The organizations and mosdos we all take for granted today had to get their start somewhere. Most of them started in kitchens just like the one I’m sitting in today with groups of young housewives dedicated to making a difference.
I’m sitting in Mrs. Devoirala Spira’s Boro Park kitchen sipping verbena tea and trying hard not to touch the cookies she’s set out. The bright afternoon sun lights up the white walls and glints off the blue-and-white Delft tiles and knickknacks that color the room; a kitchen clock has small photos of a dozen great-grandchildren in place of the numbers.
Despite her diminutive size and not-so-diminutive age Mrs. Spira is still a quiet force of nature. She and her husband ylcht”a were survivors from Krakow. (Her great-grandfather was the youngest son of the Divrei Chaim.)
Today she has brought out a plastic bag to show me filled with yellowing newspaper clippings invitations and handwritten lists. These memorabilia are about forty-one years old and bear testimony on one of Boro Park’s vital chesed organizations Tomche Cholim.
Many of us have grown up with Tomche Cholim already in operation as well as many other chesed organizations that have since become household names. But the organizations and mosdos we all take for granted today had to get their start somewhere. Most of them started in kitchens just like the one I’m sitting in today with groups of young housewives dedicated to making a difference.
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