Lessons Learned From Fishl

When I call you with some idea or issue, you caution me to examine my intention and distinguish between a good reason and the real reason. The right decision is harder. Work is its own reward. “What’s the difference between a duck”? That question rattled me to the core. I guess you were teaching me that some questions can’t be answered, but richness and discovery lays in contemplating them. Look for interrelationships between unrelated concepts and ask more questions. If the idea was popular or well accepted, it meant that it wasn’t novel. Your dad said, I may be wrong, but I’m never in doubt. Get off the fence.

Pass on your heritage, otherwise you’re adrift without an anchor. You sent all of us to Israel, even before yourself. Your stories from Chelm spark the Pintele Yid in us. Seven page letters arrived from you every week after I moved to Florida. Mom would be shopping and you’d carry a clipboard with unlined paper, sit on the floor, propped against a wall, and knock out seven pages on soybeans… or Sebastopol, on what it felt like to become a grandfather after seeing Melanie, for the first time. Seven pages of reflections, adventures, astronomy, politics, the farm; I treasure them all. On long morning walks before school you’d quiz me on the names of plants we passed. Snowy days, we shoveled or did Canadian Air Force exercises. Ice cream trumped.

Involve everyone in what you are doing. Take math until it hurts. You never looked at my report card, said my grades were between me and my teacher. Homework can be finished; studying is never done. So, now I study Yiddish … but I don’t do the homework! Think about other people’s feelings because they matter. Don’t volunteer unless you are passionate about something. If it isn’t fun, replace it. Remember, only worry if its any of your business and you can do something to fix it.

Every night, before bed, you’d gather my brother and sister and me. You asked each of us to contribute one item to incorporate into a story. We tried to pick things with no connection: a trash can, a toothbrush, a telescope. Over the course of the next hour, we waited anxiously. Surely, you’d forget one. Like watching a juggler, we waited for you to drop one of the items that still lurked in the air. Then, near the end, when we were getting sleepy, zap… there it was. Now, we have your stories on tape. My favorite is the greedy woman who lusted after a diamond ring. Hashem turned her into a puppy, and the ring into a stone. Everywhere the puppy walked, the rock dug into her paw. Finally, she helped saved a homeless man…poof, she was turned into a young mother, full of compassion.

Growing up with you was a little different. We spent weekends at museums or went digging at rock quarries. Sedimentary, metamorphic, feldspar, quartz and calcite were your impetus to scratch at a rock’s surface to reveal hidden qualities long buried. No wonder helping to revive Yiddish and uncovering its treasures intrigue you so. Students visiting faraway beaches brought back sand for your collection. Every jar was catalogued…we could feel the grains of earth, and touch some exotic place that was out of reach for our family on a teacher’s salary. When I or a friend asked you for information for a school project, you’d write the request on an index card which you kept in your shirt pocket. There was never an excuse. Your only disappointment was that I didn’t become a research librarian… in your world, the highest career.

When Melanie was two, we packed up our house in N.J. to move to Florida. You and Mom came to watch Melanie. Hours later, we went looking for you. Melanie, who wasn’t talking yet, was in her room standing innocently with her back to the closet door. She had seen all her stuff being packed away to go to Florida. Worried that she would lose her most prized possession, Poppy Phil, she had stashed you away in her closet. There you stayed in silence and in the dark, not about to squeal on her for fear she would get in trouble. Later, on her birthday, you’d give her tzedakah to share with seven strangers.

You showed us the importance of giving back, helping to preserve and promote Yiddish. Der Bay is like a home away from home, a place for expression and sharing among its pages. A Yiddish club here, a klezmer concert there, you have affected so many lives and I take pride in the irrepressible enthusiasm you evoke when you share a new friend you’ve made or reacquainted two long lost friends. You talk about Sholom Aleichem who, as an older man, wrote stories even a seven-year-old could enjoy. When Jeff and you talk, he says it’s like you’re walking the college campus together. Growing up, we lived your compassion as temple president and head of the Teacher’s Union. You taught us not to be afraid of other people’s problems or our own.

Now it is I who sit on the floor of your room, walls covered with shelves of books donated to you by authors you now call friends. The sweetest kind of love you show me is the gift of any book, to take back to my own children. With each one I pick up I hear your story of the person who wrote it. I treasure your memories of life on the Kutner Chicken Farm. Now you raise friendships.

With love from your youngest daughter, Debbie