A Woman of Valor
By Susan Strassberg Neigher, Ph.D.
On Shavuot we read the story of Ruth, a woman who exemplified caring, kindness and devotion. The week before Shavuot marks the 20th yahrzeit of another Ruth, my mother, Ruth Strassberg. She shared the qualities of her biblical namesake.
My mother was a social worker at Monroe County (NY) Welfare for decades. As a child I would visit her in her office. I asked her about the men and women sitting on benches in the waiting room, looking downtrodden with rough hands from physical labor and shabby clothes. My mother explained to me that they were migrant workers, enslaved by poverty and debt bondage. It was the start of my education about the world.
When I was in high school, my mother came home with two huge coffee pots. I asked her why she had bought them and she explained that mothers receiving public assistance were trying to get more money to help their children. They were going to try something new and radical in the early 1960’s: They were going to hold a sit-in all night at the welfare offices. My mother was worried that the women and children would be hungry. She bought the coffee pots to make sure that they had coffee and hot chocolate to drink while she stayed with them all night, and she arranged for my grandfather to deliver hundreds of bagels from his bakery in the morning so that they would have something to eat.
As the president of the New York State Association of Social Workers, my mother spent years meeting with congressmen to lobby for the Great Society legislation. I was away at college when President Johnson signed it into law in the White House Rose Garden. Years later, my mother made some passing comment about it, and to my surprise, she told me that she was there. I asked her what it was like. She said that unimportant people like herself were sent to the back of the garden, and being short, she couldn’t see a thing. But the roses were in bloom and smelled deliciously sweet.
Years later, my mother retired from County Welfare to take on a new challenge. She went to work for Rochester Jewish Family Services. She was the only staff person to handle the initial wave of Jewish refugees from the Soviet Union. This first group was not entitled to welfare or Medicaid, and on her own, my mother had to find housing, English classes, jobs and medical care for over 700 people. She called them “My Russians,” and even after she had retired, she continued to have them for coffee and dinner at her home.
Two months ago, I was cleaning out a shelf of books and discovered a slim volume I had scooped up with the books I kept when we cleaned out my mother’s apartment after she died. It was a self-published book of poems written by one of “Her Russians,” Yeugenia Skylar. The last poem in the book, written in October 1985, was entitled “To Strassberg Ruth.” In part it says:
“Not often can we find a person whose
Essence is as clear as a crystal.
Not often can we find people whose
Images are so pleasant as a sight and,
Not often can we meet those who are
Just and kind! Only good luck has
Brought into our lives a wonderful
Person with the name Ruth.
And suddenly, I remember Ruth is an
Ancient Jewish name!
…..The modern Ruth isn’t a fiction nor a
Tale. It isn’t a product of our thought
And brain. We see her often, not in
Fancy. She is a teacher in the Jewish
Center. So is our true and truly
Friend, Strassberg Ruth!”
May her memory be for a blessing.