A Great One has left the earth, and we are poorer for our enormous loss. I am reeling, as are the countless people who loved and learned from Ben Stern, Baruch Bendit ben Shimon Nussen veYentl, z"l, a Survivor of two ghettos, nine concentration camps, and two death marches - and who lived until the age of 102 as a model of perseverance, testimony, justice, and love. My friend has died, and my heart mourns to its core.
Ben was a student of the great Rabbi Kalonymus Kalman Shapira in the Warsaw Ghetto. He witnessed, as a child in the Ghetto, the great educator Janusz Korczak, accompany by choice the children in his care out of the Ghetto to the camps, where he too was murdered. Ben created the Janusz Korczak Bnai Brith Lodge in Skokie and fought the Nazis when they threatened to March then in the 60's.
Ben's beloved daughter, Charlene, was among the founders of Congregation Netivot Shalom in Berkeley, where I was blessed to serve, and where Ben and his beloved Helen z"l moved. For several years, Ben brought groups of teens back to Poland and to Israel to inspire them by demonstrating for them the life-force of Am Yisrael, the Jewish People. In 2017, at the age of 96, Ben helped lead a March Against Hate, facing an entire city with the strength of his indefatigable soul. When I introduced him to my beloved Neshama, he danced before us on the spot and blessed our marriage, knowing that he wouldn't be able to attend our wedding.
It will always be among my deepest honors to have been his student.
We will march, my friend. I promise.
You have acquitted yourself nobly.
You have made your People proud.
Rest. Finally, dear man, rest.