‘It was magical’
Great-grandmother Estelle Eisenkraft reads haftarah for her great-granddaughter’s naming
By JOANNE PALMER
Last Shabbat, Estelle Eisenkraft read haftarah at her infant great granddaughter’s naming. At 80, she stood at the bimah of the Nanuet Jewish Center, the New City shul to which she and her husband, Allan, have belonged for 50 years, and a bimah from which she and her daughter, the baby’s grandmother, both have been reading Torah and haftarah for decades.
All by itself, that is a moving and unusual accomplishment. Families move. People marry later and have children later. Skills atrophy, and so does the impetus not to allow that to happen. And Ms. Eisenkraft has read haftarah so often that her merely reading it once again, while inspirational, no longer is surprising.
