My mother, Sima Halberstam Preiser, was born to the glory of pre-war Polish Jewry, survived the Holocaust, and witnessed and participated in the rebuilding of Israel after the war.
She was born in 1930, in Sucha, a small town in Poland, not far from Krakow. Hers was an illustrious family, part of the Halberstam Chassidic dynasty. My mother was the youngest of the girls, with three younger brothers, and five older siblings. Life was pretty regular for them, whatever regular meant in 1930’s Poland in the Chassidic world. Her oldest brother, Chaim, was engaged to be married in the middle of September, before Rosh Hashanah. He was going to take over his father’s position of town rabbi while the rest of the family moved to Krakow so that her father could assist his father in his rabbinic position there. Truthfully, all the kids’ futures would probably have been similar. The boys would’ve grown up to be rabbis, and the girls would’ve married rabbis.
All that came to an abrupt halt on September 1, 1939, when the Germans invaded Poland. Her brother Chaim not only never got an opportunity to marry his intended, but he, she, and her entire family were killed.
My mother, at the young age of nine, had to start making life and death choices, as she ran from city to city, ghetto to ghetto, country to country. She wound up in jail in Hungary, and Bergen Belsen in Germany.
Through the miracles of Hashem, and as her grandfather, the Chechoyve Rebbe, foretold, she survived the war along with her oldest sister, and two younger brothers. Her grandfather, parents, and five other siblings were killed.
In May 1946, they arrived in the Lower East Side of New York, having been brought over by an aunt and uncle. My mother went to Seward Park HS and began a new life, one that included joining a youth group, Betar. Betar was affiliated with the Irgun, a paramilitary group under the leadership of future Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin. My mother and her friends did what they could here to help the Irgun in Israel.
Eventually, though, that was not enough for her. In 1949, she left the relative comforts of her new American life, and as part of a group under the leadership of Moshe Arens, a future Defense Minister of Israel, she moved to Israel to start a new life as a chalutz, a
pioneer. Once there, she went to Shuni, an ancient Roman-era town where they spent months training the young new immigrants in agricultural skills, so that they could start new settlements.
In 1950, my mother was one of the 11 founding members of Mevo Betar, a new moshav situated just southwest of Jerusalem, on the border with Jordan. There were no buildings, no electricity, and no running water; this wasn’t a four-day camping trip. It was a pitch-your-tent-and-start-clearing-rocks-and-fields-so-we-can-plant-trees-and-raise-animals-and-be-self-sufficient kind of life.
In Mevo Betar, my mother did guard duty; she cooked a Pesach seder for the entire settlement, at which Menachem Begin was a guest; and met her husband, my father, Yaakov, Jacobo Preiser, when he came as part of a group from South America. Together, they helped build a part of Israel. They loved the land and it was a hard decision for them to move back to New York for health reasons and to be near family.
In their later years, they moved back to Israel and they are both buried there, in Jerusalem.
A few months ago, my son, who is studying in Israel, went on a shabbaton. He tried to have me guess where they would be going and it took a bit before I guessed correctly. Mevo Betar! So over 66 years from when my mother helped found it, her grandson got to
enjoy the beauty of it. He even went to visit my mother’s friends who still live there. I’m sure that my mother never imagined that a grandson learning in yeshiva would one day come there for a relaxing getaway Shabbos!
My mother passed away just over a year and a half ago at the age of 85. As my aunt, her older sister, has told me a few times, no one ever expected her to live to the age of 25, let alone 85. But my mother was a fighter, a survivor! She was sickly as a young girl, then went through the Holocaust, which definitely didn’t help her health. She was the second open-heart surgery patient in Israel, back in the 1950s, when the procedure was relatively new, and much more risky. She gave birth to three children, every one of us being a miracle. She raised us to be self-sufficient and independent, as she was sure that she would die young. Thank G-d she didn’t.
We learned so much from her. How to fight for what we believe in, how to persevere, to help others, to be good friends, good neighbors, good citizens, and good people. Because she spoke so many languages, she was always helping people, and always enlisting us to help others as well. My mother could’ve been embittered by what she went through, but she wasn’t! She lived life to its fullest, and was always happy. She lived life with joy,
full of gusto. She was the epitome of the little engine that could, because of her size and dynamic personality. She didn’t let anything stop her, and poor you if you tried! She taught us, by example, not just how to survive, but to thrive. She taught these lessons not just to my brothers and me, but also to her grandchildren, and great-grandchildren. Not bad for a woman who was sick throughout her life, and who wasn’t expected to live to 25 years of age!
On a beautiful note, my parents’ newest great-grandson was born in Jerusalem this past 5th day of Iyar, Israel’s Independence Day! And the circle of life continues, continuing my parents’ dreams of living in Israel and reestablishing it as the Jewish homeland.
“Heaven’s Tears” (ArtScroll 2013), a book about Sima Preiser’s life written by Rabbi Nachman Seltzer, is available on amazon.com and at Judaica stores.
