I often wonder what it was like for her, a strikingly beautiful, confident, and previously spoiled teenager completely alone in the world, navigating through hell.
I named my fourth child after Bobby Ruzhka.
Bobby also sometimes went by Blima (her given name) and by Shoshana but when you heard her Polish friends enunciating Ruzhka in their rich rolling accents the Polish diminutive for Roiza seemed a perfectly natural fit. Her full name was Blima Roiza — if she were born in Native America I guess her name would have been something akin to Princess Blossoming Rose.
My earliest association with the name Blima was hearing the chazzan’s mellifluous voice rise to a crescendo as he chanted the words “Tolah eretz al blimah….” I had an adorable neighbor named Blima and I couldn’t help wondering why anybody would name their child “nothingness.”
My non-Yiddish-speaking and very learned cousin Jack gave the name a positive spin. He pointed out that only with proper bitul can one get close to Hashem — but by then with my own Blima on my lap the name didn’t need any explanations for me to love it.
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