Debt of Honor

When a congregant calls asking me to officiate at the funeral of a relative, I know what to expect. More often than not, it’s a clear sign that the deceased had no rabbi and probably no affiliation with Judaism.

So, when Phil Gotlieb (name changed) asked me to officiate at his younger brother’s levayah, I realized that his brother was almost certainly another victim of the assimilating effects of American life on the Jewish People.

Phil said, “My brother Nat, being only 12, was quite traumatized when our dad died. It was 1965 and the counterculture movement was going strong. Nat dropped out of yeshivah and moved to San Fransisco when he was only 14. He became a child of the ’60s, a hippie. When he finally returned to the East Coast, he was 30, jobless, and with no marketable skills. He had abandoned Torah, and he and his wife were never privileged to have children.”

I readily agreed to officiate. The funeral would be at the graveside the next morning, and I arrived early at the cemetery office to obtain the grave location.