Category: Eulogies

The Reverend Kirk Alan Kubicek
Saint Peter’s Episcopal Church, Ellicott City, Maryland

In the past four weeks … three important people in my life and ministry passed away. I am still trying to sort out my feelings of sadness, loss, anger, loneliness and all the rest. It has not fully sunk in that they are gone. …

… And then there is my friend, mentor, colleague and Jewish Mother, Bernice Saltzman. She was my advisor on my senior paper in the religion department at Trinity College in 1972, the same place I discovered the Episcopal Church in my life. Just a few years younger than my mother, she was pursuing a second degree at the time also in Religion. She was a tireless student of the Bible, both the Hebrew and Christian scriptures. She lived a full and committed Jewish life, even celebrating her Bat Mitzvah just a few years ago as an adult! She remained my primary mentor in the life of faith until the day she died. Our conversations and emails helped to shape my theology and my life year after year. She has commented on and contributed to my sermons for years. This is my first sermon ever without Bernice being here beside me in the pulpit. Of course she is still here, and the sorrow I am experiencing is simply my inability to let go as she also takes her rightful place beside the throne of God.

Rick Hornung [fellow student at Trinity College]
Communicated by email

Dear Dr. Saltzman:
Many, many years ago, we met. I was one of the hands you shook as Bernice made the rounds of fellow students at Trinity. If memory serves, the year was 1975 – and I had just met your wife at the beginning of the fall semester. I was 19 years old and had just begun my studies as a religion major. On Tuesday and Thursday mornings, from 11:20 to 12:45, Bernice, Buck McCarthy, Mark Hendrickson, Annie Brown, myself and others whose names I cannot recall joined Dr. John Gettier around a set of formica covered conference tables. For 14 weeks, we studied the first 11 cahpters of Genesis. While I will not bore you with tales of how those 14 weeks changed my life, I’d like to take a few moments to reflect upon and remember the wonderful lessons that Bernice gave to me and others. From the very first moment, she taught us how conversation, dialogue, analysis, humor, competition, teamwork and above all, an open ended curiousity were gifts that honor the beauty of this text – and the beauty of life. As we debated and questioned, cajoled and pressed, tried to one-up each other and then come together, our class began to see how one passage can mean so many things to even a few people who initially believed that they were of like mind and soul. As Dr. Gettier taught from his heart, Bernice impressed upon us the need to learn with our hearts. Over and over again, she told us that nuance and inflection, tone and emotion were as important as theme and balance, plot and character. She had a way of speaking that opened all younger members of the class to a world of experience that was way beyond our years.

Bernice came to our class with the full throated roar of a believer, a person who could never shake the foundations of her faith in YHWH’s breath and spirit. Her voice came from His breath; His spirit fueled her intense desire to know and examine a subject; His fierce and jealous love, His power, drove her quest for answers to questions of theology and theocracy, parenting and maturing, holding on and letting go.

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Ethan Felson
Executive Director, Jewish Community Relations Council of the Jewish Federation of Greater Hartford
Communicated by email

The passing of Bernice Saltzman is a painful loss, personally and for our community.

During her years as Israel Task Force chair of the Jewish Federation’s Community Relations Council, Bernice led our celebrations of the 3000th anniversary of Jerusalem and the 50th anniversary of the State of Israel. She brought vision and creativity to every task.

Bernice also helped formulate our community’s responses to a painful series of violent situations in Israel. Too often was the familiar “Hello Darling” with which she greeted callers replaced by a solemn “oh dear.”

Bernice provided calm and reasoned leadership of the Israel Task Force during a time when our homeland threatened more to divide than to unite. Her unique brand of leadership came not from a desire to influence policy or attract a limelight. Instead, it came from the heart. Her passion and knowledge earned her the respect of those from across the political spectrum. Her love for Israel and for the Jewish community was personal and it was deep. She rose to every occasion.

Bernice brought out the best in us. She led is to common ground. She taught us. We are left with wonderful memories – but a terrible void.

Our hearts go out to Seymour, to her beloved children and grandchildren. We will all miss her tales of your family visits. They were such a delight for her.

May her loving memory live on for a blessing.

It is somehow fitting that Bernice Saltzman died the week before Tisha B’av. Tisha B’av commemorates the destruction of Jewish life in Jerusalem both in 586 BCE and 70 CE. It is a time of mourning for Jews around the world.

Similarly, Bernice’s death is time for mourning not just an outstanding individual, but one whose entire life embodied the full gamut of Jewish values.

As I sat by her bedside last Shabbat, I shared with her what I want to share with you now. “Bernice, I have never known a congregant who better than you exemplifies the core ideals of the Jewish religion-Torah, avodah and gemilut hasidim-the study of Torah, worship, and deeds of kindness and compassion.”

Bernice Meyer grew up in Richmond, Virginia and went off to major in American Studies and Journalism at Syracuse University. 26 years after she graduated, Bernice earned a second degree in Religion from Trinity College. At Syracuse, she met a young medical student, Seymour Saltzman. On the day Seymour became a doctor, they joined their lives together and have shared 49 loving years of marriage, three children and five grandchildren.

Because Bernice was Bernice, I think she would not want me to say these words without tying them to the texts she studied so diligently. This week’s Torah portion, the beginning of Deuteronomy, is always read on the Sabbath before Tisha B’av.

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Shortly after I arrived in West Hartford, I taught my first session of a monthly Sunday night study group. I brought some passages from Pirkei Avot. Pirkei Avot is among the easiest, the most accessible texts in our tradition. I thought that since I did not know the people, an accessible text would be a nice place to begin. I did not count on Bernice Saltzman being part of that group. As we began to study, it became abundantly clear to me that for Bernice, studying Pirkei Avot was like winning the Tour de France then riding around the neighborhood on a tandem bike – pleasant but not overly challenging. Nevertheless, Bernice remained engaged that night and I think she learned at least one new insight into the text.

When I think now of Bernice, one particular passage from Pirkei Avot seems to resonate:
יהושע בן פרחיה אומר: עשה לך רב, וקנה לך חבר, והוי דן את כל האדם לכף זכות
Joshua ben Perachya said: Provide yourself with a teacher, acquire a companion, and judge everyone in the scale of merit.

“Provide yourself with a teacher.” Rabbi Joshua does not suggest simply acquiring a teacher or even finding one, but rather he teachers “provide yourself with a teacher.” In other words, “make for yourself teachers out of the people you meet.” Bernice’s respect for study, for learning, especially Jewish learning, meant that wherever she went, she provided herself with a teacher. She actively sought out knowledge and insights from anyone who could give them – whether it was the professors at Trinity where she earned her second bachelor’s degree, or the other students in our Shabbat morning Torah study, or even the barber where she had her hair cut for many years who asked her questions that spurred her to learn more about Jewish loan societies. She approached each person as someone from whom she could learn and turned them, whether they knew it or not, into her teachers.

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Bernice Meyer Saltzman, 71, of West Hartford, wife of Dr. Seymour Saltzman, died Wednesday, (August 2, 2000) at Hartford Hospital.

She was the daughter of the late Leonard and Ruth Radman Meyer. Born in Richmond, VA on March 6, 1929, Bernice had lived in Hartford since her marriage to Seymour on June 4, 1951. She regularly spent time with her family in Richmond, VA and Virginia Beach, VA, and with her children and grandchildren in San Francisco, CA and Israel.

She earned two college degrees, in 1950 from Syracuse University School of Journalism and in 1976 from Trinity College Religion Department. Bernice was highly respected and admired for her scholarship in Biblical and Judaic studies.

A constant student of literature, history and thought, she cherished her association with seven friends in the Wednesday Book Group. She was a member of Congregation Beth Israel, taught in its religious school, participated in its weekly Torah study group, served on its ritual, grief support and rabbi search committees, and was instrumental in reactivating the congregation’s daily prayer service, minyan, in 1994. She became an adult bat mitzvah in 1997.

At a late age she mastered computer desktop publishing techniques and put these and her journalistic skills in the service of Parents of North American Israelis, PNAI, an organization of families with children living in Israel, whose quarterly magazine she voluntarily edited from 1983-1995. She was a leader in the organization’s Connecticut chapter and served as program chairwoman of two conventions in Israel.

She was an Executive Board member of the Jewish Federation’s Community Relations Council, CRC, and a member of the Jewish Community Center’s Israel Affairs Committee. For many years, she and her husband were avid members and officers of the Shooting Stars square dancing club.

Besides her husband, she is survived by a son and daughter-in-law, David and Ana Saltzman of Windsor; daughter and son-in-law, Lisa and Yuval Mishli of Maccabim, Israel; son and daughter-in-law, Robert and Beth Saltzman, of Redwood City, CA; five grandchildren, Doron, Smadar and Amit Mishli, and Daniel and Jonathan Saltzman; and brother and sister-in-law, Herbert “Buddy” and Helen Meyer of White Plains, NY. She also leaves her aunt and uncle, Mildred and Robert of Eskeles, Richmond, VA; aunt Beatrice Radman Lorber of Florida; sister- and brother-in-law, Esther and Morris Handler of West Hartford; sister-in-law, Rose Sklar; and many nieces, nephews and cousins.

Funeral services will be held on Friday, August 4, 11 a.m., at Congregation Beth Israel, 701 Farmington Ave., West Hartford. Burial will be in Beth Israel Cemetery in Avon. A period of mourning will be observed at her home on 4 Kirkwood Road, Friday, 2-4 p.m., Saturday, 7-9 p.m., Sunday and Monday, 2-4 p.m. and 7-9 p.m.

The family will appreciate donations to the Seymour & Bernice Saltzman Aliyah Fund, c/o the Jewish Federation of Greater Hartford Endowment Foundation, 333 Bloomfield Ave., West Hartford, CT 06117, or to a charity of the donor’s choice.