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I always thought
I had been here before.
Each year of my patched-up life
I mended the fabrics
of my decrepit, tattered world.
In memory I recognized faces and smiles,
even my father and mother…
Even after the mourning period was over, when the flat was finally empty and my father and I locked the door and were alone together, we hardly talked to one another. Except about the most essential…
The Jews held cattle dealers in contempt. They considered them illiterate louts in no way different from peasants. My grandfather never let a cattle dealer into his house. Into the barn yes, but never…
Now comes the turn, with awe and reverence, awe and reverence without end, of my father, the pious, God-fearing, learned one, may his strength be for the Torah [see Esther 2:15], the supernal light…
My mother and I are out walking. I ask if she remembers the women in that building in the Bronx. “Of course,” she replies. I tell her I’ve always thought sexual rage was what made them so crazy.…
Few children know the stories of their parents. During my childhood, I knew only that mine were an impossible match—which did not prevent my mother from spending day and night at my father’s bedside…
I remember the moment when it dawned on me that my father did not impress the world at large as a powerful figure. We were at a camera store on the Plaza—a faux-Andalusian shopping district that…
The day he was gone her suitor arrived. I don’t know what else to call him. He advertised himself as my uncle, but he didn’t have our famous cheekbones and Tatar eyes. He couldn’t have belonged to…
At five o’clock in the morning our commanders stormed into the dormitories to wake us. No morning gymnastics. We are in a high state of alert. Our comrades who were on night duty report…
The parting was not long in coming. My father died two months before I turned six.
To this day, I go to him at difficult times. Mostly to complain that he abandoned me. The handful of memories that he…