Goldie Stein was a shining light.

Through the darkness, her mother and teacher are lighting the path for geulah.

Elisheva Braun

 

A girl named Goldie

Goldie Stein was a regular girl, but a very extraordinary girl at the same time.

“It wasn’t a case of ‘acharei mos kedoshim emor.’ I knew that Hashem had given me a very gifted child. Everyone saw it. She was brilliant; she was artistic; she was friendly; she was good,” Mrs. Bayla Stein, Goldie’s mother, says.

Twenty-three years ago, Goldie was in eighth grade in Bais Faiga. Her teacher, Mrs. Baila Hinda Leshinsky, adored her as a prized student.

“While I would teach, Goldie would look at the mefarshim on the bottom of the page. She had such a thirst for Torah knowledge. She was a born teacher, spending hours on the swings, tutoring her classmates. She was full of fun and laughter, and always had something up her sleeve. I felt like her normalcy hid her gadlus.”

“Goldie was color war captain that year. After she had finished her song and banner and making everyone feel like a million dollars, she went to help the other team. She was unforgettable.

Mrs. Stein continues. “It was a Motza’ei Shabbos, yud-beis Sivan, when Goldie told me she had a headache. She went to sleep, and she never woke up.”

Lakewood was much smaller then, and this kind of tragedy was very uncommon.

People were shocked, devastated. “Goldie Steinwas niftar? That doesn’t happen to eighth graders who are supposed to be graduating in two weeks.” Nobody could believe it.

Mah yisron l’adam

The Shabbos that we were sitting shiva, my husband’s friends came over for shalosh seudos and sang for hours. It was very emotional. When they sang the old Novardok niggun of mah yisron la’adam b’chol amalo sheyamol tachas hashamesh, it moved me deeply.”

A few weeks later, Mrs. Leshinsky and Mrs. Stein decided to learn something together each motzei Shabbos in her zechus.

Remembering the mah yisron la’adam niggun at that unforgettable shalosh seudos, Mrs. Stein had an idea. They would learn Koheles together as a zechus for Goldie. It’s an existential sefer, exploring life and death and what Hashem wants from us,” they felt.

To mourn together

Mrs. Stein continues, “I wanted to do something for Goldie, I just didn’t know what. ‘I know life is going to happen again,’ I told Mrs. Leshinsky. ‘Right now, it doesn’t feel like there’s life, but I believe that I’m going to live again and I’m going to be busy again. I need to do something sustainable that I can do in perpetuity, not something that requires constant fundraising or facilitating.’ In my brokenness, I felt so strongly that Mashiach had to come now. That’s where the idea of the kinnos gathering germinated. I thought, If I could help people really mourn for the Beis Hamikdash, maybe Hakadosh Baruch Hu will bring it back.

“Everyone says that Tishah B’Av in camp is their most meaningful Tishah B’Av experience. There’s a full day of programming with different speakers, different angles, different thoughts. We would try to recreate that with mechanchos explaining the kinnos and the crowd reciting them together.”

That year, just weeks after Goldie was niftar, Mrs. Stein and Mrs. Leshinsky arranged Lakewood’s first Tishah B’Av gathering at the erstwhile Capitol Hotel.

“We hung up signs in the yeshivah and the Co-op and drew a crowd of about 200. The next year, we moved to another shul because the Capitol Hotel was already too small for the crowd.”

The gathering only used the shul for a couple of years due to climate challenges.

“The air conditioning couldn’t cool the upstairs and downstairs at the same time. Only when the men finished saying their kinnos upstairs could we have air conditioning downstairs,” they reminisce.

From there, they took Yeshiva Ketana’s hall, where the gatherings are still held today.

“There are always about 500 to 600 people there at the event itself,” Mrs. Stein tells me. “Some were single or newly married girls when they started coming to the gatherings. Today, after a years-long hiatus, they can once again come to the kinnos because their children are old enough to stay at home. ‘I can’t believe I’m back!’ they tell me.”

After the organizers implemented a live telephone call-in number to broaden their audience, tens of thousands joined the event remotely.

The hall rental, kinnos booklets, flyers, sound system, and other technical necessities are the main expenses incurred. Seven or eight thousand dollars are raised annually, through donors and contributors who are connected to Goldie and her family. Some inspired participants also contribute. But it is important to Mrs. Stein and Mrs. Leshinsky that there be no entrance fee for the event.

Experiencing the loss

The atmosphere in the room is one of somber solidarity.

“There’s a feeling of achdus in mourning the tzar of the Shechinah and all our tzaros that are rooted in mipnei chataeinu galinu m’artzeinu,” says Mrs. Stein.

We all want to connect with the kinnos; we want to experience Tishah B’Av fully. The kinnos are filled with poetry and uses language that can be hard to understand. It’s very frustrating to sit on the floor, saying the kinnos and not feeling moved.

At the gathering, each speaker describes the era of the kinnah and the message of the makonein through the kinnah and other sources. They also pick out several lines from the kinnah and translate them. Afterward, everyone recites the kinnah together. Understanding the background and the emotion, everyone has a deeper connection to what they’re saying.

The organizers use ArtScroll’s Zechor L’Avraham kinnos to create a small booklet, printing and enlarging the kinnos they will focus on that year.

There are so many kinnos and so many themes: Churban Bayis Rishon, Churban Bayis Sheini, the crusades, sreifas haTalmud, the Holocaust, and more. Other kinnos, like “Tzion Halo Tishali,” express a longing for the Geulah and a deeper understanding of what we’ve lost.

“People leave with a real feeling of wanting the Geulah, a real understanding of what we’re missing,” says Mrs. Stein.

The kinnos gathering is mournful yet uplifting, and its echoes linger throughout the year.

“Once, Mrs. Batsheva Forchheimer spoke about longing for the Geulah. She mentioned the song, ‘Tattele kum shoin aheim,’ as a tefillah of longing for Mashiach. A woman told me that the song reverberates in her mind all year and that she davens and sings it constantly,” says Mrs. Leshinsky.

“I get regards all year about the gathering,” Mrs. Stein shares. “I’ll be at a wedding—or anywhere, really—and someone will tell me, ‘I know this is not the place, but I must tell you how inspired I was from the Tisha B’av program this year’”.

For kinnos or for Hallel

They used to have to beg and cajole people to speak.

“We made call after call after call,” Mrs. Stein relates. “It was hard to deal with the no’s, but we see it differently now. Whoever speaks is getting a rare zechus. In a project like this, we need to get no’s. It’s so big that therehave to be things that are not going to work out. It can’t be ‘yes, yes, yes.’ There has to be stuff that’s not going to work out. These days, we call each other and say, “We got the no’s out of the way. Baruch Hashem, I got three no’s.”

“Today, with siyata d’Shmaya, people even volunteer to speak. The speakers know how big the gathering is, and how it changed the face of Tishah B’Av. Many of the speakers are busy principals and teachers. And so they value this opportunity of zikkuy harabbim and give it their all. They see being part of it as a zechus.

“When someone agrees to speak, I tell them, ‘You’re on the hook for a kinnah. If Mashiach comes, you’re on the hook for a kapitel of Hallel.’”

From a distance

Many women can’t get out for kinnos. The call-in number allows everyone from the elderly who can’t endure the heat or sit on the floor to young mothers taking care of their children to stay connected.

“People tell us that they listen together in the bungalow colony. They put the line on speakerphone and sit on the floor together, following along.”

At first, the organizers did the call-in through their own cell phones, but the phones would die, lose service, or crash. At first, the Chofetz Chaim Heritage Foundation and then Bnos Melachim hosted the program on their lines. Today, Chayeinu is the host platform. Rabbi Yehoshua Ausfresser of YSA Productions takes care of the sound and telephone broadcasting setup.

He set up a streamlined, professional system that broadcasts to their the 20,000 callers. He runs the sound system every year at a discounted price. They’re so grateful to him.

When the Satan interferes

Rebbetzin Stein, Mrs. Stein’s mother-in-law, used to say, “Ven der Satan hockt zich arein, (the Satan interferes), no job is too small for him.”

“The objective is to give people a way to tap into the Churban,” Mrs. Stein says. “Of course, the Satan will get in the way and cause a lot of stressful glitches. At the same time, we see unbelievable siyata d’Shmaya. I always say that Goldie takes care of herself. It always comes together in the end, even when it looks like it’s not going to work out.”

One year, a speaker backed out on Tishah B’Av night!

“I was already scheduled to speak,” says Mrs. Stein, “so Mrs. Leshinsky had to take over the vacated slot.”

“I stayed up half the night preparing.” Mrs. Leshinsky laughs. “It was quite the marathon.”

Another memory: “A couple of years ago, we advertised online for the first and last time. That Tishah B’Av, the call-in lines crashed. I was calling Xchange Telecom and trying to get them to fix the lines. They couldn’t reboot it because people just kept on calling. I was getting a flurry of text messages, ‘Why am I not hearing anything?’ ‘Something’s wrong,’ and, ‘We’re offline.’ After that experience, we decided not to advertise online again!”

Spreading inspiration “The model of having mechanchos speak consecutively

about the kinnos has been copied in Monsey, Chicago, and Eretz Yisroel, and it’s an

additional zechus,” Mrs. Stein says.

The last song

Every year, if time allows, Mrs. Stein explains and sings two kinnos.

“The singing brings out the hergesh; people feel very connected. It moves them to the core,” Mrs. Leshinsky comments. “People tell me that they wait for ‘B’tzeisi M’Mitzrayim’ in Mrs. Stein’s singing and then ‘Eli Tzion’ at the end.”

In “B’tzeisi M’Mitzrayim,” there’s a huge contrast reminiscent of when Hashem promised Avraham Avinu that we’ll be the stars of the heavens and the dust of the earth. When we’re high, we’re the highest, and when we’re low, we’re the lowest. Because that’s what brings the two things together. Every line ends with either “b’tzeisi m’Mitzrayim” when we were at the greatest heights, surrounded by the ananei hakavod, or “b’tzeisi m’Yerushalayim,” when we were beaten, shamed, and downtrodden.

We sing the kinnah to an old Telzer niggun. When the line is about Yetzias Mitzrayim, the tune goes up, and when the line is about Yerushalayim, it goes down. It’s very evocative, very powerful.

Eli Tzion is the last of the kinnos. It’s a kinnah of pain mixed with hope. “Eli” comes from a lashon of “yelalah,” crying out.

There are two meshalim in the kinnah. One is of a woman giving birth, acute pain which climaxes in new life. The second mashal is of a young bride whose chosson died. She’s going to get married to somebody else; she’s going to have a life. Right now, though, she can only see how her present is so desolate.

These meshalim show great pain that serves to bring us closer to the Geulah.

“Eli Tzion” enumerates all the things that we’re lacking, the suffering, the torturous pain, the way Klal Yisrael has been mistreated and disgraced. Yet the refrain “Eli Tzion,” with its connoted comfort, is repeated throughout.

“The continued success of the program is due to the tremendous siyata d’Shmaya we have experienced since its inception. It is also reflective of the collective yearning of our women and girls for kirvas Elokim and for the geulah,” the organizers conclude.

The loss of precious Goldie is part of a greater, collective loss. As our nation’s agony reaches a crescendo, may we finally greet the day of “u’machah Hashem dimah mei’al kol panim.”