ASKING FOR HER FATHER’S BLESSING Dec 24, 2009
My father-in-law, Willie, celebrates his birthday on December 24th. Probably, that was the date of his birth in Ukraine in 1919. In any event, the ship manifest from his family’s arrival in Baltimore 10 months later corroborates the month, if not the exact date. We planned to see him in Baltimore on his 90th birthday. So, how to break the news? How would he react?
As in the meeting with the rabbi, my wife once again offered copious precautionary advice, mostly focused on the appropriate answers to the inevitable questions of “Why?” and “Why now?” I listened carefully, but did not commit to a script. I said only that I would wait until that time in the course of the visit when he would predictably say “What else?” after we had gone through a list of things mundane and not so mundane.
After lunch, a game of cards, a recounting of his social calendar (he needs a social secretary) and the usual checklist of things working and not in his apartment, he said, “What else?” My wife and I sat across the table and my father-in-law at the head. Our eyes locked, we smiled and then I turned and said, “What else? Well, remember about ten years ago when we knocked on your door and we said to you and Sophie, ‘We have come to announce a simcha involving a chuppah.’ Well, this time we have come to announce a beth din involving a mikvah.”
On that prior occasion, I had spent the better part of the trip from DC to Baltimore wrapping my vocal cords around the unfamiliar sounds of simcha (literally “happiness”) and chuppah (literally a “canopy” or “covering”). Simcha as a Hebrew and Yiddish noun, means “festive occasion.” Any celebration is a happy occasion, especially a wedding, or engagement. The chuppah in a Jewish wedding ceremony is a covering stretched over four poles which symbolizes the home of the couple to be wed and under which the wedding ceremony is performed. To me, at the time, the words sounded more like a Mexican fast food dish with salsa.
Willie’s eyes welled up immediately on hearing beth din, a Jewish religious court consisting of a rabbi and two observant men which, among other things, presides over a conversion. A mikvah, is a ritual bath designed for one of its purposes to be used for the ritual immersion in Judaism in connection with a conversion. Without doubt, the Christian ritual of baptism can be traced to the mikvah. He glanced at me, and said wryly, “I assume that someone is thinking about a conversion.”
He seemed so relaxed and unsurprised that Sarah and I suspected that either the rabbi or his assistant had somehow tipped him off. This seemed more likely since the rabbi’s assistant, a close and longtime friend of Willie, had been over for a visit earlier the same day. But our suspicions were misplaced, evident by Willie’s reaction when he found out that she and the rabbi had been part of our little conspiracy.
Then Sarah said to Willie, “Any questions?” To which Willie said, “I suppose the obvious one, ‘Why?’”
Sarah had that look she always gets when she knows that I am operating without a script over which she has editorial approval. Returning to the theme of the simcha and the chuppah, I said that we had been talking about our ten year anniversary and the possibility of renewing our wedding vows. That conversation and other things over the last several months had started me thinking about our life together, past, present and future. “But a lot of the decision had to do with my respect and admiration for you, Willie, and my desire to have you be part of the studies leading to conversion. Assuming, of course, that are you willing to play that role.”
At this point he surprised us both. “I had been thinking about this for a long time. I was wondering whether we could all be together. I used to cry about it; I really did. I was so worried that Sarah would be without you in the cemetery and we would not all be together.” Though our eyes were welled up with tears, we all then burst out laughing. So it was about the real estate after all!
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