Interview with Mrs Chana Goldstein year 2000
What are the major achievements in your life?
I made a shabbas group for children in my neighbourhood .
Every Friday I’d call up the radio station and tell what time candle lighting was for that week.
Every day I would visit sick people in the Kings-brook Hospital and bring them kosher food and try to take care of any special needs they might have. I would ask the nurses if anyone passed away without any family, and I would take care of them. I would make sure that the person received a proper Jewish burial, paying for everything out of my own pocket
Wow that’s amazing !Can you please tell us more about those shabbas groups?
Certainly! The Rebbe asked that shabbas groups be started for children to teach them about the weekly parsha and about Yiddishkeit so I decided I wanted to do it too and so when I was twelve I started my own shabbas group in McKeesport. There were no kosher food in the stores so I would bake cakes and cookies for them and teach them songs and tell them stories about tzaddikim
When you were 15, you would travel to a school in Brooklyn, wasn’t that far away?
Yes, the only jewish girls school in the whole of America was in Brooklyn , 2 hours away.which is Bais Yaakov, and i would travel there everyday from McKeesport.
How old were you when you got married?
I was seventeen. Two years after I started going to school in Brooklyn, I got engaged to my best friends’ brother Rabbi Yosef Goldstein.
What impact do you think you made on your family that they will remember for a long time?
All my married life, every Friday I would bake challos for shabbas. The smell permeated the home. I never missed one week.
I never bought ready made store food, everything was home baked
What was 1 mitzvah that you want to Pass over to your family?
An open home where everyone and anyone is welcome to come and have a meal or a bed . I beleive in the open home policy. My home is your home.
What is your favourite saying?
I always liked to remind my children that “this too shall pass,” reminding us that in good times, we should not take anything for granted, and in hard times, we should not be upset, but always serve Hashem with joy.
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