Nshei Newsletter Has Marriage Tips

By Yedida Wolfe

“I miss him so much,” Marguerita said, her eyes tearing, blessing the high school girls visiting her in the nursing home to find good husbands like her “Shloimenke.”

Musia Gurevitch, who wrote the tribute to Marguerita after her class trip to a local old-age home, captured the painful, rich, lonely and generous existence of a tiny Holocaust survivor living out her days without any family, only the past— and her pictures—to hold on to. Musia, 15, and her friends Bina and Dassi, have met their first, and perhaps last, Holocaust survivor.

“I was with my three nieces. They were beautiful, and I was so young! Three girls, they stood in a row,” Marguerita gestured to show us the way her nieces were lined up in a row, “and I knew Hitler was going to kill them.”

Marguerita referred to all Nazis as Hitler. “I begged, ‘Don’t kill them! Kill me instead!’ but they didn’t listen. They didn’t listen.”

The upcoming Kislev 5775 issue of N’shei Chabad Newsletter includes advice for both chassanim and kallahs, on how to create the kind of marriage that will imbue generations with an example of how a Jewish couple should encourage, support and inspire each other.

There’s also a tribute to Mrs. Miriam Gordon OBM and the timeless advice she received from the Frierdiker Rebbe before her wedding. While Mrs. Gordon told her children what the Rebbe told her, she never allowed it to be shared publicly – “after 120,” she told them.

In addition, Mrs. Gordon’s son-in-law, the renowned teacher Rabbi Manis Friedman offered his own marriage insights for chassanim in a column, ahead of a tele-seminar he is giving to men on “Intimacy al pi taharas hakodesh.”

During the shanah rishonah, says Rabbi Friedman, a man’s task is to “give the woman the assurance that she is his absolute priority and thus to give her the security to cheerfully give up virtually everything for her husband and future family.”

Rabbi Friedman details how a bochur transforms into the mashpia, encouraging everyone to infuse our homes with warmth, Torah, and chassidishkeit. A hopeful note at the end of Rabbi Friedman’s article assures, “It is never too late to do what should have been done during shanah rishonah.”

Also in this issue, Feigel Lebowitz, in her article entitled “Finally, Let Go,” describes growing up with untreated mental illness. The article is Part I of an exclusive Nshei Newsletter series entitled “Living With Mental Illness.”

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