Here’s My Story: Raising Four Kids on One Dollar

Dr. Anne Lewinsky

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When I was a nineteen-year-old medical student, in 1973, I married my husband Sid. But three years later, when I was beginning my medical internship, I still hadn’t gotten pregnant. Many of our friends already had children, and I began to get distressed.

A couple of the other medical interns I was working with, Fiona Messel and Rodney Undertslak, happened to be religious Jews, and they recommended that we go to see Rabbi Mendel and Mashi Lipskar, who were the Chabad emissaries in South Africa.

“Speak to them about getting a blessing for children,” they suggested.

With the Lipskars’ encouragement, we began observing the laws of family purity. In 1979, around Passover time, we also started keeping kosher. We had the mezuzot in our home checked by a scribe, to ensure they were in good condition. We also put up more mezuzot, so that every single door in our house that required one had a mezuzah.

That same year, with the help of Rabbi Sydney Katz, our community rabbi in Pretoria, we began preparing to go to New York to see the Rebbe.

Rabbi Katz was a good friend of Rabbi Yosef Wineberg, who was an important person in the Chabad community, so accommodations were arranged for us to stay with the Winebergs over Shavuot.

Unlike Sid, who had gone to a Jewish day school, I hadn’t grown up in a particularly religious home, so it was all very dramatic for me. I’d never even been in a synagogue with such a stringent separation between women and men, and being surrounded by so many orthodox women – and babies, and more babies – was quite confronting for me.

Fortunately, Freidy Wineberg, the daughter of our hosts, really helped me. She took a shine to me, and I to her. We went to synagogue together, sitting in the front row so that I could actually see what was going on, and Freidy explained the service to me.

Meanwhile, Rabbi Wineberg took Sid under his wing, and they sat just two or three meters away from the Rebbe for the services.

On the second day of Shavuot, there was a public gathering led by the Rebbe, followed by another event at the conclusion of the holiday, where the Rebbe gave people wine from his cup. Several times, as the Rebbe looked around the synagogue, he gazed right in our direction, and he often looked at Sid as well. It was all a wonderful experience.

Our personal audience with the Rebbe was after the holiday. Rabbi Wineberg took us to 770 fairly late at night, around 10:00 PM or so, and when we arrived, there was a queue of people. After some time waiting outside the Rebbe’s office, we were eventually called in.

“Welcome to America,” the Rebbe greeted us, offering us seats across his desk. “Where are you coming from? Did you enjoy the services?”

This was already the third or fourth time that we had seen the Rebbe, but now he was directly in front of us, and the aura around him was phenomenal. I remember watching the Rebbe and his incredible eyes as he was speaking to Sid, and feeling that I was in the presence of Moses.

The whole audience was only about three minutes in total. The Rebbe asked if we had checked our mezuzot, and also encouraged us to continue observing Shabbat, as well as with keeping the laws of family purity and kosher. “Please observe kosher,” he said, “and bring your children up with it.”

We had just turned kosher that Passover, less than two months before, and to be honest it was very difficult for me. The fact that my mother couldn’t make me a cake, or that my sisters couldn’t bring me a salad, was quite alienating. Nevertheless, we were able to tell the Rebbe that we were keeping kosher and that we had just put up mezuzot on every door of the house.

At one point, he asked why we had come. We explained that we had been married for over six years, and were hoping for a blessing for children.

The Rebbe looked at us and said, “You will be blessed with children, and you will see them to the chupah” – that is, you will merit to see them marry according to Jewish tradition.

He then leaned over the table and gave us each a dollar, which Rabbi Wineberg later explained were ours to keep; we’d give another dollar to charity in exchange. I’ve actually kept that dollar in my purse for all these years. We left feeling elated and inspired.

However, when we got back home, I didn’t become pregnant.

The next year, we began thinking that it might be time to adopt: Maybe that is how we will be blessed. So, being the doctor I am, I got on the phone, calling every other doctor I could and asking if they knew of any babies up for adoption.

Meanwhile, Rabbi Katz helped us with preparing the paperwork for the courts and for a house visit with the social workers, so that by the time we got a phone call on the 3rd of November, 1980, everything was ready. We were able to see our son Dan from the minute he was born, and then just a few days later, on my secular birthday, we brought our little boy home – thank G-d.

Then, just 18 days later, I got a phone call from one of the other doctors I’d spoken to. There was another woman he had in mind for us, in Johannesburg, and she had just gone into labor. Suddenly we were blessed with this instant family – a boy and a girl – and it was marvelous. Three rabbis oversaw their conversions, and for us, this was the Rebbe’s blessing being fulfilled.

Five years later, I got a call from my gynecologist, who had a young pregnant patient who wanted to give up her baby. “You and Sid are the only people I could think of,” he explained.

And that was how our daughter Robyn joined our family.

Now, for all this time, we had never understood why I couldn’t have biological children; there was no medical reason for it at all.

And then, not long after I had gone to see my doctor about a related medical issue, I suddenly discovered that I was pregnant. Eighteen years after we got married, I gave birth to our son Kevin. Our older children chose that name for him, but he also has a Hebrew name – Menachem.

But the Rebbe’s blessing really came to pass when all of our children went on to marry Jewish spouses. Today, in addition to our children, we are blessed with eight grandchildren, and I believe the Rebbe’s blessing will carry on, from us to our children, to their children, and please G-d, to their children’s children, and so on.

Dr. Anne Lewinsky resides in Sydney, Australia, where she practices general medicine with a focus on nutrition and diet, together with her husband, Sid, a retired asset manager. They were both interviewed in August 2023.