IT'S A GIRL -MAZEL TOV RUCHEL

Ruchel

Thu, Mar 15 2007, 1:35 pm

amother wrote:

Ruchel wrote:

Thanks for the info!!
I was 2.9 kilos at birth but 2 weeks early, I hope it will prevent me from having huge babies! LOL

Anyway, baby naming is tomorrow (it was hard to have a minian during the week!) and I'll let you know how it goes!

There's noplace with a minyan during the week where you live? Where does your husband daven?

There's 1 shul in my town, and it is extremely rare to have minian more than for shabbes, especially every single day, when you live out of Paris and probably Strasbourg and Marseille. We're already lucky to have a shul in a 18 000ish people town, I tell you. People from the neighbouring towns cannot even go to shul for shabbes & holidays - or they drive, because they have no shul in walking distance. My husband davens at home, but he also did it when he lived in a place with minian every day.
There's a chabad shaliach in a close town and he has the same problem, minian only for shabbes.

Anyway, the people of the community are extra great, they came before going to work so we had even more than minian Very Happy

and my baby is now named (and on first page of OS with pics LOL

)

Ruchel

Wed, Mar 28 2007, 7:04 pm

Ruchel wrote:

Anyway, baby naming is tomorrow (it was hard to have a minian during the week!) and I'll let you know how it goes!

Shame on me, I forgot!! Pregnancy brain is not going away and it's not motivating for my master (supposed to conduct interviews in NY this summer, if I'm motivated and I don't know if I will be Mad

).

ANYWAY, I'm happy to introduce Mathilde Buena Toba bat David. Smile

She was named for my living (maternal) grandma Mathilde (ad 120!), who was herself named for a sister of her mother . She is a great lady, pious and with a very strong personality. She is also the clever kind and managed to convince the Germans who had arrested her that she wasn't Jewish - at 10!

For my great grandmother (Mathilde's mother) Buena who was a real tzadekes, with an incredible emuna but also incredible middos. She was the niece and dil of a rabbi of Saloniki who became head rabbi of Amsterdam, Netherlands, and would have become Rishon LeZion without the war (killed for refusing to collaborate with the Germans). She lost almost all her loved ones but not her faith and she kept kosher while hiding. shock

She was the person who was always asked for help because people knew she never refused. Thanks to her kindness, non jews accepted to hide the family because they loved her. She was named for her own grandmother the rabbanit Buena, she was very learned for her times as she graduated high school and was fluent in many languages (Ladino, Greek, French, Hebrew and Dutch shock

). I learned the prayers in her prayer book that she left for me when she passed when I was 2.

The family was well known in Saloniki for being Spanish Jews who settled there a LONG time ago, and being a rabbinical family descended from an av beis din who also happens to be R' Isaac Luria's grandfather. Their family name expresses the fact that they were originally from France, and descended from Rashi, and I should stop before it becomes too easy to guess my grandma's name lol

And for my great grandmother Toba, a great frum chassidic lady. She was the daughter of the rebbe of Bialki and married to the great great grandson of the Kotzker rebbe. Although she lost her husband during the war, she was one of the only survivors of a village burned by the Germans. She was named after an aunt and a great aunt. Her family was extremely frum (the kind where the women shave their hair and the men fast 2 a week), but one of her brothers completely went off the derech and became a gangster who attacked the travelers on the road shock

. His name was crossed off of the family tree and not even my grandfather knew his first name, although once he met him and almost died of fear - and would probably have died really if the brother hadn't seen a family look! lol
This family was known for coming from Metz, France centuries ago, and for being descended from Rashi too.

2 years ago, I was in visit in NY, and my father had given me the address of an old cousin he hadn't seen for 50 years maybe, as she left after Toba's passing. I called her, and although she didn't know me, when she heard I was the great granddaughter of "aunt Toba" she came at our hotel and said she wouldn't leave until we came with her to stay at her home, because she was a role model in frumkeit and taught her so much (she also raised the cousin's grandma when the mom died)! More than 40 years after she passed, we got to be with relatives for Pessach thanks to her.... This cousin told me that Toba's death was the last traditional chassidic mourning in the family, with the wailers and all... people after her were much more modern. Although slightly depressing at first, all these stories made me think a lot and this stay with the cousin was one of the turning points in my life, where I saw many things and decided what I wanted and what I didn't, and the following month I met dh shock

, and the next Pessach we were married!

Pfew, that was long to write but since you can't hear speeches on OS... Twisted Evil

Anyway, still about OS... do you know why OS added my daughter's bas mitsva? because I definitely didn't LOL