goldberger, they weren’t simply a mass of people. She was the mother of one family directly and the mother in the family of so many others. Yet, this was not a contradiction. Ida Goldberger had a way of both understanding the family issues of others and sharing her own with people whose religious commitments were different from her own.
Observe:
Life dealt Ida Goldberger her own share of suffering, but she did not lose her smile, her faith, her embrace of life, her appreciation of nature, her outreaching nature, her capacity to make new friends even into her nineties. Suffering can divide a person into before and after. Yet, Ida Goldberger was not a contradiction. She was a strong person; she could remain herself — lovely, enjoyable, insightful, calming.
Ida Goldberger outlived most of her congregants and friends. When someone dies at a very old age — she was 96 — so much is consigned to history. So much the person did is either no longer remembered — because the actors are no longer alive to remember — or is received second- or third-hand. Here indeed is where Ida Goldberger especially transcended any sense of contradiction. Her eye was not on her “legacy,” as so many seem to be obsessed with today. Her eye was on doing good things, helping others in distress, sharing the burdens and delights of life with a wide swath of people, giving children the tools to succeed — all this, for their own sake. She was not looking to “be remembered.” She was looking to take life for its richness in the here and now. She was taking in the commandments of her Creator. This is a life empty of contradiction.
Now she lies next to her husband. Both the rabbi and his wife were a major piece of Denver Jewish history, with their legacy not written in books and not on gravestones, but on the hearts of children, adolescents, young adults, middle-aged and senior citizens; on the lives of the native-born and Yiddish-speaking immigrants; in the never-to-be written annals of affirmative interactions between Jews and gentiles; in the deep respect that both Goldbergers paid to their elders and then, as they aged, in the deep respect they elicited as elders themselves.
No, contradiction did not live here. Rather, an ever freshening wellspring born of partnership, resilience, optimism and echoes of eternity.
Copyright © 2021 by the Intermountain Jewish News
