Another birthday for Australia’s oldest Jew

DALIA SABLE

MARY Rothstein, who is believed to be Australia’s oldest Jew and possibly the world’s oldest Jew, will celebrate her 109th birthday on Saturday.

Born in Russia on February 27, 1901, Mrs Rothstein could possibly hold the international title of oldest Jew, following the death earlier this month of Switzerland’s Rosa Rein, a few weeks shy of her 113th birthday.

A high-care resident at Jewish Care, Mrs Rothstein is active and coherent, enjoying regular bingo and word games and participating in many of the activities on offer at Gary Smorgon House, where she recently moved from the Smorgon Nursing Home.

Twice a grandmother and six times a great-grandmother, Mrs Rothstein knows all her family by name and remembers the months of their birthdays.

Daughter Ruth Cavallaro credits her mother’s longevity to her active life, telling The AJN that her mother “was always on the go [and] loved to keep herself busy”.

And a busy life she has had. At the age of two, Mrs Rothstein moved to London with her parents and four siblings. In 1935, she married “the love of [her] life” Joe Rothstein, giving birth to her daughter Ruth in 1936.

The family remained in England during the war, where Mrs Rothstein ran her own millinery business making hats for the royal family, before migrating to Australia in 1958.

Maintaining her ties to fashion, Mrs Rothstein worked at Myer, where she admits to lying about her age “only the once” in order to continue working beyond the then mandatory retirement age of 65.

When The AJN asked her the secret to her long life on her 106th birthday, the kosher-eating, non-drinking, non-smoking great-grandmother was uncertain. “I can’t understand why I’ve lived so long. It doesn’t seem possible,” she said.