Nesha was a good match for the young rabbi. Like Samuel, she came from a respected rabbinic line; her father, Rabbi Nachum Twersky, was a direct descendant of the Ba'al Shem Tov. Also like Samuel, she had lost her mother, Malcha, when she was young. So she understood what it was like to be an orphan. Nesha remembered:
"We lived in Kishinev--my father, my two brothers, and a sister…There was a fire in the shul. By the time my mother ran out the smoke had damaged her lungs. My older brother, too, damaged his lungs. My mother went to a sanitarium but they couldn't cure her and she died. My brother died, too. I don't remember my mother. There weren't any pictures. I never knew what she looked like. The people who knew her told me my mother was a beautiful woman. Do you know what it is like never to have a mother? Never to know a mother's love?”
Also like Samuel, Nesha had to deal with a new stepmother and a new home in a distant land. Her father remarried a rabbi's daughter, and subsequently the family moved to the United States.
"If it were not for my stepmother's parents we would have been killed in the Holocaust. Her parents came to the United States and brought her and our family over. I was about 15 years old. We settled in New York.”[1]
But all was not milk and honey in the Promised Land. According to Nesha:
"My father was very good to us but he couldn't get along with [his new wife]. They had fights. Sometimes my father would send us children some place nice on vacation in the summertime, and she would be jealous. Her mother used to come in and got mad at my father. She didn't think he did enough for her daughter. She would say, Did you lose a lot of strength on my daughter? And he would reply, Did you lose a lot of strength on my children? My stepmother never had any children of her own.”
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Nesha with David outside their apartment in Mattapan |
Nesha’s marriage to Samuel Korff gave them both the opportunity to make a happier home for themselves. The newlyweds remained in New York for two years, during which time their elder son, David was born.[2] Soon after the baby arrived, Samuel received a job offer in Boston and the couple pulled up roots to move to New England. Leaving her family in New York was difficult for Nesha, but her husband’s future was her first consideration.
"I didn't want to move to Boston," Nesha remembered, "but my husband got a position in Boston. I didn't want to leave my father. David was about 7 months old, so my father came with me when we moved and stayed for four or five days while I got settled.”
Samuel and Nesha rented an apartment for $40 a month at 1238 Blue Hill Avenue in Mattapan, a predominantly Jewish neighborhood, close to Dorchester where Samuel’s family lived. After Samuel and Nesha’s younger son, Joseph, was born, they decided it was time to move to a nicer place.
"We wanted to buy a house in Mattapan at 573 Norfolk Street," said Nesha. "It was an old house and there was a lot of remodeling to do in it. But it was a spacious twelve-room home and there was a beautiful lawn in front. There were three rooms on the top floor. We had to build several steps so the people could walk up. It was like an apartment.
"My husband needed a mortgage. He went to a man, a very nice man, who knew my husband very well. The man went to a [non-kosher] restaurant and he wanted my husband to go in with him. My husband said, No, I can't go in there. I’ll wait outside. So after he came out the man said, Rabbi Korff, now I can trust you, since you didn't want to go in there because it is not kosher. Now I can see you are a reliable person.”
