Two days ago my family and I visited my father's grave, on the first anniversary of his passing, the 13th of Sivan. Afterwards we gathered in
As a teenager my room reflected the eclectic and perhaps hectic world I grew up in. On one wall there were pictures of hockey players and on a different wall there were pictures of famous rabbis. Leaning against a third wall was a print of a painting that to this day I haven't a clue as to how it came to be there. It was entitled "My Father's Legacy", depicting a tallit (prayer shawl) and tefillin (phylacteries – which is a word I'm in doubt people know – unless they know what tefillin means anyway) left on a table in a synagogue. They are not carefully wrapped up, but rather laid out as if the owner, the wearer, will soon return. No people are depicted in the picture – the father is gone and no one has as yet taken his place – but the hint is that the legacy is waiting for the next link in a living chain to come and wrap their lives in the prayer shawl and fasten the laws of the Torah, the words of God, to their being and actions.
So we gathered to contemplate my father's legacy. My eldest remarked that my father had a tough life, that he wasn't "in the place" he wished to be, not only in the physical sense, but in every other sense as well. He had indeed been through hell during the Holocaust, he was severed from the Chassidic world he had grown up in and for most of his life wasn't in the
For years he worked in education – and was indeed a talented educator. He inculcated in me such a natural love for
Upon retiring my father decided to realize his dream and moved to
He taught me that the Arabs should realize that not every group and sub-group in the world has their own state. He compared the Arabs in the Holy Land to the Hungarians in
Ultimately, in spite of the suffering he endured, he was by choice and with courage in the place he wanted to be most: the Holy City of Yerushalayim (