Worst of all, when he began to speak, he was almost unintelligible. Someone hurried to adjust the microphone, placing it nearer his lips. To her relief, she could now understand him. “We know that when the soul departs the body, it lingers. We know that you are here with us, Malka, that you can hear all that is being said about you. I ask you, my dear wife, to forgive me for every trespass against you; every unkind or angry word; for every time you were silent and I did not reach out to ask you what was troubling you; for every time my work kept me away from home so that all the burdens of caring for the family and household fell on you. My dear wife, you gave me everything I have. You supported my learning. All my Torah is yours. You taught me so much: how to be a mensch, how to love. You taught me to care when I asked someone, ‘How are you?,’ to listen to the answer. You taught me that the people who don’t ask, who don’t speak, who are sitting alone on the sidelines, they are the people we need to sit down next to, not the ones who crowd around us. And all day, every day, you worried about your people: the widows you brought charity to, the orphans you arranged to get into yeshiva, the young girls of marriageable age from poor families that needed new clothes, the tired parents caring for sick children. You do not need an angel to accompany you on your way to heaven. Your good deeds will crowd around you as you ascend, each one a winged angel. Ah, my dear wife, my life. What will I do without you?” He wept helplessly until his sons and a few of his students hurried to help him down from the podium.

Fruma Esther felt tears come to her eyes. She had not expected this. She had expected, along with everyone else, a learned discourse based on Talmudic sources and obscure midrashim, not the raw outpourings of a wounded heart; not something so real, so intimate and sincere, naked to the world, unshrouded behind philosophical and biblical imagery and allegory.

Ah, my dear wife … what will I do without you?

She felt her heart expand and go out to him in his grief. Perhaps this was the true sign of greatness, she thought. The ability and modesty that allows one to be human and without pretense. Only a rav of his caliber, known for his scholarship and magnificent oratory, someone held in such respect, could publicly risk such a thing.

The funeral was followed by shiva, seven days in which all those at the funeral and many more besides would show up at the house to pay their respects and offer words of comfort.