Shlomo Feldberg
Holocaust survivor, scholar, engineer, artist. Born on Oct. 30, 1940, in Nizhny Tagil, Sverdlovsk Oblast, Soviet Union; died on March 2, 2016, in Ottawa, of cancer, aged 75.
Shlomo had a restless spirit, one that brought him to Canada from Israel and to his chosen profession of engineering. For Shlomo, there was no problem that could not be solved by breaking it down into its component parts. He demanded precision of thought and language and he loved nothing more than to debate. When he looked at you, eyes glittering, and said, "So, do you really think …?" you knew you were in for a wild ride.
That Shlomo had lived to come from anywhere was a miracle. He was born in what was then the Soviet Union, where his family had fled the SS Einsatzgruppen, Nazi death squads rampaging through the cities and shtetls of Eastern Poland. Shlomo, his parents, his brother, some aunts and uncles and his cousin survived wartime Sverdlovsk, Stalingrad and evacuation to the high desert of Kazakhstan. He always attributed their survival to the kindness of the Russian people and the soldiers of the Red Army.
At war's end, the family walked back to Europe from Central Asia. Faced with nothing but ruins and displaced persons camps, his parents chose instead to become part of Aliyah Bet, the postwar migration of Holocaust survivors that built the state of Israel.
As a teenager in the early 1950s, Shlomo was a self-described gang leader in the hardscrabble streets of post-independence Tel Aviv. Other children of the Holocaust were drawn to this tall, commanding youth, a survivor just like them.
Shlomo was blessed from birth with an abiding love of his faith and a deep connection to Jewish scripture. A teacher saw this in the young man and encouraged him to take part in biblical quiz shows on Israeli radio (where he became a bit of a celebrity).
That was Shlomo, always the centre of whatever group he was in, deeply thoughtful, called to be a teacher and scholar. He was the foundation of Torah study at our Ottawa synagogue, a master of commentary and the art of exegesis. He taught biblical Hebrew and he started an early-morning Jewish book club that he ran with the discipline and formality of a doctoral seminar.
After finishing his Israeli military service in the early 1960s, Shlomo and his family moved to Canada, reuniting with relatives already in North America. As a newly graduated electrical engineer in Ottawa, he met Wendy Heald, who had come to Canada from England. Their marriage was blessed with three children, Matthew, Sarah and Hannah and, later, five grandchildren.
Shlomo worked as a professional engineer in Ottawa's high-tech industry, but was always an inspired and gifted artist. In the home studio that he shared with Wendy, he created art from found objects and bits and pieces of hardware. It's likely that half the Jewish homes in Ottawa kindle the lights of Hanukkah using one of his improbably graceful menorahs, made from silver spoons and old copper pipes.
Every few weeks, Shlomo and I had breakfast together. Our eggs would grow cold as we talked about everything from biblical archeology to Russian politics. "Nu," he would say in the Yiddish cadences of his earliest childhood, "what's going on by you?" He truly wanted to know how his friends were, always ready with a bit of fatherly advice or a consoling hug.
Shlomo was a kind soul, as wise as his namesake King Solomon, and the embodiment of the survival of the Jewish people. His memory, like his life, will be for a blessing always.
Angus Smith is Shlomo's friend.