A very special woman passed away last night, one of those people the world will truly miss.
Mrs. Frimet Silbiger, of blessed memory, was the kind of person you were always happy to meet, no matter your age. She was one of the quiet pillars of Basel, not someone prominent, but a true Yiddishe Mame of the old kind.
Among the members of Basel’s Orthodox Jewish community, such a woman is often described as ‚a chashuve froy - an important woman.‘ But in my Chabad lexicon, she perfectly embodied the highest definition of ‚a poshete froy - a simple Jewish woman‘: pure and luminous simplicity, smooth and clear.
In Chassidus it is known that something completely simple can bear everything, and that’s exactly what I mean. All kinds of people found in her a listening ear and an equal, sincere, and genuine relationship.
We stand now on the eve of „Shabbos Bereishis“, the Shabbos of which the Rebbeim of Chabad said: “As a person positions himself on Shabbos Bereishis, so will he stand the entire year.” And as I think about what I want to focus on this Shabbos Bereishis of the year 5786, I realize that the direction must be simplicity.
As Kohelet said:
> “See, this alone I found: that God made man upright, but they have sought out many calculations.”
> Sometimes one must stop calculating — and simply walk straight.
Rabbi Uriel HaKohen Silbiger, one of the rabbis of Basel and the son of the departed, told a story last night from her childhood that captures who she was - and became the foundation of her life’s path.
She was born in Poland in 1939. When the war broke out, her family was exiled to Siberia and that exile saved their lives. Life in Siberia was not easy. They were confined to a certain village and given only the bare minimum to survive. As citizens of a foreign state, they were forbidden to complain, anyone who expressed dissatisfaction could “disappear” very quickly.
So, whenever a senior official came by and asked how they were, they would answer, “Everything’s fine,” and the adults would warn the children never to complain, it was dangerous.
But one winter, when the official arrived and asked how things were, four-year-old Frimet heard her mother say clearly, “Not good, not good.”
The surprised and angry official asked, “What’s wrong? What happened?”
And she answered, with complete honesty and simplicity:
“Pesach is coming soon, and we have no flour to bake matzos.”
Everyone was terrified. Even the little girl remembered the fear, some may even have been angry at what her mother had done. But the next day, a delivery of flour arrived, and there were matzos for Pesach.
For Frimet, that brave act became a shining, steady pillar of simple and upright Judaism. No overthinking, no complications, the path is clear: walk straight, and G-d will take care of the rest.
Rabbi Uriel Silbiger knows how to tell a story and how to define and clarify a point. With that story, he captured in one moment, for everyone who knew his late mother, who she was: an honest and simple woman, a Yiddishe Mame without sophistication or calculations and all of it with a truly loving smile.
> “See, this alone I found: that God made man upright, but they have sought out many calculations.”
Shabbat Shalom,
Rabbi Zalman Wishedski