Eulogy for Ida Gelbart – Rabbi Chai Levy, 6/6/08 A month ago, I shared with Ida the story that I told many of you, about a Torah that was hidden during the Shoah by Polish Jews, and how, four of its panels had been removed and taken with people into Auschwitz until their deaths. After sixty years, through a series of miraculous events, the Torah was found and the pieces put back together, and it was restored and rededicated in a synagogue here in the States. Ida loved this story, and we spent some time talking about it over the last few weeks. She kept saying, “it’s a miracle, it’s a miracle.” I’ve been thinking about why she was so moved by this story. Not only did Ida and her husband David bring a Torah with them when they finally were able to get a visa to come to the United States in 1955 after ten years of being refugees, but also: the story of this Torah is really Ida’s story: losing so much, but putting the pieces back together, not just surviving, but emerging from a world of death, to thrive and live like a Torah, with the greatest possible holiness, beauty, honor, and wisdom to teach.   As you know, Ida Gelbart was a brilliant, creative, multi-talented, and inspirational woman: An author, a playwright, an inventor. The life-force just burst out of her. We all know that Ida made wonderful cholent, and we were nourished by her on many a Shabbat, but did you know she made art? You can see it on the walls of her home. Did you know she became an insurance agent after David got sick so she could take on his clients? Ida could do anything, and she did it boldly, with elegance and warmth and the most loving and kind heart. It’s all the more stunning to think about her beautifully written memoir or the play she wrote, paying homage to an unknown girl whose coat she wore during the war, to think of all of her talents, when we remember that Ida’s education stopped at age 14, when her whole world was “usurped” (as she titled her book), as she spent her teenage years in a concentration camp and lost her home in Poland, lost her beloved parents and much of her family. Others might have gone through what Ida did and been angry, angry at the world, angry at God, but not Ida. She wrote in her book how she didn’t blame God for the Holocaust, and instead she challenged us humans to live more in the image of God. Which she did, and which she showed us how to do. She lived fully, with hope and optimism, generosity and kindness, compassion and love, and yet while never suppressing memories of the past. She spoke openly about the Holocaust, telling her story at Yom HaShoah, reading from her book publicly, making sure her play was performed on stage. How did she do it? I asked her once: So much was taken from you, how can you not be angry and bitter? She answered simply: Being angry and bitter only hurts yourself. It seems she was able to hold on to her early memories of her own mother and strove to embody in herself the love she remembered receiving. I asked her just a week or so ago, “Ida, how’s your neshama?” With a tear rolling down her face, she repeated over and over: I’m so grateful, I’m so grateful. For my family, for my friends, tell everyone I love them.    What love Ida had. For her sons, Norman and Sam, for her late husband David, for her granddaughters Chelsea and Claire, for all of us who had the privilege of knowing her. She had an incredible combination of softness and strength, physical and emotional. We know her softness because Ida embraced everyone. She held you and told you she loved you. She was an incredible comfort to her husband who suffered severe post traumatic stress from his experiences in the Shoah. She created so much warmth in this community in the 19 years she was here and was a dear friend and an inspiration to so many. All of the younger women at Kol Shofar looked up to her with admiration and awe. And she created warmth in her home, spending half the week cooking for Shabbat. Shabbat was Ida’s favorite time, her time to bring together her family, friends, young people, people she didn’t know. Even today, her freezer is still stocked with her rugelach, because you never know when she might have wanted to feed you. And Ida was strong, “a force of nature,” as Norman described her, unstoppable. Just a few months ago, at age 83, with a brain tumor filling her head, she visited Israel.  Ida was passionate about Israel and raising money for Israel. She was active in Hadassah here and in Baltimore, Pioneer Women, which was like Hadassah, and served as local president. She studied Hebrew, one of the many languages she knew. And she had family in Israel. So off she went on the long flight to Israel, visiting family, walking all day long with the others barely able to keep up with her, going to a rock concert, and doing the tour of the underground tunnels of the Kotel, which she was just thrilled about. She was so strong. Ida had become a nurse after the war, studying and working in a displaced persons camp in Germany, and she would have continued to work as a nurse after getting married. But David was traditional and wanted her to stay home. Ida had that kind of inner strength where she didn’t need to exert her independence; fine, she’d take care of the family instead of working, but her incredible power found plenty of ways to emerge. I’ll never forget the moment of Chelsea’s bat mitzvah, when Ida got up to lead Musaf. Here was a woman, born in 1925 in Poland in an Orthodox family, who attended an Orthodox shul in Baltimore until she moved here, and she gets right up there, wearing a tallit, singing proudly ledor vador nagid godlecha, “from generation to generation we declare Your Greatness, God.” I doubt there was a dry eye in the sanctuary. It was precious gift to Chelsea, and to Claire, and it was a gift to all of us: a living, thriving demonstration of hope and vitality and faith, that despite everything, we are still here and we still declare God’s greatness. That was the power of Ida Gelbart. Just like when she spontaneously got up in front of the entire congregation on Yom Kippur to sing Eli Eli. She was a walking Torah, never shy or afraid to stand up in public in all her glory and pride to tell us to choose Life. Ida wanted that to be her legacy. She said it clearly in the end of her book: “This account is my legacy to the generations to follow, especially to my children. It is an inheritance, not of money, but rather of something infinitely more precious and important: ‘To Be,’ that is, to be alive.” Indeed, Ida showed us how to be alive, so completely alive. She lived her life like a blossoming, flowering spring, lush, vibrant, and beautiful after a dark, cold, winter. And now, even in this dark time, the bright light of her spirit will continue to shine. In her book, Ida describes being in the concentration camp and lying down at night and being able to see stars glittering through the window as if to say “You are not alone.” You are not alone, Ida. We pray that your soul is glittering like a star, reunited at last with your husband, your parents, your siblings. And we will look at the stars and see them shining, beaming, sparkling in the darkness, and we’ll think of you, Ida, and the many blessings you have bestowed on us, and we’ll know that we are not alone either.