They’ve never met formally, but they have a lot in common. They both live in central New Jersey. They both have two children—a son and a daughter. They both have families that traveled across continents to improve their futures in America. They attend the same Chabad House, but at different times and on schedules that match the current stages of their lives. On Sunday, Feb. 8, however, they will both come together as part of the 28th annual local event associated with “Jewish Women’s Day.”
Renata Magurdumov, 36, and Marion Bernstein, 68, will each be presented with the “Eishet Chayil” (“Woman of Valor”) Award for their support of Chabad Lubavitch of Western Monmouth County in Manalapan, N.J. The event there—as it does in other locales—honors the memory of Rebbetzin Chaya Mushka Schneerson, of righteous memory, the wife of the Lubavitcher Rebbe, Menachem M. Schneerson, of righteous memory.
Nearly 350 people are expected to attend the luncheon at the Freehold Jewish Center. The theme of this year’s symposium is “Jewish Women, the Power of Now.”
Tova Chazanow, co-director of the Chabad center with her husband, Rabbi Boruch Chazanow, emphasizes that each year, certain women are chosen for the specific award for their ability “to care and to grow, and to make a difference.”
No great feat need be done; there’s no check-off list of accomplishments that must be met. The honorees are simply women who have had a ripple effect on others, and who are in the midst of their own personal Jewish journeys.
“As they say, there are no saints in Judaism,” affirms Chazanow. “We’re all people; we’re all human. It’s the foot soldiers, the regular person who changes the world.”
‘Connect at Such a Deep Level’
When asked about the award, Magurdumov pauses to find just the right words before responding: “I’m honored to be in such company and so humbled to be in that category. I feel a lot of responsibility ... that people felt I deserved this.”
Magurdumov was born in Odessa, Ukraine, where she says she had no Jewish influences at all. She left at the age of 9 with her parents, younger sister, grandparents and other relatives, arriving in the United States in 1989. The family settled in Brooklyn, N.Y., where she and her sister attended the Nefesh Academy, a yeshivah for Russian immigrant girls. Afterwards, she went to Pace University, earned a bachelor’s and a master’s degree, and worked for 10 years in management information systems. Now she serves as director of marketing for her husband Ruben’s company; he is originally from Tashkent.
Growing up in Brooklyn, she was familiar with Chabad and its activities, and says she appreciated the emphasis on doing mitzvahs, the ease of it. She and her husband eventually found themselves at Chabad in Manalapan for their soon-to-be 8-year-old daughter’s baby-naming. From there, Magurdumov gradually got involved, taking Jewish Learning Institute (JLI) courses and then attending the Tuesday-morning Torah-portion class run by Tova Chazanow.
Three years ago, she “made it a priority.”
“I committed to it,” she says. “It offers inspiration for everyday life; the parsha talks to you every week. The more I learn, the more blown away I am by the depth and meaning of G‑d and creation and life, and the more I want to do things Jewishly.”
Last year she planned on attending just the banquet of the Kinus Hashluchos, the International Conference of Chabad-Lubavitch Emissaries in New York, but instead wound up going to the entire four-day program. “I came back so uplifted, so energized,” she recalls. “I felt like I was shining. I’m still in touch with women I met there. With Chabad, you connect at such a deep level.”
She’s again getting ready for the Kinus, which this year runs from Feb. 12 to Feb. 15. And what is she looking forward to the most? Immediately, she replies: “Everything!”
‘It’s So Much a Way of Life’
At the age of 3, Marion Bernstein moved to a farm in Vineland in South Jersey. Her parents, born in Germany, were Holocaust survivors who met in New York and relocated to the country to boost her father’s poor health (he was beaten and left for dead by the SS). Other survivors and Jewish families did the same.
It was hard work, she remembers, and often lonely, especially because she had no siblings. But what she did have was a tight-knit community of Jewish immigrants. “Yiddishkeit was very much a part of it. We all got together on Shabbat and the holidays. The friends you make become your family.”
She recalls the forming of a co-op, a Jewish poultry man’s club, a shul. Her parents were Orthodox, but they were miles and miles away from everything. “I didn’t realize, but we were living a Chabad life; we were taught to help one another. Yiddishkeit was the center of our lives.”
After graduating from public school, Bernstein attended Douglass College, the women’s counterpart at the time to Rutgers University, studying sociology and psychology. She married in 1967, then moved outside of Washington, D.C., where her husband, Howard, started work as an electrical engineer for NASA and she finished her studies at the University of Maryland. There, she did some teaching and eventually stayed home to raise her kids.
When the couple, married for 47 years now, moved back to New Jersey in 1978—Freehold, to be exact—she returned to work. They met the Chazanows shortly afer their arrival in the late 1980s, and right away, Bernstein’s husband offered to help get the computers up and running. He was also one of the first men in the minyan, and “it evolved from there,” she says.
Now she attends as much as she can and also frequents the more recent Chabad of Freehold, literally around the corner from her home, co-directed by Rabbi Avrohom and Zisi Bernstein. “Chabad is like family—that’s where you meet your friends, that’s where you are. It’s so much a way of life,” says Bernstein.
In 2013, she retired from a career in social work and threw herself into volunteering. She’s involved in bikur cholim, visiting the sick in hospitals on Fridays, as well as the “Smile on Seniors” program and the Friendship Circle, which pairs teens with special-needs kids. She’s filled food baskets for Purim, participated in the book club, taken JLI classes and sells ShopRite supermarket script to benefit Chabad.
“Tell me what you need, and I’ll try to do it” is the philosophy of this grandmother of one (with another grandchild on the way).
As for the upcoming honor, she says she feels humbled—and a bit terrified about the prospect of having to give a speech.
But at the same time, she thinks of her parents; her upbringing steels her and keeps her grounded. “I’m honoring the values they taught me—you have to help one another; that’s what you do. You inspire other people to do things. I was taught to live Torah, and am honoring a way of life.”
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