Isru Chag Pesach 5735 (1975), the Schusters’ firstborn child, Shatzi, asked her mother for money so that she could run to the nearby makolet to buy gum. She never returned home. As she crossed the street to the makolet, she was hit by a truck and killed instantly. Neighbors came to tell Mrs. Schuster of the tragedy and stayed with her. But Rabbi Schuster was well into his day by then. Neighbors of the Schusters from the adjacent building went to Shaare Zedek to identify the body.
When Reb Meir was finally located and came into the hospital, his initial reaction was to feel sorry for his neighbors whose faces were contorted in pain, until he realized that it was for his own daughter they were crying. Shatzi’s parents were both devastated. But they reacted in different ways. Mrs. Schuster was able to find solace then, and over the years, by speaking about her daughter. Reb Meir, as was always the case, kept his feelings to himself, and was rarely able to speak about his daughter once shivah was over. Chaim Kass walked together with Rabbi Schuster at the levayah (funeral). He observed tears forming in Reb Meir’s eyes and falling silently, but Reb Meir did not say a word. Reb Meir was, in his wife’s words, “meshugah” over his daughter. He had chosen the name Yocheved simply because he loved the name; Faige Dina was after Mrs. Schuster’s maternal grandmother. (In any event, Yocheved Faige Dina was universally known as Shatzi.)
By all accounts, Shatzi was an unusually bacheint (charming) child. Dr. Shimon Friedman and his wife Chani spent six weeks one summer in Ezras Torah, in the building in which the Schusters lived. Mrs. Friedman remembers Shatzi as “mesmerizing everyone.” On the way back from Israel, after a packed vacation, she and her husband spoke primarily about Shatzi. “There was something unique about her,” she explains. Though only 6 at the time of her death, the entire street (of six buildings, in 1975) knew her by name. Bachurim who ate at the Schusters’ regularly remember her as a very bright child, who had inherited her mother’s outgoing nature. Reverberations from her tragic death were felt far beyond the confines of Rechov Even Ha’ezel, particularly in the as-yet small English-speaking Torah community. Someone who was in the home of Rabbi Noach Weinberg when the news of the accident arrived remembers how Rebbetzin Denah Weinberg burst out crying. For the bachurim in Ohr Somayach, Shatzi’s death was traumatic. Even forty-five years later, when they speak about Rabbi Schuster, they inevitably mention Shatzi’s passing. In those days, many of the bachurim davened on Leil Shabbos at the Kotel, and there was a large group who served as “runners” for Rabbi Schuster to bring those gathered at the Kotel to their Shabbos hosts. Rabbi Schuster had been the one to bring most of the Ohr Somayach students to the yeshivah, and even those who did not know him personally saw him daily in the yeshivah as he escorted new recruits and checked on those whom he had brought to the yeshivah. The shivah for Shatzi was notable for two reasons. The first was the large number of those who arrived to pay their condolences in jeans and ponytails. For many of the Ohr Somayach and Aish HaTorah talmidim who came, it was their first shivah house. The more advanced students in Ohr Somayach organized an ongoing rotation to say Tehillim in the shivah house for the entire week.
The second notable aspect of the shivah house was the fact that Rabbi Yosef Shalom Elyashiv, then the foremost living posek in Israel, made a shivah call. True, Rabbi Schuster brought all his she’eilos to Rabbi Elyashiv, who was still relatively accessible compared to later years. But the great sage almost never left his Meah Shearim neighborhood. The story of how Rabbi Elyashiv came to make a shivah call perhaps more than any other brings out the overwhelming sense of mission with which Rabbi Schuster lived. Not long after the beginning of shivah, Rabbi Schuster grew agitated at the thought of all the Jews who would visit the Kotel during the week of shivah, and for whom there would be nobody who could offer an introduction to Torah. That raised in his mind a halachic she’eilah as to whether he should return to the Kotel. And what was that she’eilah? Is not the saving of a Jewish neshamah from a state of ignorance of Torah and mitzvos a matter of pikuach nefesh? And if it is pikuach nefesh, did the imperative of saving Jewish neshamos not mandate, or at least permit, Reb Meir to be at the Kotel to meet them, for who could know whether there would ever be another opportunity to bring them to a yeshivah or arrange a Shabbos meal for them? The she’eilah was brought to Rabbi Elyashiv by Rabbi Yehudah Samet. Rabbi Elyashiv did not dismiss the she’eilah or refute Reb Meir’s conclusion that his going to the Kotel was no different than any other form of pikuach nefesh about which the general rule is that pikuach nefesh supersedes all other mitzvos, with three exceptions — murder, idol worship, and forbidden relations. Quite the opposite. Rabbi Elyashiv responded that Reb Meir was right and that the work that he did at the Kotel was indeed life-saving. But because few people, if any, possess the same clarity of vision (which is why there has been only one Meir Schuster), his failure to sit shivah in the normal fashion would not be understood. That failure might even undermine his work. As if to prove Rabbi Elyashiv’s point, among those who did not understand Reb Meir’s desire to return to the Kotel was Mrs. Schuster. Even though she knew better than anyone her husband’s intense love for his oldest daughter, it pained her that he could seemingly not give a week to mourning her loss. In any event, Rabbi Elyashiv instructed him to continue sitting shivah.
But Rabbi Elyashiv did not leave matters there. The next day the gadol hador made a rare shivah call outside of Meah Shearim. If there was a person in the world capable of putting aside his personal grief upon the loss of a child and think only about the neshamos of Klal Yisrael, Rabbi Elyashiv wanted to personally convey his tanchumim (condolences.) On Leil Shabbos during shivah, when there is no mourning in public, Rabbi Schuster was back at the Kotel setting up Jews for Shabbos meals with religious families. In the face of tragedy, he did the one thing that he knew how to do well: Keep going, move forward, and maintain a laser focus on his mission in life — connecting Jews with their Father in Heaven.
Many years after his personal tragedy, one of the Ohr Somayach bachurim to whom the entire Schuster family became very close lost a son to cancer. When the bereaved father was sitting shivah in America, Rabbi Schuster called and offered him the only advice he could because it was the one that got him through the darkest moments of his life: “Be strong, be strong".
[Yonason Rosenblum - Artscroll]
