She grew up in California with a father who ministered a parish of Christian Sabbath observers, married a Bible scholar who brought her to the Appalachian Mountains where they lived among destitute hillbillies for two decades, then journeyed with her ten children to a life of Torah in Israel. After years in obscurity, Tzirel Rus Berger is finally putting her life down on paper.
Tzirel Rus Massey-Berger has a few theories as to why she and her ten children — a one-time family of rifle-toting Bible-thumping barefoot mountain folk living deep in the woods of theAppalachians — became Torah-observant black-hatted Jews.
“For years I’ve been asking myself Who lit the candles? Who gave the zchus to this family? Mother’s sister once told me ‘Grandpa Dugger always said we were Jews from Spain.’ Maybe it was a great-great grandmother who fled from Europe. Or could be I’m a gilgul of some ancestor who ‘went off the derech.’ Rebbetzin Carol Weinberger a”h told me ‘Your family was submerged in Christianity for generations. Hashem chose you to bring them out.’”
Either way more than two decades after the Masseys discovered their Jewish core the days and years on the mountain are but a vague memory for the younger ones a wholesome foundation of survival for the older ones. Yet for Tzirel Rus it was those years of loneliness and isolation living out of nature’s hand and developing a resourcefulness in conditions she couldn’t have dreamed of that shaped her spiritual sensitivity and honed her ability to uncover existential truths.
Story of My Life
“How goodly are your tents o Jacob!” Tzirel Rus exclaimed surveying the modestly dressed women in the lecture hall of her new community on the outskirts ofJerusalemthe year after her conversion.
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