Hadassah Blocker z"l

The appellation z"l is Hebrew shorthand for zichrona livracha - may her name be for a blessing. Hadassah Blocker, who died this week at the age of 94, was a remarkable woman. She was the daughter of an Orthodox rabbi, one of the first Jewish women to attend Radcliffe College, and, for 32 years, directed Camp Pembroke, a Jewish girls camp in Pembroke, Massachusetts. For four years in the late 1960s and early 1970s, I was a counselor at Camp Pembroke. At my interview with her before my first year there, she said, "If it's a girls' camp, who do you think chants the Torah at Shabbat morning services?" I figured that a mumbled "dunno" was my best bet for an answer. "I do", she said proudly.

Hadassah's Torah reading made a huge impression on me, although I was unaware of it at the time. As my religious observance increased, as I learned how to read and chant Torah myself, as I applied for rabbinical school, and in my years as a rabbi, Hadassah's influence has stayed with me. A couple of years ago, a former Pembroke camper brought her son to the Claremont Colleges, where I was then the rabbi. She told me that Hadassah, after retiring from Camp Pembroke, had for many years taught adult Bar and Bat Mitzvah classes at her synagogue in Newton, Massachusetts. Just a year earlier, she had moved to an assisted living facility, where she taught the other residents to read Torah.

I am not entirely sure of this, but I think Hadassah died on the day of the festival of Simchat Torah. How appropriate. No one found more happiness in Torah than she did. As I attend synagogue tomorrow, and hear its opening paragraphs read, I'll be thinking of her.