A Heart as Big as the World

Rebbetzin Yitty Neustadt grew up in a chassidish home. But when she and her siblings asked their father, Rabbi Ezriel Tauber, which chassidish group they belonged to, he always replied, “We are the Eibishter’s chassidim.” It was an environment saturated with Torah ideals, avodah, and chesed.

The family started off in New Square, then relocated to Monsey when Yitty was 16. Reb Ezriel was a successful businessman, and also the address for all kinds of communal and individual needs. He was the author of well-received seforim on Jewish thought, and a visionary whose life’s work — including the Shalheves organization he cofounded with Rav Shimshon Pincus, and Yeshivas Ohr Somayach, which he established in Monsey — improved the status quo for Klal Yisrael. Almost inevitably, in this atmosphere, his children absorbed a sense of Klal-consciousness.

At home, Mrs. Tauber, the family matriarch (who still lives in Monsey today), held the fort with complete commitment to her family. Her children marvel that “off-days” simply didn’t exist. Whatever was going on, she constantly worked to make home-cooked, plentiful meals and keep everything running smoothly. She raised a dozen children, ka”h, and accomplished chesed as well: She’d have donations of clothing dropped at their home, which she would dedicatedly wash, mend, and pack, to send to poor families in the USSR.

Even in that environment, the third child, Yitty, stood out, with a heart as big as the world. She was reserved as a girl, keeping herself in the background — neither outgoing nor looking to be popular. But the ahavas Yisrael, which others would later describe as “almost tangible,” was beginning to flower, rooted in her good heart and an intuitive grasp of the needs of people around her. In a world that had not yet openly embraced special needs children, her sisters remember that Yitty easily held hands with and visited them. In school, she was recognized by her fellow students and teachers as being unusually refined, with an unquenchable thirst for Torah and chesed. Tehillim mechulak was not yet a thing, but when she knew that someone sick needed tefillos, Yitty divided Sefer Tehillim among her fellow high-schoolers.