Rabbi's Derasha

Abe Berman (Avraham Yehoshua ben Yechiel Yaakov, a"h)

Abe Berman was born in the Bronx in 1929 and he found his bride, Sylvia, there too.  But after their first child, Joy, was born in the mid-50s, Sylvia announced that NYC was no place to raise a child.  They made a circle on the map with a 50-mile radius from the grandparents in the Bronx to scope out the possibilities.  The first place they visited was the small community in Monsey, NY.  It was during Chol HaMoed Sukkot and Abe came to a stop sign.  He looked left and he looked right and saw Sukkot in both directions.  "That’s it,” he announced.  “We found our place.”  

It was rustic, full of trees and space for the children to play.  They moved into a house on 26 Maple Terrace, just off of state highway 59.  The kids played outside, and Abe had plenty of work building houses.  There was a Shul with the young R' Avi Weiss, and the big community Shul with R' Moshe Tendler, z"l.  There was the Yeshiva of Spring Valley with R’ Dov Greenbaum, z”l, for the kids.  A growing community on the Jewish frontier.  

But it was merely America.  After the Six Day War, Abe, whose Bar Mitzva portion was Lech Lecha, felt a strong pull to go to Eretz Yisrael.  After preparation, including Sylvia switching from accounting to nursing, they made Aliya in the early 70s.  During the Yom Kippur War, Abe traveled around the Sinai distributing Siddurim and cigarettes to soldiers stationed there.  They lived in Yerushalayim, on Rechov Ramat HaGolan at the bottom of Ramat Eshkol.  They were living there in 1975 when a few friends asked Abe to create for them a rectangular box.  He asked what it was for and they said it was a secret.  Over time, as he was creating the box, he pressed them for more details.  He said he needed to know because it would affect his Kavanot (intentions) when he was building.  Finally, they revealed the secret: it was an Aron Kodesh for a new Beit Knesset in a new settlement.  He ordered them to take him there immediately and he jumped into the car.  They took him to Ofra, the first settlement in the Shomron.  Once again, Abe came home to tell Sylvia they were moving, this time to join a handful of families.     

There was no place that captured Abe’s imagination like Ofra.  Working through its first primitive stages -- in isolation and in caravans and in the harsh elements -- only made him more determined.  He became the go-to carpenter on the Yishuv.  Every stage of developing the settlement engaged his pilgrim soul. 

Complicated circumstances brought the Bermans back to the States, and to the Bay Area no less.  They made friends, though, wherever they went.  And there were consolations in coming back:The children were here, and the grandchildren.  For example, Abe’s creative touch passed to his son Dani in spades.  Dani became a well-known artist with major works in glass and stone all over the world.  He counted as clients Hollywood celebrities and heads of state in Israel, the US and Russia.  One of his most famous installations was a wall made of Jerusalem Stone in the entrance to R’ Sholom Lipskar’s Shul in Bal Harbor.  Abe, mostly on a ladder, helped Dani with that installation, a work that has been imitated dozens of times since.  He was in his element, with one of his kids, bringing a touch and a whiff of Israel to the rest of the world. 

The stone came from Yerushalayim, but it wasn’t quite the real thing.  Though they were back in the US for over 30 years, Abe and Sylvia cultivated the dream of returning.  Plans would heat up and then cool off, and then heat up again and cool off.  It was a singular act of will, as they were in their 90s, to realize their dream to return to Israel, and to Ofra, last January.  A few weeks ago, Abe heard Lech Lecha all over again.  Yehi Zichro Baruch.