Obituary for Saba Moshe Z"L

 

Elephant, Elephant, Tiger

Moshe Barth Z"L (9.1.1926-14.4.2024)

"Saba Moshe", or Moussa – what he called himself when speaking to an Arab – or Min Hamayim Meshitihu ("From the waters, I was drawn"), when checking the acumen of a yeshiva buchur, who would more often than not, correctly guess his name, was someone who was so many different things for so many different people. That, one could say was what enabled him to survive the greatest human tragedies perhaps ever witnessed by mankind. Inflicted by man, the Holocaust shaped our grandfather (1926-2024), who we ourselves called Saba, more than anything else, yet I wonder, if when we, his children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren (which he called his "great-grands") think about him for just a second with our eyes closed, think about him in that way. He did see horrific things, but at least for me, ever so impressively, the Holocaust was always the backdrop of his life, and not the forefront.

Saba grew up in a place where, in his own words, "if you stood on your head, the water went up to your ears." Rymanow was the name of the town, a town that was special in Hasidic lore, but for him was the place of his cherished youth, defined by mischievous behavior, "lifting" a neighbor's bike and being too small to sit on the chair, teaching himself to pedal standing up. Small, little blonde-haired Saba, with the piercing blue eyes, who snuck into the mikveh and learned to swim there (because, of course, the river wasn't deep enough).

Whenever his mother went to the market on Monday, she would bring home a treat for him, which he relished to the day he died. Along with his treat, she brought home the chicken for Shabbat, which was stored in the attic, and tended to by him; on Thursday Saba brought the chicken to the shochet, the ritual slaughterer, which was then checked by Saba's mother, Esther Z"L. When cleaning it, if she spotted something that could make it treif, or not kosher, young Moshe, the little yingele with the kaszkiet, or kasket was sent to the rabbi to rule on the matter; if the chicken had a nick, a perforation, or blemish inside, there was, to quote him, "no chicken that Shabbat."

For someone who "never had a childhood," something he said often at his more somber moments, he would spend a lot of time with childish mirth in his later years; torn away from the cheder of his youth before Bar Mitzvah, with no formal education after 7^th grade, he was, that notwithstanding a man who suffered opened wounds that admittedly never healed. When he said "I never had a childhood," he meant it; he did remember making his own sleighs, and frolicking about jocularly – and the special foods prepared for each and every occasion (especially the katschke, or duck which was fattened for Pesach, which his loving niece, Freida Barth, would make him 70 years later on his annual stays in the Kew Garden Hills on his visits from Israel)  – but, his earliest years were rife with memories of anti-Semitism, as regular as "sunrise, sunset," a reference to – of course – "Fiddler on the Roof," one of his favorite musicals, which he knew verbatim, and sung at every wedding, together with, the far darker, "Tell me where can I go? There's no place I can see."

He numbered the great-grandchildren in his later years, every great-grandchild being another personal victory. The last great-grandchild he lived to hear of was Alma, born to Yonah and Niran – "#19," he said, and of course, when he said that, I knew that my cousin, Yonah had become a mother.

We were anything but numbers for him, very far from the number on his arm, a number which is too hard to write, because it so little resembled who he was.

He was a man of mirth, of joy, even of ebullience, either with Savta at his side, or thereafter with the shnops he needed to forget his sorrows.

When he took the larger family to Auschwitz just shy of a decade ago, already at the advanced age of 90, right behind the infamous sign Arbeit Macht Frei, Saba – the tour guide – was asked to pay admission for entering. He rolled up his sleeve, and said, "That's funny, the first time they let me in for free."

There is so much to say, and much of what needs to be said is secondary to who he was as a person, a short man, who was larger than life: at a smidgen over five feet tall, in the Korean War, he was stationed in Germany "as occupying forces" (when saying that word, he always dragged out the word "occupying," pronouncing each syllable slowly, and clearly, to show the magnificence of the moment). He became a muscular man, a weight-lifter, feared as an arm wrestler and someone you didn't start up with.

But, any faithful description of Saba's life can't be truly faithful without mentioning, Mazal, Savta, who was famed for the large red and white magnet on her fridge in Bronx, NY, "Michelle's Kosher Kitchen." Oy, so much time has passed since she passed away, Saba, a widower for 27 years. Every year at the memorial service in her honor at the cemetery, like on a dime, after the Kel Moleh Rachamim, he would say, "Ma, I'll see you soon."

A man torn between what once was – the life, ever so joyous they had shared, raising their beautiful, proud, successful children – and the imperative he felt to live on, even after she had died. A man who had gone to sleep in the camps praying for two things, "as much bread as he could possibly eat, and, to die in his sleep so his suffering would be no more;" that is a man we should – and must – celebrate. Raphael Wilson, a close friend, once said about my grandfather, our blessed Saba, like the blessed rabbi of "Fiddler on the Roof:" "Your grandfather looked the devil in the face, and spat him in the eye!" That was Saba. We all got spat on in the eye a little too, but he loved us so much, because we were him, and he was us, and his survival was our survival, our people's survival, the most hopeful statement you could possibly imagine in the face of the greatest tragedies and calamities mankind could conjure up.

I will finish with an explanation of the title: "Elephant, Elephant, Tiger." Every one of Saba's grandchildren knows those lyrics by heart. One time, the story goes, when putting one of us to sleep, he wanted to calm us – if anyone can ever imagine Saba being calm! – and so he started singing, "Elephant, elephant, tiger; Tiger, tiger, lion; Lion, lion, alligator – alligator"… and then he ever so gently tickled the sole of the unsuspecting grandchild, and then, as he sung the final words: "BOOM, BOOM, BOOM," he gave three direct, perfect and precise slaps to the sole of the appointed foot. Every single one of Saba's grandchildren knows these words by heart (not that there's anything Shakespearesque about them), and many of us still put our children to bed the same way, the child eagerly delighting in the tickle and then the imminent, "BOOM, BOOM, BOOM."