Sunday, June 18, 2017

My Dad

My parents and our Rabbi at our son's Bar Mitzvah


My father was a foul-mouthed, lobster-eating man who didn’t really like to wear a yarmulke.  He wasn’t known for his patience with prayer.  In a kind of Passover apprenticeship, my dad spent several years side-by-side in an attempt to train Jeremy to lead a speedy seder, and then the past couple of years heckling and telling Jeremy to speed up as he led the seder on his own. My dad was just as impatient  when we said the Shabbat prayers at our house.  And I remember him spending a good portion of the High Holidays of my childhood not inside at services, but chatting outside of the building with his friends.

My dad wasn’t patient with the ritual aspects of Judaism, but he was a fiercely proud Jew - adamantly supportive of the State of  Israel, and at the same time (as anyone who followed him on social media knew) openly critical of Bibi.  He was a lifelong Temple member and leader, and a parent for whom Jewish education was mandatory.

But my father wasn’t only a proud Jew, he was a tzadik - a deeply holy man. For those not as familiar with the Jewish tradition -  tzadik isn’t really the same as a saint but it’s similar.  It’s a word we use for biblical figures and  spiritual masters.  I know it is hard to think of my swearing, dirty joke telling dad as a spiritual master, and it’s true - he wasn’t your typical holy man.   But the Hebrew word for tzadik comes from the root tzedek, righteousness or justice, and there was nothing more important to my father than justice.  

Every fight my dad fought, every client he defended, every politician he supported, every social media rant he made, was, for him, about right and wrong, about justice.  For my dad, justice was first and foremost about giving people a chance and protecting the “little guy”.  In any given situation, what it meant to get a chance and who the little guy was weren’t always clear cut.  What was fair for one person might not be fair for another.  My father deeply believed that every person deserved his or her day in court, that the system was pretty much always out to get people, and that it was his duty to help people who asked for it.  There were not simple lines; he defended people I would call good guys and people I might call something else.  Much to my great frustration and the source of more than one argument, he was even known to vote across party lines on occasion.

Jewish tradition teaches us to first give to our families, then our tribe or community, then our town, then the world.  This was my dad’s way as well.  There was nothing more important to him than his family, his community, and his town.  He went out of his way to help his kids, his parents and in-laws, his nieces and nephews.  He volunteered in his synagogue and his community; he took barter as payment, or sometimes he took no payment not at all.

I’m not sure if my father believed in God.  I’m not sure if it was even relevant to him.  What mattered to him was actions.  Not being a snob. Talking to everyone.  Helping when you can. Taking care of your family.  Showing up in your community. Standing up for the individual.

My father and I were different kind of Jews.  He didn’t always have patience for the kind of kosher keeping, prayer saying, Jew I am.  I didn’t always have patience for the kind of "using his cell phone in Temple" kind of Jew he was.  But everything I know and believe about values I learned from him and my mom, and I can only hope and pray to become half the tzadik - and person - he was.  Every moment I spent with him was a blessing; every lesson I learned from him greater than those from any Torah scholar.  I already miss him dearly, and can’t imagine life without him.