Early Monday on Feb. 8, construction workers at the entrance to Yeshiva Toras Chaim stepped aside as subdued mourners prepared to say goodbye to Rebbetzin Leah Kagan.
Mrs. Kagan, wife of yeshiva co-founder Rabbi Israel Meir Kagan for 60 years and a beloved kindergarten teacher at Hillel Academy, passed away in the wee morning hours of Feb. 8.
She was 83.
The Yeshiva Toras Chaim study hall filled quickly. Men sat in the front while women gathered on the other side of a mechitza. Though separated by a horizontal table, the emotions unified in memory and prayer.
An audio system carried the service to all the classrooms and huddled mourners outside. They could hear Rabbi Ahron Yisroel Wasserman lead the psalms, and the plaintive pleas joining his.
Mrs. Kagan’s casket, bound in heavy cardboard, encased in white, for its journey to Israel for burial, was gently lowered before the bimah.
Rabbi Israel Kagan, the first to speak, visibly forced the words through his pain. “It was very difficult for my wife to move here” in 1967, he said. “She had to leave her family; to raise small children without them. But she knew this is what I wanted to do.”
The kindness and help she received from the yeshiva community “saved her,” he said.
Unable to say anything further, he returned to his seat on the bimah. People briefly rose and sat down, a customary show of respect repeated throughout the service.
Rabbi Isaac Wasserman, co-founder of the yeshiva, spoke of Sarah’s loyalty to Abraham. “There
was no precedent for Sarah,” he said. “Sarah devoted her life to her husband, the Jewish people, raising Isaac and a Jewish nation.”
Leah Kagan was a Sarah in the yeshiva’s midst.
“When we first came to Denver, I compared it to a midbar, a wilderness,” the rabbi said. “Coming here was an expression of Mrs. Kagan’s loyalty and devotion. These were the values that were important in her life.
“She was always ready to perform acts of kindness for anyone, everyone — wanting to help, wanting to give.”
Women sobbed and reached for one another. They had experienced this gift. Now the humble giver was gone.
Rabbi Tzvi Mordechai Feldheim, principal of YTC, focused on Mrs. Kagan’s pervasive ability to comfort people with her grace and compassion.
“A star sometimes is perceived as very small, when it actually is much larger,” he said. “Rebbetzin Kagan taught our children the joy of Torah, bouncing them on her lap with love and tenderness.”
Mrs. Kagan taught kindergarten at Hillel Academy for some 30 years.
Feldheim said that “her love inspired them to become rabbis, teachers and children of Torah.”
And no matter how deeply a person suffered, Mrs. Kagan managed to sweeten the bitterness.
“She was real, genuine,” Feldheim said. “She cared for every family. Their simchas were her simchas; their tsuris was her tsuris.”
Rabbi Tzvi Steinberg of Zera Abraham gave a stirring tribute to Mrs. Kagan, a woman of valor in every sense of the term.
Gripped by powerful emotion, he alternated between Hebrew, Yiddish and English. Frequently his only language was sorrow.
“Who has found the Aishes Chayil, the woman in whom her husband can find strength? Rabbi Kagan has found her.”
Mrs. Kagan “was like the merchant ship that goes to sea to sell her wares and brings everything to the house of Torah,” Steinberg said.
“She had such strength, in her quiet way. She was unassuming . . . You didn’t hear her voice, but her lessons were strong and will never weaken.”
Steinberg praised Mrs. Kagan’s adherence to modesty, which extended to her spirit, personality and inner life.
“The yeshiva has lost its rebbetzin. The community has lost its rebbetzin. The family has lost its rebbetzin.”
Mrs. Kagan’s son Rabbi Aaron Kagan concluded the service. His touching comments mingled poignant reflections and revealing anecdotes.
Born into an illustrious rabbinical dynasty, Mrs. Kagan did not merely pass this inheritance to her children. “She lived it, she breathed it, she embodied it.
“These are the pillars that hold up the house you build — and I lived in that house.”
He recalled with a smile how his mother would wave hello to empty homes.
“I would ask her, Mom, why are you doing this?
“She said, ‘What if someone is home and I don’t wave? They might feel bad.’
“And she never wanted anyone to feel bad.
“She took people into the house and did so many other things for people that no one knew about.”
Mrs. Kagan looked out for widows.
Referring to his mother’s 83 years on this earth, Rabbi Kagan explored the meaning of a long life — not in years but substance.
“What does it mean?” he asked rhetorically. “Because every single day she cared about the needs of others, and that came first.”
Toward the end, Mrs. Kagan’s appetite diminished but she made a concerted effort for her husband’s sake.
“Your dad will feel so bad if I stop eating,” she told Aaron, “so I push myself.”
The rabbi acknowledged that his mother’s passing “has left a void in this world that we all have to pick up.
“Be kind; caring. Wave at an empty house. That’s how we will fill the void.”
Leah Ehrenfeld was born in Austria in 1933 and came to New York with her family at age five. She was the daughter of Rabbi Shmuel and Rochel Ehrenfeld. He was the Mattersdorfer Rav and she was also a member of the Ehrenfeld family, making their daughter Leah Kagan a descendant on both sides of the preeminent 19th-century Torah scholars, Chasam Sofer and Akiva Eiger.
As a child, Mrs. Kagan attended the Bais Yaakov of Williamsburg under the leadership of the legendary Vichna Kaplan.
Her casket was flown to Israel for burial on the Mount of Olives in Jerusalem.
On the way to Israel, Mrs. Kagan’s East Coast family and friends held an additional service at the Chasan Sofer Yeshiva in Brooklyn. The yeshiva was founded by her father.
Eulogies were delivered by her husband Rabbi Kagan, her brother Rabbi Simcha Bunim Ehrenfeld, her daughter’s father-in-law Rabbi Shmuel Kaminetsky, and her sons Rabbis Chaim O. Kagan, Dovid Kagan, A. B. Kagan, and sons-in-law Rabbis Yaakov Furman and Shalom Kaminetsky.
Mrs. Kagan is survived by her husband Rabbi Israel M. Kagan; children Rabbis A. B. (Chani) Kagan of Denver, Dovid (Minna) Kagan of Monsey, NY, Chaim O. (Tybie) Kagan of Lakewood, NJ, Miriam (Shalom) Kaminetsky of Philadelphia, Chavah (Yaakov) Furman of Brooklyn and Gitty (Avraham) Lifshitz of Chicago; brother Rabbi Simcha Bunim Ehrenfeld (the Mattersdorfer Rav) of Brooklyn; sisters Gittel Cohen and Esther Paler; and many grandchildren and great-grandchildren.
Feldman Mortuary made the local arrangements.
Andrea Jacobs may be reached at [email protected].
