ECCLESIASTES teaches, generations come and generations go. Last week, as Frieda Shames Makovsky Englard passed away, the Denver Jewish community was imbued with this feeling. The sun is setting on a generation. With Frieda’s passing, that twilight has just deepened.
Frieda Makovsky, as I called her most of my life, was such a warm, friendly and personable woman. Always there to greet me (and anyone) with a smile and strike up a conversation, taking an interest in my life. She was a strong woman, but a woman who wore her strength lightly. She truly was humble and understated. A woman to admire, a woman whose company I so enjoyed.
As the years have passed, Frieda Makovsky became not only a matriarch of her family, but also even though she would probably never think of herself in this way a matriarch in the Denver Jewish community.
My very first memory of her was of a caretaker, of wheeling her husband Mr. Makovsky in a wheelchair to shul. This was a primary part of her personality and nature being there and taking care of the people she loved.
Aside from being a personal friend, Frieda Makovsky Englard, as a Jewish Colorado-born woman who lived almost a century in this state, represented much more.
Read the full obituary notice for Frieda Makovsky Englard
She was part of the great Shames family of Colorado, and was the last living link to the Cotopaxi Colony of Jews who came to Colorado from Russia in 1887. As one of nine siblings, Frieda had the emotionally complicated and lonely honor of outliving all of her siblings, both older and younger.
One of her sisters was the beloved Molly Feder of the West Side of Denver. Somehow, with Frieda’s passing, the end of an era has come. I found myself thinking about the one-of-a-kind, charismatic and gracious Molly Feder, and her brother Motti Shames and his world famous cholent. Both were founders and leaders of a lot of Jewish Orthodoxy that is taken for granted by my generation in Denver today. These people were among the Colorado Jews who fought the brave fight to establish a lot of the vibrancy of Jewish life that we all know today.
Together with her first husband Sam Makovsky, Frieda raised her children, Haim, Evan and Jan, in Pueblo. All three children are living committed, shomer Shabbat lives with children and grandchildren of their own. From the small, predominantly gentile Pueblo, Colorado, here is a strong Jewish family. How did this happen?
MOST stories of small town America don’t have such happy Jewish endings. Everyone agrees, her story is an exception due to her maternal wisdom and strength of character. Without compromising one bit and yet without pressuring one bit, she simply made it clear to her children what their Jewish boundaries were. With love, she successfully transmitted to them a strong sense of self, identity and their place in the world.
Her lines in the sand were clear. Shabbat is Shabbat, and on Shabbat we do x, y and z, not a, b or c. If one of the children was tempted to do otherwise, she made it clear that that is their choice, but they should just know that if they want to be who they are Jews and if they want to be part of their Jewish family and the Jewish people, then they need to stick with Jewish choices.
It all sounds so simple, but think about the temptations of youngsters when all their friends might be doing something totally different. Frieda instilled in her children how to be loyal to who they are, how to be different and proud.
From this fertile ground in Pueblo, Colorado have grown grea
t things. Inspired by a Young Judea program, Haim made aliyah to Israel where, together with his wife Yaffa, they are the founders of the very popular and beautiful community Neve Daniel. Evan, together with his wife Evi, and Jan and Philip Lightstone, have been active members and preeminent leaders in our community for decades.
With Frieda being one of nine children, everyone jokes that the Makovsky/Lightstones are related to everyone in Denver. Frieda, with her sense of humor, warned Evan before he left Pueblo for Denver that he better be careful which girls he takes out, as they might very well be his cousins!
Like sitting shiva has a way of doing, a sense of history and time is deeply felt. I found myself sitting in the same room as Mrs. Lucie Prenzlau and Mrs. Reva Weisbrot, two old friends who rarely see each other anymore, two gems in our community, both each in her own way matriarchs themselves. Molly Feders son, Gary, flew in from Israel to pay his final respects to his last aunt.
Since shiva has a way of awakening the memories and people of the past, stories unfold.
Then a young Colorado boy, Gary remembered meeting the Holocaust survivors coming to town for the first time. About Leo Verderber, whom many of us knew as a high school teacher, university professor and great Torah scholar, Gary shared that he remembered Mr. Verderber back when he was an electrician.
An electrician? Yes, Gary continued. In Europe, when Mr. Verderber was taken off the trains to the death camps he immediately noticed two lines. One line led to the labor camp and the other to the death. Sizing up the situation in a few seconds, Mr. Verderber realized the common denominator of the people on the labor camp line was that they all had professions. Young and not trained in any profession, he immediately got himself into that line. When the Jew in front of him was called up and asked his profession, he responded: electrician. Next was Mr. Verderber, and he repeated: electrician.
Not knowing the first thing about being an electrician, Mr Verderber spent the war years copying whatever he saw the real electrician doing, and this is how he survived.
Since Mr. Verderber survived the war by identifying himself to the Nazi as an electrician, and then pretending to be an electrician, he felt a certain sense of duty, destiny or integrity to committing to those words, for real, and actually became an electrician. Once he survived, he honored those words in the concentration camp with deeds. Hence, upon arrival in Denver, Mr. Verderber trained to become an electrician, and worked as one for a number of years before going forward as an educator,
THE interesting thing about Frieda Makovsky is that, although she herself was American through and through, by her sheer existence she embodied a connection to so many different times and different parts of our Jewish lives. To the end of the century before last, to the Cotopaxi Jews of Colorado, to Pueblo, Colorado and to the Jewish immigrant experience through her hardworking, immigrant, Russian husband.
And then, at the end of her life, to the Holocaust, too, because of her second marriage to Fred Englard, who, in his deeply visceral and soulful way, wore the Holocaust on his sleeve like no one I, and most of us, have ever experienced.
So, for almost a century of Colorado Jewish pioneering strength, and most of all friendship, thank you, Frieda.
