Late last month, 18-year-old Anna Borenstein of Queens, New York, emailed The Chronicle to tell us of the April 16 death of her grandmother, Marilyn (Masha) Silverstein. Borenstein told us that her grandmother and her grandfather, Richard (Mordechai) Silverstein, lived in Overland Park for more than 30 years before moving to New York to be closer to their kids.
Borenstein wrote that her grandmother worked for a Montessori preschool for many years in Kansas City, Missouri, and was a member of the Beth Israel Abraham Volimer (BIAV).
She told us that she had written a reflection about her grandmother for her school. She added, “My grandfather, who is currently in a rehabilitation center in recovery from a recent surgery, insisted that I contact the Kansas City Jewish Chronicle, a newspaper that he has held in the highest regard for years, in an effort to publish it.”
Borenstein told us publishing the piece in The Chronicle “would be of great appreciation to her many friends in the community, my grandfather, and my entire family.”
The reflection is reprinted below:
You betcha, sweetness! The words of my Grandmother, Marilyn Silverstein, dotingly called Bubby, ring in my head like the toll of the church bells in the distance. It’s amazing how many religious noises disrupt, or shape, everyday life in the Old City of Jerusalem.
My Bubby would have loved that. She was a woman who effortlessly dedicated her every breath to tolerance and light. Love came so naturally to her. To hear us singing Jerusalem of Gold on a rooftop with a breathtaking view of the Temple Mount while getting hushed by a neighbor as his fast for Ramadan hadn’t broken yet — people with such stark differences and backgrounds living side by side, close enough to quibble over our rendition of Naomi Shemer, would have given her Kansas heart and spirit such fulfillment.
The news of her passing was catastrophic, a loud enough blow to dim the cascade of surrounding sound, including the Havdalah where we stood arm in arm as one of our rabbis led the ritual.
Overwhelmed, I had to step outside. Yet not for a second did I forget where I was, steps away from the Western Wall, my unsteady feet on stone whose mere existence reflects thousands of years of Jewish history. Though my family is in America, oddly enough, I didn’t feel terribly alone. I found comfort in the stone, somehow.
Through trial and tribulation, the streets of the Old City have supported the feet of millions before me — people who lived, breathed, feared, conquered, cried, and loved. That night, on a tour of the Old City, our phenomenal guide asked us how old we were. 18, 19, 20? “Wrong answers,” he said. We were each over 2,000 years old. I felt that. And it was hard to feel alone. Especially because a dear teacher of mine got me ice cream.
