Earlier this summer, when we published a profile of Ramah of the Rockies’ Rabbi Eliav Bock, one of my oldest friends told me that she and he shared a kibbutz family, one year apart, and that he was a close friend of one of her college friends.
In August, my friend in London, who incidentally is not Jewish, was at the Bar Mitzvah of her friend’s son. Who should she meet but Rabbi Marc Soloway of Bonai Shalom?
Over the High Holidays, I found myself reading a biography of Henny Machlis, Emunah with Love and Chicken Soup (Artscroll 2016). This incredible rebbetzin was previously unknown to me, but as I read and discussed the book, a good number of connections were uncovered.
But first — who was Henny Machlis? She was a Brooklyn-born Jewish woman who was imbued with a sense of godliness, who decided from a young age to focus on G-d’s work, who married young and immediately moved to Israel, having only spent a couple of weeks there once before. On that trip she had visited Mt. Herzl and seen the graves of felled Israeli soldiers. She decided then and there to have a large family. She ended up having 14 children, many of which had to be delivered by C-section.
Machlis and her husband, Mordechai, were renowned for their open-door Jerusalem apartment, where they hosted hundreds weekly over Shabbat. They offered their home to people under house arrest, to homeless people, to people without families.
Ill for a number of years with cancer, Machlis passed away in 2015. She was 57.
When considering the death of a woman who positively impacted countless lives, a mother, grandmother, wife, daughter, sister, aunt, the word that comes to mind is “tragedy.” But Machlis so fully believed that everything in life was directly from G-d that the word “tragedy” feels wrong. She didn’t pretend that everything was going well, but she sought to learn and grow from every experience, and always to consider what she could do for others. It was the perfect book to read during this introspective period, challenging its readers to emulate a woman who embodied the term tzadeket — righteous woman.
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For the connections — Machlis’ mother, Edith Lustig, was the second wife of Denver’s Manny Feder. Machlis’ sister married the brother of one of my mother’s oldest friends. That friend’s youngest child married one of Machlis’ nephews. One of Machlis’ daughters was married to a member of the Jesmer family, formerly of Santa Fe and family friends. Who made the shidduch? Chasya Batya Heller, also formerly of Santa Fe and a good friend.
As the Machlis home hosted (and continues to host) thousands over the decades, the following isn’t a unique connection. But for one of their first dates, my brother Chaim and his now wife Ronit spent a Friday afternoon helping the Machlis’ cook for their many Shabbat guests.
shana@ijn.com
