A Tribute to My Mother

Rebbetzin Chava Kuperman

“Until the age of ten and a half, I grew up in the toxic environment of the USSR. In a society that repressed all religion, my parents gave us a rich and complete Torah upbringing. In a terribly stressful environment, they also nurtured our psyche and our emotional health.

“I remember from my childhood how my mother envisioned our future and worked to ensure our emotional health remained intact. For example, she made sure we didn’t feel deprived. Our economic situation was terrible and there was nothing to do about it. My mother couldn’t work, because she didn’t want to send us children to Soviet kindergarten or preschool. My father worked, of course, but because he took off for Shabbos, his income was low. But even though we had so little, my mother bought cheap food so she could serve us everything generously and we’d feel things were plentiful.

“One of my mother’s biggest fears was that we children would ask for chometz on Pesach, because our diet and our means were both so limited, and obviously chometz was all around us; no one else in our environment was keeping Pesach. She combated this by making the best food she could manage on Pesach, ensuring we were extra well-fed with delicious meals.

“My parents had to weigh the risks of sending me to school. If the Russian government found children unregistered in school, they’d punish the parents very harshly. But in school, the teachers could easily figure out that I wasn’t writing on Shabbos, and the family would be accused of religious crimes.