From Auschwitz to Zabar’S

Book excerpt: You will cry then cheer as Rene Feller conquers the scars of multiple traumas and celebrates life. Now in her ninth decade, Rene leads a double-layered life. Born in Czechoslovakia, she is a trauma survivor with a capital T who fights the scars of PTSD, forcing herself to get out of bed every day and get moving. She lost her mother as a young child then her father, brother, and most of her family in the Holocaust. Rene survived Auschwitz by saying she was eighteen when she was really only thirteen; she was sent to America to live with relatives she didnt know. Always searching for happiness and family, she was widowed twice and divorced once (her first marriage was tormented by a bipolar, abusive husband). She raised three daughters, one of whom has Down syndrome, and lives in a group home. The oldest daughter struggled with bipolar disorder and died several years ago. To deal with her ordeals, Rene shares her search for wholeness through Jungian analysis and a variety of alternative therapies, a search which led her to become a Rubenfeld synergist and, at age seventy, an ordained rabbi. Read how, in her later years, she learned to reclaim her feelings, her voice, and her Jewish identity. Now, in her other layer, she rejoices in sanctifying Jewish and interfaith marriages, connecting with people from all over the world in her morning coffee at Zabars Cafe.