Chava Shusterman, who passed away April 18, was photographed with her granddaughters at a recent International Conference of Chabad-Lubavitch Women Emissaries.
Chava “Evelyn” Shusterman, a respected leader of the Chicago Jewish community who founded the city’s chapter of the Lubavitch Women’s Organization, passed away April 18 at the age of 89. For decades, the Chabad-Lubavitch emissary seamlessly combined her communal activities with her responsibilities raising a family, earning a reputation for showering her motherly love and wisdom on the countless individuals she encountered.
Founder of Chicago Women’s Organization Passes Away
Chava “Evelyn” Shusterman, a respected leader of the Chicago Jewish community who founded the city’s chapter of the Lubavitch Women’s Organization, passed away April 18 at the age of 89. For decades, the Chabad-Lubavitch emissary seamlessly combined her communal activities with her responsibilities raising a family, earning a reputation for showering her motherly love and wisdom on the countless individuals she encountered.
Born in 1920 in Malden, Mass., to Rabbi Shmaya and Etta Krinsky, she spent her formative years learning in public school during the day, while her parents supplemented her education with a full Jewish curriculum at home. Shusterman’s father worked as a ritual slaughterer at the Armour-Swift Company’s kosher poultry division.
The family of nine later moved to Boston, where they became involved in communal work, organizing Torah classes and Chasidic gatherings in synagogues throughout the city. The Krinsky home was always open to Jewish leaders who passed through Boston, especially Chabad-Lubavitch representatives fundraising for Jewish education. Through the years, Shusterman’s parents hosted such luminaries as Rabbi Yitzchak Horowitz – known in the Lubavitch community as “Itche the diligent” for the days and nights he devoted in Torah study – and Rabbi Mordechai Chefetz, who spent hours telling the family stories of pious individuals and sharing with them key Chasidic teachings.
As a teenager, Shusterman learned at the high school of the Hebrew Teacher’s College, where she graduated in 1941. Two years later, she married Rabbi Herschel “Harold” Shusterman, who at the time was assisting her sister and brother-in-law, Rabbi Moshe and Rivkah Hecht, with the Lubavitch School in nearby Worcester that they founded.
Following their wedding, the Sixth Lubavitcher Rebbe, Rabbi Yosef Yitzchak Schneersohn, of righteous memory, suggested that the young couple should move to Rochester, N.Y., and establish a Jewish day school. Among the first Chabad-Lubavitch emissaries in the United States, the Shustermans moved the Rochester, carrying out the formative tasks at the school themselves, as well as serving as teachers.
They struggled financially, but approached their endeavors with a sense of purpose. Within a short time of their arrival, they were even able to purchase a building for the school.
“We managed and never complained,” Chava Shusterman once said. “[We] didn’t buy things that we didn’t need.”
