Tante Ruchel

Ruchel was my great-grandmother’s cousin through marriage. Born and raised in Batei Ungarin in the 1930s and 40s, she was your quintessential Yerushalmi meidel. She plaited her hair every morning into two tight braids, spoke Yerushalmi Yiddish, and was acquainted with every stone passageway in the vicinity.

Her family lived in extreme poverty. A single orange was a cause for excitement, and every child would await to receive a segment with wide-eyed anticipation. Ruchel’s father, originally from Hungary, died of starvation when she was a young girl, and she and the rest of her siblings were raised single-handedly by their blind mother. Their apartment was pitifully small and crowded, food was in scant supply, and clothes were passed from child to child until they were falling apart.

But they were happy.

Ruchel married Berel Waller in the 1950s. Berel was an orphan who also hailed from Hungary and had fled the inferno that engulfed Europe during World War II.

Husband and wife were from two different worlds; one was a bright and balabatishe European, the other a conservative, simple, yet iron-willed Yerushalmi. But they got along decently, despite their stark differences, as did many “mismatched” couples after the war.