I’m writing this on 7 Iyar the 12th yahrtzeit of my beloved father Reb Mordechai ben Reb Yoseif Chaim Eliezer z”l. Reflecting back on his life it’s clear to me that no matter how skilled a parent is in imparting lessons to us in word and even deed there just isn’t anything quite as powerful and lasting as what his essence does for us what we get by simple osmosis. Abba was a wonderful and wise teacher a natural who devoted his life to that calling; his true love was teaching Jewish children but later in life circumstances saw to it that public school kids were his lucky beneficiaries.
He could and would use anything to help him make a point. One story we tell in our house is of the time he was in class a steaming cup of coffee on his desk to help him get through the six teaching periods that he’d mirthfully call his “six shows a day” when in walked his department chairman for a surprise evaluation visit. Pivoting agilely Abba launched into an impromptu science lesson built entirely around the contraband coffee. First he introduced to the class the term “exothermic ” or heat-emitting pointing to the cup of coffee the steam rising from it. The companion term he continued is “endothermic ” or heat-absorbing which he said “is what happens when I do this” — as he lifted the “visual aid” to his lips and took a sip of coffee. Needless to say he got an excellent evaluation.
But with all his teaching gifts the most important things I got from my father were seemingly transmitted through the air itself as if they were germs — healthy life-giving ones. Notice how we speak of someone’s “infectious” joy or love of something because that’s exactly what happens: unbeknownst to us and assuming we haven’t been “inoculated” by cynicism we get infected with the wonderful attitudes of a parent or teacher or friend.
I have a vivid early memory of my father returning home from his weekly visit to my big brother away at his Brooklyn yeshivah high school and telling me how he’d dropped by the nearby pizza shop whose Yemenite proprietor would regale him with pshatim andmidrashim galore on the parshah which he’d then share with me. The fellow was malei v’gadush (full and overflowing) Abba would enthuse; that was the phrase he’d use as the highest compliment for a talmid chacham and to this day my neshamah tingles when I hear someone use it.
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