Posted on 02/16/2006 9:35:45 PM PST by Coleus
It was "beshert."
The Yiddish term signifying "meant to be" was the word that often passed through the lips of those in attendance at Herman Rosenblat's bar mitzvah Thursday. They were referring not only to the celebration -- an event 63 years in the making -- but to his wife, Roma, and the amazing story of how they got together.
Rosenblat, formerly of Bay Terrace, and now living in Florida, became a bar mitzvah at Congregation Beth Sholom Chabad in Mineola, with more than a dozen well-wishers in attendance. At age 76, he was one of the oldest to celebrate the event at the temple.
"Typically, the rabbi is older and taller," joked the diminutive Rabbi Anchelle Perl, who led the ceremony. "Herman was not only taller and older, but taller in spirit."
Perl decided to hold the Jewish rite of passage after hearing Rosenblat's love story and learning that he would be visiting his daughter Renee who lives in Manhasset. "He brings a message of hope," Perl said. "It shows how the hand of God is with a person throughout the toughest times."
At 13, the age when the child becomes responsible for observing the commandments under Jewish law and when most Jewish boys celebrate their bar mitzvah, Rosenblat was just trying to stay alive. Imprisoned in a German concentration camp during World War II, Rosenblat's early teens were spent carrying the dead bodies of his fellow prisoners from the gas chamber to the crematorium.
Wearing nothing but rags and beaten so hard he once went blind for three days, Rosenblat was sure he would perish in the camp. With their father and mother dead -- the former from typhus, the latter after being sent to a death camp -- Rosenblat's three older brothers did their best to
(Excerpt) Read more at newsday.com ...
(Denny Crane: "I Don't Want To Socialize With A Pinko Liberal Democrat Commie. Say What You Like About Republicans. We Stick To Our Convictions. Even When We Know We're Dead Wrong.")
this marriage was meant to be.
Who would have thought they would meet in the USA many years later and marry.
I love this.
What a wonderful post. Thank you.
Herman Rosenblat is a hero!
I would pay money to a meeting between this honorable man and the idiot Holocaust denyers like that crazy engineering professor at Northwestern University!
wonderful story!
Mazel tov!
In related news, Herman Rosenblat will be enrolling in the 8th grade at Central Middle School this coming fall.
Feel-good bump.
Mazel tov!
Great post! What an amazing story, definitely "beshert"!
Wonderful post!
I remember reading the story of this couple on the Far Eastern edition of Reader's Digest many years ago. Still a very heart-warming story nonetheless.
I think they used to be the only boy belonging to "the other group" among the MSMs. I remember in the 1980s and early 1990s reading a lot of conservative articles that otherwise wouldn't have made it to the mass - articles from Buckley, Michael Novak, Friedman (Milton, not Thomas of course), etc.
But with the rise of Rush Limbaugh, talk radio, internet there are more choices for conservatives, and more importantly, I heard that the current editor-in-chief Eric Schrier is in fact a non-conservative. It does seem to me the magazine is little more than a more human-interests oriented version of Time or Newsweek. I stopped reading around 2000 (not bothering to renew subscriptions because it was quite expensive), but now I'm glad I don't pick it up again.
Wow!
Mazel tov!
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.