On Friday night after midnight, light of the 26th of Shevet – on the eve of Shabbat Kodesh Parshas Mishpatim, she returned her soul to its creator, the important and righteous woman, eldest daughter, Mrs. Miriam Rivka Bernstein by Kiryat Sanz in Jerusalem.
Born in Jerusalem between the walls, in the Old City, to her father the Tzaddik Gaon Rabbi Shimon Seidel Shapira ztl. The daughter of the late Rabbi Baruch Reichman from Safed.
When the Old City was evacuated in 1948, and she is a four-year-old toddler, she left the Old City with her mother and older father who was miraculously not taken prisoner and moved to the Katamon neighborhood, where the refugee families of the Old City were concentrated.
Her mother, Mrs. More have already established their homes) and served both as a pain and mother together.
“Once on New Year’s Eve,” she recounted years later, “I turned to Dad and told him in tears that tomorrow I could not go to synagogue, I do not have a mother sitting next to me to tell me when to get up and stand during prayer. Dad sat down next to me, opened the cycle and showed me page after page, Piyyut after piyyut, where should one stand.
“When we got to the ‘Holy King’ I asked him if Tommy should stand here too? Dad looked at me and replied with a burning enthusiasm ‘Miriam, there is no Holy King who can even Zichen – in the’ Holy King ‘who can even sit ?!”… Indeed Until the end of her days, in the terrible days, when the cantor came to the ‘Holy King’, the grandmother would get up and stand up with the daughters and granddaughters who would live. ‘
As a young girl, she was called to the house of Rabbi Aharon of Belza, who lived in Katamon, after looking for a quality girl who would serve as a companion to the rabbi’s stepdaughter during Shabbat night prayers.
After the prayer, the rabbi would come to wish the rabbi ‘Gut Shabbat’ through a small window in the room, and later she would describe with great emotion the movement of the hand and the heavenly and miraculous smile that was on the face of the Tzaddik at that unforgettable moment.
Bought her education at the “Daughters of Jerusalem” institutions and later served with dedication as an instructor and educator at the “House for Refugees” in Jerusalem. Upon reaching the chapter, she built her home with her husband, who was blessed by Rabbi Binyamin Yehuda, one of the most important followers of Bayan, one of the most glorious families in Jerusalem.
Not many years after her marriage her father weakened and then a new chapter in her life opened, a golden age of ‘honoring a father’, when the great father moves into her house which at that time was full of tiny children, for all the devotion and sacrifice in it. Will be described.
A sublime chapter of faith was engraved in her life when she experienced the ‘experience of binding’, in her education at a young age her eldest daughter, the master of virtues Esther Hinda, who passed away when she was a child, from receiving judgment with love and faith won, with immense heroism, without questions and difficulties. Her life has encouraged parents who have experienced God in a similar experience and shower them with reinforcing pearls carved from the depths of her heart and being.
All the years of her life were one continuum of love of the Torah and true idleness before her learners. Together with her great husband they instilled in their sons and grandsons the understanding and knowledge that the Holy Torah and its teachings are the greatest value in the world, there is no greater than it. She would often tell her descendants about the miraculous perseverance of her older brother, Rabbi Yehuda Shapira Zatzokal, one of the greatest students of Hazon Ish.
She was marvelous in the degree of a ‘good eye’, in the infinite power of giving to others. For years she served as a cook at the ‘Arloi’ yeshiva and the yeshiva students from that period tell in tears about her kindness, so for example when she heard about a guy who wanted to follow a diet, she started cooking daily specials for him, separately, low-carb foods, all simply and without interest.
Even as her body weakened in recent years, all her desires and thoughts were to give, give, strengthen, the grandchildren, the neighbors, the friends. Her greatest power, perhaps, was in giving the other the best feeling, to make him a ‘huge smile in the heart’, this through positive and powerful sentences that was overflowing and planted in the power of her ‘joy of life’ and seeing the good and positive in every person and every situation.
“You are millionaires, you have such children in God, you should rejoice and be glad and thank God, you are just millionaires” – one of the sentences she used to shower on couples from her extended family who came with her. Reinforcement pumped to her as a ‘magnet’, these came out of her house reinforced and encouraged and a different spirit with them.
Her good treasure was replete with ideas and pearls full of wisdom, wisdom and marvelous knowledge, soaked and immersed in the faith of a fortified master. Those who have heard lectures from her on various occasions, even if many years ago, still quote her words that excelled in leaving an indelible impression on the hearts of their listeners.
In recent years her body has been attached to the torments that whiten a person’s body, she has gone through them with tremendous mental heroism, without hearing any complaints about her condition and anguish, all immersed in giving, incessantly giving, making ‘Pekalach’ to her beloved grandchildren, sending a pie to a neighbor who rejoices.
But the abundant springs of her giving were not content with bestowing only on human beings, her desire to do good with every created being led her to take care of feeding pigeons and birds, in the examination of ‘and his mercy for all his deeds’. “Someone has to take care of them too” she would say simply and regularly collect for them the challah and bread flakes that were left over and scatter for them on the porch of her house, even though this often caused quite a bit of dirt left by the wing owners.
Tears well up in the eyes of her descendants as they recall the ‘blessing of food’ that was a sacred work that lasted a long time, in her fervent prayers or in the blessings of ‘who created’ that she would bless aloud and intentionally, word for word, like pearls.
About two weeks ago, her condition suddenly deteriorated. After contracting Corona disease, she was taken to Hadassah Ein Kerem Hospital in Jerusalem, where after about ten days of hospitalization, her pulsating and inspiring life mask came to an end.
Shortly after one o’clock on the night of Friday night, Aarshak Mishpatim, Or Lechu 26 Shevet, in a sublime and sublime position of ‘Exodus’, with her bed surrounded by her sons and daughters and dozens of her grandchildren who came to her bed under private supervision in their last moments and burst into tears. And immediately afterwards in the song – the cry of the piyyut ‘Ka Achsuf’ to the Rabbi of Carlin who was so loved and revered for her all her life, in the song ‘Ana Abda’ in the recitation of ‘Neshmat Kol Chai’ and other heart-waking songs.
In this transcendent-saturated class that lasted a long time and everyone who attended it will never be forgotten, a class that revealed a tap from the exalted personality of the great rest who won from Shamia to part with the world in this way – her polished and polished soul ascended to a higher seat.
At her funeral, which took place from the Shamgar Funeral Home, her husband, Rabbi Binyamin Yehuda Shlita; Her nephew is Rabbi Chaim Yisrael Shapira Shlita R.I. Rabbi Nachum Shlita, one of the most important students of the Bayan Chassidim in Beitar Illit, Rabbi Meir Shlita, R.M. In Jerusalem in moving and heartwarming farewell words.
When rains pour down on her bed and on Saturday evening after midnight – the two ‘beautiful signs of the dead’ mentioned by Chazal, she was buried among the rugs of Mount of Beatitudes in the Hasidic plot when her descendants ask and petition her to recommend honesty before the ‘Holy King’ who now stands and stands before him.
She is survived by a blessed righteous generation, sons and grandsons, grandchildren and great-grandchildren. And from the followers of Bayan in Jerusalem, Rabbi Baruch Shlita, Rabbi Nachum Shlita, Rabbi Meir Shlita, son-in-law of Rabbi Israel Gershon Shlita, founder of the Beit Meir congregation in Beitar Illit, her son Rabbi Bezalel Shlita.