A Dream and a Suitcase

“My savta was special,” I kept hearing. “”She was larger than life… everyone always wanted to be near Savta.””
Well, isn’t everyone’s savta special? But when I heard that this particular savta traveled to Poland from the US to become the only American in Sarah Schenirer’s seminary, I realized she was no garden-variety savta.
No, “Savta” was Rebbetzin Chava Pincus, nee Weinberg — the sister of Rabbis Yaakov and Noah Weinberg ztz”l, and the mother of Rav Shimshon Pincus ztz”l. Spunky and idealistic throughout her life, she instigated the Bais Yaakov movement in America and served as a teacher and mechaneches for six decades.
And while her children and grandchildren treasured a close relationship with the grandmother they describe as simultaneously soft and strong, a closer read of her personal memoir sheds new light on her prodigious intelligence and an outlook steeped in Torah, even as it provides a rich window into Jewish life on both sides of the Atlantic over most of the 20th century.

Mountaintop Haven

Rebbetzin Pincus came from illustrious stock; her father’s brother was the Slonimer Rebbe in Teveria, while her mother came from the prestigious Lorberbaum family. “My mother was the fifth generation of Lorberbaums, the ninth generation after the Chacham Tzvi and the seventh after the Chavas Daas, Rav Yaakov of Lissa,” she writes. Her grandfather would spend the entire week learning in the shul of the Ari Hakadosh, coming home only for Shabbos; his wife would send food with one of Chava’s younger aunts. She recalls how as a baby she observed him one night:
I remember being in a vigale, a small wooden cradle. I woke up in the middle of the night, and my grandfather was rocking me with his foot, while learning by candlelight. I see clearly his radiant face, and can almost hear the Gemara melody as he learned and rocked me… The people in Tzfas were proud of him, and many miracles were related about him.
Her description of Tzfas in those times depicts a saintly, picturesque mountain hamlet:
The whitewashed houses of the little city shimmered in the sun, and it looked like a city of crystal, [an image] in perfect harmony with its purity and holiness. In our yard, there was a tree with beautiful pink and purple flowers, which would close at night like morning glories and open after sunrise. The yard was paved with quaint balatos, stones of different sizes painted with a light-blue whitewashed line around each stone.
I used to go with my aunt to be present at the milking of a herd of goats. It was an experience to be way up above the city on the high crags, the powerful mountain winds blowing through our hair and almost knocking me over, hearing the bleating of the goats and bringing the milk home for everyone to drink.

Dangerous Waters

Chava’s father, who refused to accept a rabbinic position because he didn’t believe in making money from Torah, built a mill on the waters of the Jordan to grind wheat for the farmers of the Galil. (He also worked as a mohel.) When he wasn’t busy, he’d sit and learn. Little fish swam in the waters, and the local Arab women would come to catch them.
There were constant warnings that they shouldn’t come close to the wheels of the mill. But one day an Arab woman disregarded the warnings, and her hair was caught in the wheels of the mill and she was killed. The Turks, who ruled Palestine, arrested my father and put him in a dungeon.
An aunt managed to secure his freedom, but he had to flee to the US. Chava’s mother was left alone with two babies, during the terrible wartime famine and hardship. She became the breadwinner; her sister had a knitting machine, and would produce stockings and scarves that she’d take to Beirut and sell, exchanging them for a precious sack of flour. Chava remembers food being so scarce that her mother and grandmother weighed every piece of bread on a scale before distributing them to each family member.
In 1917, the Balfour Declaration announced the British government’s official support for a Jewish homeland in Palestine. When Lord and Lady Balfour came to visit Tzfas, she writes, the excitement was “indescribable.” Although just a little girl, she was drafted into the festivities:
Dressed in a white silk dress with a blue sash, I was chosen to welcome these illustrious visitors. I was to present them with a bouquet of flowers and give them a brachah as they entered the city. But the streets were so crowded, and there was so much noise and movement, that I couldn’t give my brachah! I was simply picked up and put into their royal coach, and barely managed to hand them the flowers.

New World, Old World

In her memoir, Chava describes Zionist immigrants flooding Tzfas with fervor for the Land — absent an appreciation of its holy mitzvos. In 1922, Chava’s father sent a letter with documents and tickets for them to join him in America. Mrs. Weinberg prepared to go to Teveria to take leave of their family, which in those days meant reserving a caravan. The scene remained etched in Rebbetzin Pincus’s memory:
We started out at dawn: Ima on a mule, and we on donkeys. Since Tzfas is on a high mountain and Teveria in a deep valley, the whole trip was downhill and pretty rocky. At one point the donkey I was on became very frisky, prancing around until he threw me off. Luckily, I fell on a grassy spot. A young Arab retrieved my donkey and walked alongside us the rest of the way.
After tearful goodbyes, the Weinberg family boarded a ship in Jaffa and crossed the ocean, eventually reaching New York and settling on the Lower East Side.
Chava’s brother was promptly enrolled in Yeshiva Rabbeinu Yaakov Yosef, but Chava attended public school; in those days, boys and girls went to separate buildings and proper dress and behavior were expected of staff and students alike. There were Jewish studies classes after school three days a week, but Chava’s father wouldn’t let her attend because the teachers weren’t Torah-observant.
When Chava was 12, she reports, her father came home one day highly excited, having just read about the founding of a new “Bais Yaakov” school in Cracow. She writes, “He had received a copy of the ‘Agudah Periodical’ from Poland that contained a report of a fabulous woman, Sarah Schenirer, who started a school.” Her father was ready to ship her off then and there. Her mother, however, had no intention of sending a young child off to a foreign country.
When Chava finished high school, though, the topic was raised again. “My mother got her fearlessness from her father,” her daughter relates. “Both of them were undaunted by difficulties like a new country, a new language.”
When Chava left for Cracow, she brought with her a letter from her father to Frau Schenirer. He wrote:
I am sending you my daughter Chava, and asking that you give her a double portion — pi shnayim b’ruchecha — of your tzniyus, your temimus, your yiras Shamayim. If you ask: How do I have the chutzpah to ask this of Frau Schenirer?, my answer is that Elisha Hanavi asked the same of Eliyahu Hanavi. When he knew Eliyahu would no longer be with him, he asked for a double portion of Eliyahu’s ruach hakodesh, knowing that the generation that followed would be less than the preceding generation, and that he would need it. My Chava will also return to a land and a generation that will be much different from yours!
Chava herself left for Europe with a mixture of excitement and trepidation:
It seems like I must have been adventurous, but in retrospect I must have been scared as well… I agreed to go on condition I would have a round-trip ticket and be allowed to return whenever I wanted. My knowledge of Poland was very sketchy. From stories of the Baal Shem Tov and tzaddikim, I gathered it was a vast land with forests and many goyim who hated Jews, where yeshivah bochurim essen teg and trinken treren…
I was given a storybook sendoff! Bnos girls from Brooklyn, Manhattan, and the Bronx came with flowers, knickknacks, and stationery for letter writing.
Her trip involved a six-day sea voyage to Bremen, followed by a crowded train ride to Cracow, during which she was appalled to see the conductor harass a young chassid, assuming the innocent man was the cause of some malodorous vomit in the car. “A spirited, young, liberal American, I stood up and called out to the conductor, ‘What makes you think he did it?’ ” she writes. “I said, ‘I know he is innocent, so please leave him alone!’ ” She apparently shocked him into backing off.
Due to a miscommunication, Chava received no red carpet welcome upon arriving in Cracow. She had to hire a drushka (horse and buggy), with no one to help her. The driver claimed not to recognize the address 10 Stanislawska Street. They therefore drove until she spotted Jews who pointed them in the right direction. Her first impression was disappointing:
I found the building almost deserted. Sarah Schenirer was away working on the establishment of a Bais Yaakov school. Fraulein Doktor [Grunfeld] was away on a mission representing Bais Yaakov in Italy, and the classes were away on a three-day outing. No reception. No welcome sign. No one to greet me except Vikchu, the Polish servant, and a few girls who couldn’t go on the trip.