EULOGY of ANN PRINZMETAL
by Rabbi MAX Nussbaum
My good friends no more melancholy task could be given to any Rabbi in this area than the one to deliver the eulogy for Anna Prinzmetal, and it is indeed with hearts filled with sorrow and minds crowded with memory that one approaches such a knowledge for a person quite unique and set apart who became a permanent feature in this community, and the very symbol and conscience of a whole movement.
The public image of Anna Prinzmetal is more known to the community than the private and the personal one. Therefore, a word about that at this moment. She came to us from a corner of the Austria-Hungarian empire close to the Russian border, studied in high school, acquired a knowledge of many languages, became a high school teacher, taught languages at the high school and college levels, and came to the United States at the early age of about 24 or 25, was married in 1904, lived in Buffalo until 1923, and then to California and here in our midst.
When she appeared on the American scene, all the ingredients that came to make her personality the way we have known, appreciated, and loved were already there---the type of image you can easily paint in broad strokes. Already at that time it was quite visible what these ingredients were: a kindness and considerateness of the heart, an intellectuality of the mind, an incredible strength of will, and a complete identification with our people. It is with this spiritual equipment that she set out to play her role (and how superbly did she play it) as a wife, a mother, a grandmother to her family, and as a Zionist leader in this community
Anna was a woman of great intellectual awareness of the world, interested in all phases of human life, always on the side of liberal and progressive ideas, an avid reader interested in literature and great poetry, had an appreciation of music and in recent years of art, had a way of approaching people with respect and kindness rare to be found, and a strength of will which can only come from the purity of spirit when things had to be done---nothing could be too difficult, nothing is impossible to accomplish if it is necessary---and an identification via Zionist ideology which is rare even in our own generation. It is with these ingredients that she came to her family and it is in these ways and directions that she influenced them. These were qualities that made her overcome many a difficulty. They had a store in Buffalo; her husband was ill (invalid for many years) so she had to manage the store, see to making a living, to educate her children at the game time, to make sure that one of the sons went into law and one into medicine, to see to it that they are trained in such a way that they become prominent each in his respective field and make a contribution in his field, and at the same time working hard in the Jewish community and for the Zionist movement. There has in this circle of activities for the family been the playing with all the qualities---not only for her husband, not only for the two sons, for the grandchildren to whom this was and has been a tremendous objective---a combination of will power, Jewish identification, open mind to all phases of modern literature; and the cohesiveness of the family, closely knit character, the relationship between her, her sons and the grandchildren was so remarkably good and infinite because of these great qualities that were in her.
But she reached, I believe, the height of her career from a viewpoint of personality development within the ideology of Zionism. She belonged to the early group around Herzl and knew Theodor Herzl (the founder of the Zionist movement), attended many a Zionist Congress, associated with Henrietta Zold in the inception of the Hadassah, was a National Board member of the Hadassah years ago, pioneering in the Jewish National Congress, made a tremendous contribution to the Bonds For Israel. And some of you may remember the day in which the organization celebrated her and the City of Los Angeles declared an Anna Prinzmetal day in her honor. In a long and deeply moving wire of the organization of the Bonds For Israel, they announced an Anna Prinzmetal Memorial Committee to advance in her name the welfare of the State of Israel. And in connection with her relationship to the Zionist movement, we often say of people that they are sympathetic to a cause, they are friends of a cause, and they are identified with a cause. In Anna Prinzmetal's case you cannot use any of these words. Not only not "sympathy" or "friends"; even the word "identification" is not strong enough. It wasn't a matter of being "identified" with Zionism; she WAS Zionism. It wasn't a matter of being "identified" with Israel; she WAS Israel. The great writer Stephan Dreit said once, "In the realm of Ideals there are people who are torch bearers, and there are those who convert their own person into the very torch." This was Anna Prinzmetal. She wasn't a torchbearer for Zionism; she was the torch of Zionism. And this is why those of you who had the privilege of knowing her may begin to understand what the establishment of Israel meant to her, the partitioning of Palestine early in '47, the establishment of the State; what every advance, every step that Israel made in the right direction meant to her, something completely personal. She was Israel and therefore an advance of Israel meant a success in her own work.
It is against this background that one may begin to understand the incredible persuasiveness of Anna Prinzmetal, the relentless demand upon others. You could never refuse her---and the demands were high---and she never took "no" for an answer. As she devoted all her life, all her energy, all her time-for this cause she was relentless in pressing others for it, and established quite a school in this direction, many people in, and this community whom she selected for leadership. She read the books, underscored the lines, made the comments, sent it along to friends so to make sure that the coming leadership reads it, understands it, and follows through on the things that have to be done. This demand upon others came from the great modern force in herself. Because she herself did it all through the years, and in the same way that she carried her family to such height through she carried a tremendous burden upon her shoulders and though the early years were terribly hard and she succeeded so well and so brilliantly within the circle of her own family, so did she demand of others to follow through in devotion to Israel and to Zionism because she herself was the best example, and irrespective of difficulties and illness, it was the path came first; the ideal came first; the devotion came first; and everything else was of second consequence. Only people, who are themselves the torch for a cause can act in this way and derive so much of strength, derive so much of strength from what they do. I have always believed for the last couple of years watching her that this devotion to the cause, this complete identification to a point of actually being the cause, the incredible power of will and the strength of the spirit carried her through many years (the last few years surely of her illness) bringing her to the point of achieving beyond the biblical age of 84. There was here a strength that came from this being the torch, which was very often amazing. She used to attend meetings, lectures, and very often services in this temple when she could hardly walk. There was here an additional inner strength that she herself received from what she did, and only a week ago when I spoke to her (she had just been returned from the hospital) she said to me, I would have to catch up on so much reading I wasn't able to do in the last couple of weeks. What is happening in Israel and in the Middle East?" The last words I remember so well.
She listened once to a sermon of mine (or a speech) in which I discussed the rare quality of light, which is the only agency (I said in this lecture or this sermon), which the more you give away, the more you add. Anything else in possession if you give away, you have less. But if you take and kindle one light and then with this one light you try to kindle a second, a third, fifty, a hundred, a thousand candles you are not diminishing the quantity or the quality of the light from the one candle, and you constantly add to---you add strength to. She said to me several weeks later and repeated it only about three or four years ago, that she liked this idea so much---it is so true in Jewish life---and that she repeated it so often to others. I believe this is a summary of her own life. The more she worked for the family and for the cause, the somehow stronger she grew. The more lights she kindled, and this kindling of lights of others and getting other people involved and becoming bearers of the torch, she herself not only retained the inner energy but somehow grew in strength in seeing the light spread. It is somehow I believe therefore a gesture of destiny that it came out this way that she is being laid to rest on a weekend, which introduces the celebration of the 15th anniversary of the State of Israel.
Those of you who have known her should have been in her home in a day let us say when the partition of Israel was declared or an Independence Day of Israel and see her dancing out of inner joy on the occasion to understand what Israel meant to her. Only with such devotion and such selflessness can one live to be 84 with this inner strength, this great inner happiness, and give so much to others, bequeathing a heritage which will live in the memory of this community, in the memory of our movement for all the years to come.
With her death, my good friends, a whole chapter of Zionist history is being completed. There are no more people alive today who knew Theodor Herzl. A whole chapter closes. At the last Zionist Congress it was said that two people are still alive; I understand they passed away in between. A chapter is closed. But there is here a good name left, a challenging personality. And if one wants to perpetuate her memory, as all of you who have come here surly desire---not many people can be torches of a cause, the very torch---but the least one can do in her memory is to continue to be torch bearers in her name, inspired by her idealism, moved by her selflessness of identification with the cause of our people for the years to come. It is in this spirit that we have assembled here to honor her memory; it is in this spirit that we repeat the ancient Hebrew words sanctified by centuries of Jewish tradition. It was the Lord who in His wisdom has given her to her family, to our community, and to the Zionist movement. It was the Lord who has taken her away after much suffering in recent weeks---taken her away at the appointed time---not always comprehensible to us; but His ways are not our ways. And it is upon us to accept a divine decree to pledge our loyalty and support to the causes for which she stood and to say Blessed be the Lord.