For decades, Rabbanit Dvora Zarbiv has clothed hundreds of Jerusalem’s poorest
We’re at her kitchen table. She offers me a hot drink, a cold drink, and everything in between. Then she shares her story, a story of the three pillars of the universe — homes built upon Torah, tefillah, and chesed.
Rabbanit Zarbiv’s mother, Geveret Benaya Levy, came from a long line of great Torah personalities. When she met the Rabbanit’s father, Rav Eliyahu Abba Shaul, an immigrant from Persia, she asked him if he learned Torah. He told her he didn’t; he’d just been released from serving in the Turkish army. “But I promise you, I’ll begin to learn seriously now,” he said. At 15, Benaya married 22-year-old Eliyahu.
He worked by day as a shoemaker to support his family, and like he promised his young bride, sat and learned from the evening until midnight every single day. Geveret Benaya had no fridge, no washing machine, and 14 children, yet she did everything herself, not wanting to take a moment away from her husband’s learning.
“Torah was everything to my mother and worth every effort. She never sent my brothers to the makolet lest they waste a moment of their learning. My brother Chacham Yitzchak liked to drink his coffee cold. My mother woke up extra early to make his coffee for him and allow it time to cool off, so he wouldn’t miss any learning time waiting for it to cool down.”
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