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Rabbi Janine Jankovitch, Pat Rubins, Michael Schattman, Amy Rubins, Rachel Rubins, Rita Rubins, Daniel Rubins and Mary Ellen Schattman at Rachel\u2019s bat mitzvah in 2015. (Courtesy of the family)<\/p>\nRabbi Janine Jankovitch, Pat Rubins, Michael Schattman, Amy Rubins, Rachel Rubins, Rita Rubins, Daniel Rubins and Mary Ellen Schattman at Rachel\u2019s bat mitzvah in 2015. (Courtesy of the family)<\/p>\n
On Fridays, Michael and Mary Ellen Schattman\u2019s route could stretch from Lansdale to Philadelphia\u2019s Overbrook School for the Blind, on to feeding therapy in Langhorne and finally back home.<\/p>\n
Their granddaughter Amy needed help learning to eat. Whatever the distance or appointment, the couple worked it into their lives.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhatever Amy had to have, Mike and I saw to it she had it,\u201d Mary Ellen said.<\/p>\n
That commitment brought the Schattmans from Texas to Montgomery County in March 2007. Their daughter, Rita Rubins, and her husband, Dan, were raising two young girls. Amy, who is deafblind and intellectually impaired, had significant support needs, while her older sister, Rachel, needed attention and opportunities of her own.<\/p>\n
The grandparents came to help with both. Over two decades, they became fixtures at school events, therapy appointments and synagogue programs, sharing the work of raising the girls and supporting their Jewish upbringing.<\/p>\n
Michael died Oct. 9 of a heart attack at 80. For Mary Ellen and Rita, his death has brought into focus the life the couple built around being nearby and available.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was invaluable,\u201d Rita said of her parents\u2019 help. \u201cI had somebody that I could trust.\u201d<\/p>\n
Rita, a paralegal, and Dan Rubins, a scientist with a doctorate at Merck, moved to Pennsylvania in 2004. Amy was born the following year. As her parents sought testing, they learned that she had hearing and vision impairments and difficulty swallowing, but no clear picture of how she would develop.<\/p>\n
Rita left graduate school as therapy appointments and exercises filled the week. In Texas, Michael was approaching retirement from a legal career that had included service as a state district judge and, in D.C., general counsel of the Small Business Administration. Mary Ellen had worked in hospital finance and government, including overseeing a hospital mortgage insurance program at the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development.<\/p>\n
They had met at a college mixer in 1965 and married during graduation week in 1968. Now, they faced another shared decision: where their time and experience were needed most.<\/p>\n
Leaving Texas meant leaving friends and the legal community Michael knew. Pennsylvania, he half-jokingly complained, had too many trees. But concern for Amy and Rachel outweighed those losses, Mary Ellen said.<\/p>\n
Michael understood the value of an involved grandparent. His blind Jewish grandfather, Ben Schattman, had lived with his family when he was growing up in Fort Worth. The two were very close.<\/p>\n
In Philadelphia, the couple first rented an apartment near Rita\u2019s family. They helped pay for additional physical, speech and feeding therapies, accompanied Amy to medical appointments and practiced exercises with her. They also fed her and helped keep up with laundry.<\/p>\n
Their presence made family travel possible. On a trip to Michigan for Amy\u2019s medical evaluation, Rachel was upset about missing Halloween at home. Her grandparents helped create a hotel celebration with candy and costumes, changing outfits repeatedly as they traded trick-or-treat visits between rooms.<\/p>\n
At home, Michael met Rachel\u2019s school bus and came to know the other parents and their dogs. The couple took her to libraries and museums, supported cello lessons and attended concerts. During summer trips to Pittsburgh, Rachel attended cello camp while Amy went to a communication program, with the adults dividing responsibilities.<\/p>\n
Neither grandparent converted to Judaism, but both embraced their grandchildren\u2019s Jewish upbringing and became involved in Jewish life around Philadelphia. Michael was raised Catholic with Jewish family roots; Mary Ellen came from an Irish Catholic family. When Rita converted to Judaism, they attended classes at Adas Israel Congregation in Washington to learn how to support her.<\/p>\n
In Pennsylvania, they joined Rosh Hashanah dinners, Passover celebrations and other family observances.<\/p>\n
\u201cMy mom can make a better Shabbat dinner than I can,\u201d Rita said.<\/p>\n
At Congregation Beth Or, they participated in Celebrations, an adapted Shabbat program Rita helped bring to the synagogue.<\/p>\n
They bought musical instruments and a large prayer shawl used in activities, including recreating the crossing of the Red Sea.
The families sang, discussed Jewish teachings and made room for children to participate in their own ways. The Schattmans helped Rita host Shabbat dinners for the Celebrations families, extending those connections beyond the synagogue. For the grandparents, the program offered friendships and discussions of Jewish ideas alongside time with their granddaughter.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was so important to me and to the other moms that our kids\u2019 Jewishness was just as worthy as their older sisters\u2019,\u201d Rita said.<\/p>\n
The Schattmans helped fund the girls\u2019 bat mitzvah celebrations. At Amy\u2019s service, relatives and a family friend shared readings on her behalf. Her party included a magician, petting zoo, food trucks and a drum circle.<\/p>\n
They also enrolled Rachel and Amy as founding members of the Weitzman National Museum of American Jewish History when its new building opened in 2010. The couple took their grandchildren there regularly. They encouraged Rachel\u2019s travel and interfaith dialogue programs and supported Hillel as a religious home during her years at Franklin & Marshall College.<\/p>\n
Today, Rachel works in the legal field in Wisconsin. Amy, 21, lives with Rita and Dan and continues attending school. Mary Ellen remains involved, including in preparations for Rachel\u2019s wedding next September. Family wedding dresses and other heirloom fabrics are being fashioned into a chuppah.<\/p>\n
Looking back on the move, Mary Ellen described a decision grounded in what the family needed and what she and Michael could give.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe saw what was important to do,\u201d she said. \u201cAnd we moved up here to do it.\u201d<\/p>\n
Ellen Braunstein is a freelance writer.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Rabbi Janine Jankovitch, Pat Rubins, Michael Schattman, Amy Rubins, Rachel Rubins, Rita Rubins, Daniel Rubins and Mary Ellen…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":320588,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[76034,15328,111152,25858,182,130220,69,71,70],"class_list":["post-320587","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-philadelphia","tag-congregation-beth-or","tag-disabilities","tag-grandparents","tag-jewish-life","tag-local-news","tag-michael-schattman","tag-philadelphia","tag-philadelphia-headlines","tag-philadelphia-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/320587","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=320587"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/320587\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/320588"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=320587"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=320587"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=320587"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}