Message from Lilly Cantor; daughter of Sophie Lubka z'l "Bubby Zush"

Dearest Family and Friends:

I am writing to you to share a last wish of my beloved Mother, Sophie Lubka, z"l.

As a survivor of the horrors of the Holocaust, her thoughts in her later life turned, ever so often, to her family life in Poland before the Shoah.

They were a happy, busy, religious Zionist family, with dreams of coming to live in Palestine.

When the Nazis entered her hometown of Pabianice on September 1, 1939, it was too late to leave and their dreams were shattered.

Only my mother and her beloved sister, Miriam, survived the terrors and torture of the Shoah.  Although heir parents, Yisrael and Rochel Leah, and siblings Mayer, Leeba, and Avraham were gassed to death, they lived forever in the hearts and minds of the surviving sisters.

And these daughters, Sophie and Miriam, never forgot the love for Zion they learned in their home. They even attempted to meet an illegal ship going to Israel!

Daily, they followed  the news about the volatile Middle East, prayed for peace in Israel, and fulfilled a lifelong desire to visit their homeland. 

My mother,  Sophie, came to Israel many times, first with my father, Felix, z"l, then for our son Michael's bar mitzvah, followed by a number of trips with our family as we began to plan our aliyah fifteen years ago. During our travels she was often brought to tears of awe and gratitude that she was able to step foot in the land she so loved. Every inch of ground was precious to her and even many years later the entirety of the trip remained vivid in her mind. 

When Irv and I told her that we planned to follow in Shaena's footsteps by making aliya, I feared that she would feel abandoned, yet she continuously shared her great joy that we were fulfilling her parents' dream, the dream of all Zionists, to come home.

When my Mother made her last trip, a little over a year ago at the age of ninety-five to join us for the wedding of our dear Shaena and Ari for which she had prayed so many years, she marveled at the maginicent place they called home, The Arugot Farms.  

While the glorious views took her breath away, she was most profoundly moved by the great accomplishment of what they had built, bringing life, growth, and vitality to a part of Judea 

that had not been lived on by Jews for two thousand years. Seeing this dream fulfilled by her own descendants was more than she could have imagined in her wildest dreams. But she had one last wish. 

After her long hospitalization in October, and her own personal donation to the farm for her recovery, my Mother beseeched me that a plaque memorizing her family be dedicated at The Arugot Farms, in the uniquely beautiful Beit Knesset on the top of their highest mountain.   This brave Holocaust survivor,  my Mother, who had a lifelong war with G-d , asked that the Ner Tamid, the eternal light, be dedicated in memory of her family, so that their beliefs, goals, and family name also be eternal. So fitting, she said, that her family of Zionists be forever remembered in a place that is inhabited by her direct descendants and has belonged to the Jewish people for nearly five thousand years.

By dedicating the  Ner Tamid at The Arugot Farms in their memory, the legacy of her family would be for a great blessing:

ROCHEL LEAH ROSENZWEIG

ISRAEL ROSENZWEIG

MAYER KRUG ROSENZWEIG

ESTHER ZISSEL (SOPHIE) ROSENZWEIG LUBKA

LUBA ROSENZWEIG

AVRAHAM ROSENZWEIG

MIRIAM ROSENZWEIG ZWEIBAUM

I am reaching out to you, my closest family and friends, to invite you to be a part of fulfilling my mothers last wish. 

Thank you, and may we all celebrate only smachot together in the land of  our forefathers, THE LAND OF ISRAEL.

Love,

Lilly Cantor