Rabbi Ferenc Raj used to drive Emmie Vida home after Torah study. And according to the spiritual leader of Berkeley’s Congregation Beth El, the aging rebbetzin “always had some questions about Torah or Judaica. She was always reading or studying something.”
Vida, who lived in Kensington for 30 years, died on June 24. She was 93.
Vida (nee Koppel) was born in 1909 in Munchen-Gladbach, Germany, though her parents came to Germany from Poland. Her father was a weaver and owned a store that sold cloth. She was the middle of seven children.
In 1930 she married Hungarian-born George Vida. Before she was married, she hoped to become a pediatrician. But like most women of her time, her education stopped once she became a wife.
Her husband’s work as a newly ordained rabbi took the couple to Jablonez-nad-Nisu in the Sudentenland of Czechoslovakia. The Vidas stayed there until the Germans began to annex the Sudentenland.
“They heard something on the radio, picked up whatever they could get into a suitcase, and we took off,” said their daughter, Ruth Meltsner, who was 7 at the time.
The family arrived in the United States in June 1938. Vida served several congregations on the East Coast, and in the early 1960s he was stationed in Germany as an army chaplain. Meanwhile, Emmie attended classes at the University of Heidelberg.
Vida founded a congregation in Rockville, Md., and served there for many years, but after he retired in 1973, the couple moved to Berkeley to be near their eldest daughter. Vida served as interim rabbi at Reform Congregation Beth El and then as scholar-in-residence, while Emmie Vida facilitated Torah study.
In 1987 the Vidas went on a tour to Prague and Budapest. Even though Emmie Vida had some traumatic memories surrounding her family obtaining visas in order to leave Europe, on her return trip she insisted that a taxi take her to the former Gestapo building.
“I felt I had to walk up those steps again,” she later told the Bulletin. “I left with the wonderful feeling [that] I had an American passport. I am an American citizen. There was nothing to fear.”
Once in Berkeley, Emmie Vida took numerous writing classes, and wrote her memoirs as well as many short stories.
Her husband died in 1989.
In 1997 she wrote in the Bulletin about an iron pan, in which her mother used to make latkes, that the family brought with them from Germany. She had many interesting stories to tell.
Meltsner described her mother as “very charming and very social.”
She was a regular at the Berkeley Richmond Jewish Community Center’s senior programs, especially its Monday kosher lunch program.
“I know when I get there, there’s always someone who has a seat for me,” she told the Bulletin in 1994.
When Hadassah, the women’s Zionist organization, honored Emmie Vida, “it was among the largest attendance they ever had,” said Meltsner. “She could get people to do things they had no idea they were capable of doing.”
Raj knew Vida ever since he became rabbi at Beth El seven years ago. “She encouraged people to do their very best always, and loved and accepted everybody. Everything she did, she did with love.”
In addition to Meltsner of El Cerrito, Vida is survived by son Henry of Gum Spring, Va., five grandchildren, eight great-grandchildren, brother Leo Koppel of Albany, N.Y. and sister Karola Loeb of San Diego.
A memorial service will be held for Vida at 10 a.m. on July 28 at Congregation Beth El, 2301 Vine St., Berkeley. Information: (510) 848-3988.
Donations can be made to Congregation Beth El, 2301 Vine Street, Berkeley, CA 94708 or Hadassah, 2215 Judah St., S.F., CA 94122.