Her husband moved to Switzerland when he was 10 years old with his family from the United States. The Sternbuchs had moved to the US after the Kishinev pogrom but had found life in New York City difficult as newly arrived immigrants. When the Sternbuch's moved to Basel, Isaac's father became a community leader for newly arriving Orthodox, in a city where Jews were mostly assimilated and had even hosted the secular Theodor Herzl at the First Zionist Congress. In this aspect, Isaac's childhood in Switzerland shared similarity with Recha's in Belgium, as his home became a meeting point for religious men and scholars to meet with his father. In fact, Abraham Isaac Kook, one of the founders of religious Zionism, was staying with the Sternbuchs in 1914 when World War I started, an experience which likely influenced the Sternbuch family's views on Zionism. Unable to find a wife in the mostly assimilated Swiss-Jewish community, Isaac met Recha after he heard the daughter of a great Rabbi was seeking a marriage.