Rabbi Yechezkel Moskowitz, the grandson of Cherna Moskowitz, who passed away last week, and the late Dr. Irving Moskowitz, spoke to Arutz Sheva -Israel National News about his grandmother's passing and his grandparents' legacy.
"My grandparents were always dedicated to building Judea and Samaria and Jerusalem. This was a first and foremost priority for them. Everything else was a secondary [priority]. For them it was like ensuring that there was Jewish sovereignty in these areas, which they believed was the traditional homeland of the Jewish people," Rabbi Moskowitz said.
He added, "In their mind, the idea that it would be possible that the Jews would not have freedom of living in any of these areas was a preposterous concept. And therefore they did everything in their power to ensure Jewish sovereignty."
Rabbi Moskowitz explained how the Holocaust impacted his grandparents' activism and philanthropy. "My grandfather, who over 130 members of his family died in the Holocaust, felt very strongly about this idea ... Many of the Jews who flee to the United States flee to the United States because Jews were not allowed to own land, Jews were not allowed to truly prosper in Europe, and especially, obviously, during the Holocaust. In his mind, when the State of Israel was founded in 1948, that was, so to speak a manifestation, of this concept of Zionism and how the Jews would now have that freedom to build a homeland of their own, that they would have that security and prosperity. And for him, that was the number one priority, to ensure that."
"And therefore, when there was a lot of international pressure or whatnot to stop him, he was tenacious and was steadfast in his beliefs and he would not bend to any pressure whatsoever, because he felt it was an existential threat to acquiesce an inch of land," he said.
In response to this criticism, Cherna Moskowitz would say "It's just noise."
"I had the privilege of being the special assistant to my grandmother for close to nine years now before she passed, and I will tell you that she was excited about every project," he said. "Now, obviously, there were projects that stood out to her more, but I think that every project to her was important. Otherwise, she would have not supported it. If she didn't feel it was important, she would have not supported it."
Likewise, "If my grandfather didn't feel projects were important, they would have not supported it. They obviously felt there are a lot of projects and everything's important, but at the end of the day, what their priorities were - were to ensure Jewish sovereignty and security. And therefore, whatever they felt served that purpose, that was what they supported."
"They really believed, truly, that without all of the folks who did that, there would be no possibility of doing that. And therefore they truly appreciated all of those [people]. In fact, my grandmother used to always say to me, [when] I used to ask her, 'How do you feel about all these people coming here and speaking to you and interacting with you?' And she used to say, 'They are my friends. They're here to show me all about what they're doing, cause they're so excited about them. And without them, we would never be able to do anything that we do,'" he said.
Addressing the task of continuing his grandparents' work, he said, "I think that at the end of the day, it's not about fitting into their shoes. It's about making new shoes and treading this new path and living in their legacy. It's not that there's a hard act to follow. We need to write a new act, it's the second act. We have to live up to that, and I think that the family will do so, each and every of us in our own way. And I think that we are gonna be Mekadesh Shem Shamayim and give them Nachat in Shamayim."