Rebecca Gratz
1781-1869 19th century
Consoling without claiming to measure another's grief.
Who was Rebecca Gratz?
Born into a Jewish family in Philadelphia, she never married and gave her life to institutions: a Hebrew women's benevolent society, an orphan asylum she directed for forty years, and above all the first Jewish Sunday school in America, founded in 1838 and presided over by her until she was eighty-three. She raised her dead sister's children. Her letters, written over more than fifty years, speak of a Jewish faith held without anxiety in a Christian country, and of a great many bereavements.
In their own words
What grateful thanks My dear Sister I owe you, for your kind letters, over which I have wept again, and again, and prayed for my beloved brother, whose grief I share, but cannot measure even by that which fills my heart. All human sympathy are but drops of comfort in his great sorrow, but God in his mercy will open a fountain of consolation to his mourning spirit.
But it was God's will, to take her from 'the evil to come' and she resigned her spirit with the most tranquil submission into His hands, but oh My dear Brother the loss of her society is to me, a trial only to be borne by the conviction that her whole life was a preparation for a happy futurity.
I think of you dearest Maria, with a Sister's solicitude and a sister's hopes, and pray the Almighty may bless you with all your heart desires. A little season, and your tribulations will end in joy and gladness.
I trust you still cherish the design of visiting us in the spring, should it please Heaven to continue to us the blessing we still possess; for alas, from the suddenness of our recent affliction, I fear to look forward with too earnest a desire to any earthly good.