Missing Dad

August 10, 2008 - 7:03 PM by Rachel Neiman

It’s Tisha B’Av, the saddest day of the Jewish calendar. Although I don’t fast, I do feel an affinity, a closeness to the destruction of the Second Temple, maybe because my Dad talked about it a lot. This is what happens when you’re the child of a Jewish historian – or maybe just the child of a Jew – some far-away events become very immediate and very real.

The destruction of the Second Temple by the Romans in 70 CE marked the beginning of the Jewish Diaspora, and the beginning of the long and complicated relationship between the Church and the Jews – a topic on which my Dad built his career. But all this is very abstract and that’s the hard part of trying to mourn on a midsummer day when the weather outside is gorgeous and life in general is pretty darn good. And so I find my thoughts wandering towards the personal and missing my Dad, who passed away four and a half years ago.

“Who am I going to call when I have a question about something? I’m going to have to buy an encyclopedia,” my sister Becky said, only half-jokingly, at the shiva. It was true. If you ever had a question about anything, at any time of the day or night, all you had to do was call Dad. My father had a prodigious memory and was interested in just about everything, from the Sumerian cuneiform glyphs on which he’d done his PhD. (with a good deal of prodding from my mother, as he was always easily distracted) to Jennifer Lopez’s impending marriage to Ben Affleck (he was relieved when it got called off). Now we were going to have to fend intellectually for ourselves.

My mother died when we were young, so there was no one to oversee this absent-minded professor while we were growing up. Her death was our own personal First Temple destruction – damaging on a psychic level – but his death has sent us into a familial Diaspora. Spread out over three continents, we work very hard now to see one another.

Partly as therapy, but mostly to keep alive the work of a great teacher and lecturer who didn’t publish very much, Becky has spent a good part of the last four years sorting, editing and publishing audio and video versions of Dad’s lectures. My other sister had a baby and named him for Dad. Me? I think about him and my mom, and write stuff down.

Tags: , , • Category: History and Culture, Holidays, Immigrant Moments, Life 

Comments

3 Comments on Missing Dad

  1. Efrat Gurman on Tue, Aug 12th 2008 7:25 AM

    2. i love you.
    would you like to be part of my family?

  2. varda on Mon, Oct 27th 2008 7:47 AM

    3. wow. my favorite part here is “….. and life in general is pretty darn good.”

  3. Israelity » Nostalgia Sunday - Mommy’s trip to Sinai on Sun, Nov 9th 2008 10:46 PM

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