My Amazing Mother, Miriam Friedman

By Fay Kranz-Greene
This article was originally recorded on Fay It Forward – the Fay Kranz-Greene podcast. You can hear weekly nuggets of inspiration on most streaming platforms here.

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Today is Tu B’shvat, also known as Rosh Hashanah l’ilanot, the birthday of the trees. Coincidentally, or perhaps not coincidentally, today is also my mother’s birthday.

My mother, Miriam Tzimmel Friedman, a”h, was niftar 4 years ago.

She would have been 106 today.

How can I describe my mother? How can I describe a woman who defies description?

My mother taught herself to read, write and speak English almost immediately after we came to the United States in 1950. It was important for my mother to speak the language of the “medinah shel chessed,” the very kind country that had helped them so much.

We lived in Crown Heights where my parents were eventually able to buy a house.

Our home was ka”h always bustling with noise and mischief but my mother never raised her voice. To this day, my friends will say to me that they loved coming to my house when we were younger because my mom was always so calm and welcoming.

Although we were 8 children, ka”h, with no money for household help, my mother actually found the time to work as a bookkeeper, a trade she had learned in Russia. Until the last years of her life, my mother found volunteer work to do. She would count up the money in pushkas of different organizations, making sure every penny was accounted for.

She never, ever sat idle.

In her later years, her greatest pleasures were listening to the Yiddish radio and reading the Yiddish newspapers. One day she said to me, “I used to be able to see the headlines with my magnifying glasses. But now, I can’t even do that!” Then she laughed and she said, “maybe I’m getting old!” As if that thought had just occurred to her.

She was 99.

During my years on shlichus, whenever I was scheduled to give a class, I would call my mother and ask her for a bracha that it should be successful. She always gave me one.

During what was going to be the last year of my mother’s life (of course I didn’t know that,) I called about a class and she said “you don’t need my brachos anymore!”

I was a bit disappointed. I thought maybe at this point she thinks I became a good speaker! Maybe.

But then I realized maybe my mother was trying to tell me that she might not always be here and I would have to continue speaking without her brachos. I would have to learn how.

As my mother got older, she began to talk more and more about Moshiach. She was so looking forward to the coming of Moshiach. We all do, of course, but my mother actually lived it. She wrote a beautiful poem about moshiach which we all had to learn. Even her Muslim aides had to learn how to say “We want Moshiach now!” with the emphasis on the word now.

My mother remained amazing until her final day on this earth.

Even my mother’s levaya was amazing.

As we were already getting ready to leave the Chabad cemetery in Queens, New York, we heard the news that one of my mother’s granddaughters had just given birth to a baby girl. Fortuitously it was Monday, a day when the Torah is read, so a minyan was immediately formed in the shul next to the Ohel and with joyful cries of “Mazel tov!” the new baby was named Miriam Tzimmel.

What a zechus! My mother had a namesake on the very same day that her holy neshama went up to shamayim.

To conclude, I want to repeat a small lesson from Tu B’shevat, the well known story of the Tanna who was resting under a shady tree on a very hot day. When he left he said to the tree, “Ilan, Ilan, with what can I bless you? Your trunk is already strong, your branches are green and your fruit is sweet. You need nothing more! So I will bless you that all the fruit and leaves and trees that come from you should turn out to be strong just like you.”

And this bracha certainly applies to my mother and my father.

Mom, happy birthday. Happy Tu B’shvat. And please keep on davening for Moshiach from your very special place in Gan Eden.

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This past summer Mushka & Chaim Leiter opened Miriam’s Motherhood Center and dedicated it to honor their Bubby Friedman’s legacy. Miriam’s Motherhood Center is a project of Mothers of Crown Heights and aims to support women at every stage of motherhood.

Today they are raising $150,000 to cover 75% of their annual budget.

You can be a part of this community project by contributing here: MothersofCH.com