Chicago, IL – In the weeks since her middle son won his mayoral campaign, Marsha Emanuel has found herself waking up in the middle of the night and creeping down to the family room to look at the pictures hanging on the wall.
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The faces in the faded photographs stare back at her: Her father, Herman Smulevitz, who immigrated to Chicago in 1917 to escape the anti-Jewish violence in the Moldovan region; her aunt who stayed behind and died in the Holocaust; her brother-in-law, Emanuel Aurbach, who was killed in a 1933 skirmish with Arabs in Palestine, a death that so profoundly affected her husband’s parents they changed the family surname to “Emanuel” in his honor.
 Tears fill Marsha Emanuel’s eyes as she looks at them all.
“I think about how proud they would all be,” she says as her voice chokes with emotion. “My father came to Chicago looking for a better life, and two generations later, his grandson is elected mayor. I don’t even know how to describe it. What’s the word the kids use today? Awesome? Well, this is awesome.”
As Inauguration Day approaches, Marsha Emanuel and her husband, Benjamin, spoke with the Tribune about their son Rahm’s political triumph and its place in the family history. They granted the rare interview in their Wilmette home, the modest split-level where they have lived since the late ’60s and raised three sons by stressing the importance of family, faith and fairness.
All three boys have become titans in their chosen fields. The oldest, Ezekiel, is an oncologist and one of the nation’s leading bioethicists. The youngest, Ariel, is a powerful Hollywood agent and the inspiration for the Ari Gold character on the TV series “Entourage.”
In the middle is Rahm, 51, who soon will become Chicago’s 46th mayor. He takes charge of the country’s third-largest city Monday with a resume that includes three terms in Congress and two years as President Barack Obama’s chief of staff.
Read more at Chicago Tribune
Such yiddishe nachas!!!!!!
Nebach
ditto no.1
nebach
Nebech all the family names sound so hiemish,
Poor RAHM is clueless about tidishkiet
His real family name is Aurbach? A yerushalmi? Related to HoRav Shlomo Zalman zt”l?
Three successful sons. Great nachas for a mother who did her job well
All three son’s working. Where did she go wrong? No daughter in law in PT?
please Dear Jewish Brethren,
Define your favorite Jewish word, “nebach”. My innocent ears have rarely been exposed to such thoughts in the past and clearly I must assume that I need to know such illustrious vocabulary. I do suspect it is an equvalent of “B.S.” or “shonda” or something of the like. Please do define the said term for a newly introduced Jew to “religious” Judaism.
In my opinion, those of you who say “nebach” on such success stories are really jealous of this man and his family. You are jealous of successful people, so you hang onto some idea that you are somehow superior anyway and you use a word that means “pity on them”….so totally inappropriate…. because you believe that you are more “frum” than others. I wonder what Hashem thinks.
Funny, I always thought that orthodox judaism called for ORTHODOX LANGUAGE. I am afraid dear children that the lovely word “nebach” is neither orthodox nor friendly. So if you really think that you want to obey the Torah of Moses, I suggest you pass a note around to your dear friends and discuss how nasty that word presents itself. You may wish to indeed call me the “nebach”, but I will tell you all that you are neither friendly nor are you Torah orientated with that sort of vocabulary. Saying that it is in our verbal compository for the last many generations does not excuse you from the pain and suffering you have caused a fellow jew or even the insult you throw at another person who may or may not know your “sophisticated” diatribe. So please dear Brethren, consider that you are not keeping our Values and you are indeed causing pain and suffering. I have once been referred to as that lovely idiom and I can assure you that it was not forgotten nor have I cared to consider the challenger as my friend any further. So being a “newly introduced orthodox Jew”, I will suggest to you dear children that your choice of verbal soliloquies is Offensive. Best Wishes.
If “pity on them” is the rough translation of Nebach, I will suggest to you that truly we can have pity on another person, but to express that in a way that we are elating our own self esteem is a way that we violate Torah. This really is a big deal. Perhaps you can say that word to yourself in your thoughts, but to express it openly shows contempt and dissolution. So best wishes again. I will not be incorporating that word into my own vocabulary. Thanks for the bagels. I’ll leave the cheese behind.
Proud to have intermarried yordim that put the squeeze on Israel?
Why odes this article state that “Rahm Emanuel will soon become Chicago’s Mayor”? He has been Mayor for months!
Perhaps Benjamin Emmanuel, Rahm’s father, is now proud of Rahm for his political successes. But the Benjamin Emmanuel, of 50 years ago, would have neutered himself first had he known at the time that he would have an intermarried son who would threaten Israel’s existence by political pressure.
Benjamin should hope that he is being punished b’olam hazeh.
when we say ‘nebach’ in this case, we mean what a shame, a shanda, a disgrace etc. If you have a problem with this word, too bad!!! We don’t have to sugar coat stuff for you.
And he also told a group of local Chicago askanim the following diyuk: that he will not be a “Jewish mayor, rather a mayor who is Jewish.”
I say “nebach” to all the self-righteous “religious” phonies who preach to everyone else and have nothing nice to say about anyone slightly different from themselves.
We should all be so perfect that we can be the judge of any mother’s children.
The only thing that bothers me about this story is how a job was carved out for this egomaniac.