Fax Facts

An Interview with Rebbetzin Devorah Wigder 

FROM MAIN STREET TO BEIT SHEMESH AND BEYOND 

as appeared in Binah, December 16, 2013 #362

I had the privilege of meeting Rebbetzin Devorah Wigder this past Rosh Hashanah, when I attended services in her late husband's shul. The following Shabbos, I attended the kiddush that is held in her home – men in the living room, women in the kitchen. Over homemade kokosh cake I heard about the family newspaper she sends out several times a year to family members throughout the world, and the English book lending library that she keeps in her spare bedroom. I decided that this was one woman that I just had to get to know better.

From the time I was a small child I dreamed of creating a home dedicated to Torah learning, which is why, in 1959, right after graduating high school, I went to Eretz Yisrael. While working at an orphanage in Bnei Brak, someone told me about Gateshead Seminary, and the following year, I became a Gateshead girl! There, in addition to learning how to get along with girls from different backgrounds – at one point all five of my roommates were French-speaking, and I was the odd one out – I gained a real appreciation of Torah and limud Torah, which eventually led to my marrying a talmid chacham who devoted his life to Torah.

After one year at Gateshead, my parents insisted that I return to the States. They wanted me to get a job and settle down, but I wanted to continue learning Torah, so I enrolled in Rebbetzin Kaplan's seminary. By the middle of the year I was a kallah. My husband, Rav Shabsie Wigder, was very close with Harav Moshe Bick and a talmid at Beis Medresh Elyon, located in what was then very rural Monsey, New York.

I really wanted to live in Eretz Yisrael, but my husband was an only son, and he didn't feel right leaving his elderly, widowed mother alone in America. Even though my mother in law lived in the Bronx, we made our home in Monsey so that my husband could continue learning in the yeshiva there. It was understood that once we married off most of our children, we'd move to Eretz Yisrael.

Our first home was a tiny basement apartment on Maple Avenue. My upstairs neighbor's nephew, a sweet little boy from Argentina (I thought), loved to come downstairs and play in our living room – I think he liked my homemade cupcakes! It was only later, when the Israeli police discovered his hiding place, that I learned that he was really Yossele Schumacher.

The first year of my marriage, I taught limudei kodesh New Square, even though, at the time, I barely knew a word of Yiddish! Every night, my upstairs neighbor would teach me the vocabulary that I needed for the following day's lesson and somehow I managed. I must have been successful because at the end of the year the school asked me to continue.  Although I occasionally substituted, I decided to devote myself to my primary occupation – being a wife and mother.

Before our second child was born, we bought a house on Main Street. We lived there for 21 of the 38 years that we lived in Monsey.  During those years we were blessed with 17 more children, and then we had twins – or at least some people thought we did! But we didn't; it was nothing more than a practical joke that got out of hand.

Two of my daughter's friends decided to have some excitement, and spread a rumor that our family had just been blessed with twins, numbers 19 and 20, and that we were keeping quiet about it because we were afraid of an ayin hara! We began receiving phone calls from friends throughout the world - Canada, England, and even Eretz Yisrael – wishing us mazel tov on the new additions to our family. My son even called from Eretz Yisrael complaining that, "just because I live so far away you can't include me in the simchah?" Eventually the rumors quieted down, but our family still continued to celebrate the twins’ milestones; when they turned three, we celebrated an upsherin (after all, since there were two of them, we assumed that one must have been a boy) and later on, a bar mitzvah. It was a family joke and we had a lot of fun with our non-existent children.

I thought that the tzibbur had forgotten about our latest (non)additions, until a few years ago, when I met an acquaintance at a wedding in Eretz Yisrael, who asked me if we had already married off the twins! She was shocked to hear that those beautiful babies were nothing more than the figment of someone's imagination. The truth is, I am very thankful for this story, because now, whenever I teach the halachos of shemiras halashon, I use it to demonstrate just how far one’s words can go. Imagine; 20 years after a couple of girls spread a rumor about us, people still remember it!

Thank G-d, I was blessed with a good sense of humor, otherwise, how could I have possibly raised 18 children? Life was never easy, but we certainly had an awful lot of fun! And of course, all the kids pitched in. At one point, to make some much-needed money, a friend and I opened an advertising magazine that was mailed to all the heimishe families in Monsey. For several years, the kids helped with the monthly mailings, even shlepping the magazines to the post office in their little toy wagon! One evening I was cleaning up the kitchen with my two older girls, who were then around nine or ten, when I noticed the girl next door riding her bicycle up and down the street. I was worried that my girls would be jealous that they had to work in the kitchen while their friend was enjoying herself outside. Instead, one of my daughters remarked, "That poor girl, she must be so bored. She has nothing to do all day!"

One time, shortly after I gave birth, our nine-year-old son was hit by a car and hospitalized with a concussion. After he regained consciousness, he was moved out of isolation into a room that he shared with a non-Jewish youngster. When his roommate turned on the television, he jumped out of bed, dragging all his medical paraphernalia with him, and ran into the hall, explaining to the startled nurse that "My parents don't allow us to be in the same room as a television!" Today, this little boy who was so adamant about living a life of taharah and kedushah is a big talmid chacham who devotes his life completely to limud Hatorah.

One daughter, who was in fourth grade at the time, decided to go to Eretz Yisrael. She and 

a friend left school and started walking down the street, which was not in the best neighborhood. Baruch Hashem, someone caught up with them – who knows where they would have ended up otherwise? My daughter did end up moving to Israel after her wedding, and she is still here, 25 years later.

I credit the success of our children's chinuch to the fact that everything in our home revolved around my husband's limud Hatorah. He was a gaon and gadol b'Torah. When he was in his thirties, he traveled to Eretz Yisrael to ask the head of the Eidah Chareidis (the Gaavid) Rav Yitzchak Yaakov Weiss, zt"l, to test him for semichah. When the Gaavid asked him which Gemara he wanted to be tested in, my husband said, "It doesn't matter; anywhere in Shas." To make a long story short, the Gaavid tested him on one Gemara after another, and then gave him semichah. In his letter of semichah, the Gaavid wrote that even in a previous generation, my husband's level of Torah knowledge would have been considered unique.

As a bubby, and great-bubby, I'm entitled to share some nachas with you; after all, we worked hard to be m'chanech our children to appreciate limud Hatorah. Last week, just as I was about to light the Shabbos candles, I got a phone call from my son in New York. He wanted to share something with me that happened at the sheva brachos they had made the previous night for their daughter and new son-in-law. Toward the end of the seudah, the chassan stood up and requested to say a few words. Then, much to everyone's surprise, he began to recite the Hadran that is said at a siyum hashas! 

WIGDERS THROUGHOUT THE WORLD

 Over the last twenty-something years, my children have grown up and spread out across the globe. Our children and grandchildren have lived in communities throughout the tri-state area and Eretz Yisrael; in Postville, Iowa, as well as Kiev, London, San Paolo, and Australia! 

My son in law, Rabbi Yaakov Bleich and his wife, Bashy, were sent by the Stoliner Rebbe to Kiev over 20 years ago to lay the foundation of what has become a vibrant Jewish kehilla. They established schools, chedarim, yeshivas, and seminaries.

Way back in 1993, when international telephone calls were still prohibitively expensive, I came to the conclusion that the best way to keep everyone up to date with family news was to send out a newsletter. The first newsletter was just a couple of pages and appropriately named “Fax Facts,” since it was faxed, rather than mailed or emailed. Over the years, I added all kinds of different columns, including halachos of shemiras halashon, short one-line jokes, inspiring stories and, most recently, stories and memories of my late husband. The newsletter has grown to be between eight to 12 pages, three columns to a page, and is published between six and eight times a year, with an international circulation of over 60. In addition to the regular family news (and irregular family news, such as the demise of my trusty mixer) and a separate page with everyone's contact information, the newsletters include inspirational short stories and articles that I collect throughout the year, as well as letters, poems, and stories submitted by various family members. It's a lot of work, but also a lot of fun, and besides, at this point of my life I'm retired and all my children are married, so what else do I have to keep me busy? (Actually, a lot, but that's beside the point!) Since the standard sized paper sold in Israel does not fit my old fax machine, I now send the newsletters by email or regular mail. I wanted to change the name – after all, if it's not being faxed, why call it Fax Facts? But the kids wouldn't hear of it, so Fact Fax it has remained!

ERETZ YISRAEL

Fifteen years ago, in 1998, we decided to fulfill our dream and move to Eretz Yisrael. The previous summer I had traveled to Eretz Yisrael on a pilot trip to look at potential communities. I fell in love with Beit Shemesh because of the view; it was gorgeous – mountains, empty fields, nature at its best. I was oblivious to the fact that once the apartment building would go up, the empty hills would disappear.  So now I have a different and much nicer view: in the morning, I see men on their way to learn Torah and sweet children waiting for the school bus. In the afternoon, I watch the young girls playing jump rope, or the boys rushing to minyan. Although I craved my old home in Monsey at first, now I would never leave the kedushah of Eretz Yisrael.

Of course we had the usual new immigrant stories; adjusting to a new culture has its light moments. One was the "Empty Mailbox Mystery." I thought it was very strange that the mailboxes were always empty. Was it possible that no one ever received mail?  It was only when one of the neighbors asked us why we never pick up our post that I learned that the mailboxes outside our door were only there for decoration; and that all our letters were delivered to a central post box ten minutes walking distance from our home! When I wrote about this in a local N'shei newsletter, another new immigrant to Israel called to thank me. She had felt very bad that no one wrote to her!

Taking out a mortgage was a real adventure. The bank told us that we   would need a co-borrower and at least three co-signers, quite a tall order for people who are part of a kollel community!  Although we were able to find three co-signers, we had difficulty finding someone to qualify as a co-borrower. When one of our co-signers got a raise in salary and was able to qualify as a co-borrower, we were left without the three co-signers necessary to take out the mortgage (if you find this confusing, well, it is. We were totally confused at the time!). We were pleasantly surprised when the bank manager informed us that since my husband is a talmid chacham, he would waive the official requirement of three co-signers! I think that only in Eretz Yisrael would being a talmid chacham make one qualify for a mortgage!

When we bought our apartment, we also purchased the basement storage rooms, which we converted to a beis medresh and a beis din for inyinei mamonos. Upstairs, I converted one of the extra bedrooms into a book-lending library, with some 1,800 books (we would have had more, but 750 books were left in storage in Monsey, and then accidentally thrown into the garbage). A steady group of women borrow books, which means that I get to know a lot of really wonderful people!   

Before moving here, it was almost impossible for me to imagine living anywhere other than Monsey—it's such a makom of Torah and chessed. The whole idea was intimidating; moving into a newly developed neighborhood, I knew that I would be missing many of the conveniences that I had gotten used to, such as good bus connections, a large variety of fully stocked stores, a comfortable makom tefillah, and of course my large group of close friends. Basically, I'd be missing home. But once we made the move and I started getting used to my new environment, Beit Shemesh became my new home! It shows that even when we're older and set in our ways, it's possible to change and grow.

In Monsey, I used to go to lots of shiurim, but here, I'm the one giving them; one in English and another one in Yiddish. I began giving shiurim almost as soon as we moved here, and over the past 15 years I have grown together with my talmidos.

Since fewer ready-made foods are available here, I'm busier in the kitchen. As a result, we spend less money on food and eat healthier. At first, I didn't own a clothes-drier; hanging out the laundry provided me with an opportunity to look at the beautiful view outside my window. Now I'm lazy and look out the window as I put the clothes in the drier! It's wonderful to go through an entire Shabbos without seeing any chilul Shabbos, but it was difficult for me to adjust to only one day of Yom Tov. Shuls tend to begin earlier than in the States, which makes it hard for me to come on Shabbos, but on the other hand, it results in a longer afternoon – especially nice in the winter.

Generally, I find that life in Israel is less focused on the material, and more on the spiritual. All the apartments in my neighborhood had a standard layout, so there is no competition to have the fanciest and grandest – just the most functional. Since the standard of living is lower than what I was used to in Monsey, I have more time, money, and strength for the truly important things in life. And I like it that way.

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"Where is Yossele?"

When Yossele Schumacher's grandfather realized that his grandson would be raised as a non-observant Israeli, he arranged for Ruth Ben Dovid, the famous convert who eventually married Rav Amram Blau, founder of the Naturei Karta, to smuggle him out of the country. Instead of continuing their manhunt for hidden Nazi, including Mengele, the Israeli Intelligence focused its efforts on finding little Yossele. Throughout Israel, and in Jewish communities throughout the world, people asked each other, "Where's Yossele?"

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