Sewing It Together

To some people, sewing is an art, a satisfying means of creative expression. To others, it’s a profession. To many of us it’s simply a way of keeping our clothes from falling into tatters, a necessary evil that keeps our buttons buttoned, our hems from sagging.

To us Sisters, though, sewing represents one thing: our mother, Rose Stark a”h.

The word evokes an almost tangible image of Mommy plying a dressmaker’s needle in order to help Daddy — who gently wielded a butcher’s meat cleaver — feed and clothe the three of us, to pay for the steep but necessary costs of a Torah education.

It also evokes a metaphoric image.

Using the torn threads of her life, her family, her beliefs — strong threads extracted from the ashes of Auschwitz — Mommy seamlessly stitched together a reconstructed fabric. The fabric of her new life. The fabric of our own lives and the lives of our children and grandchildren.