Every Friday night, a group of Jewish men meet in the apartment building I grew up in and greet the Sabbath.  Most of the men are older or find it difficult to travel to a temple.  Traditionally, you need ten men to form a “minyan,” the group that prays together.  In Judaism, praying in a group during Shabbat is considered more important than praying alone (sorry ladies, traditional Judaism doesn’t count women as part of the minyan). 

I’m not very religious and don’t go to temple very often, but I was honored to be asked to join the minyan for the night.  The leader of the group said it would be a good opportunity for me to say “Kaddish,” the traditional prayer said for the deceased.   I can read Hebrew and know the prayer, but I’ve never stood in front of a group of religious men and said Kaddish out loud in honor of my father.  It was an experience as powerful as my bar mitzvah.   The ancient text praising G-d really leapt off the page for me.  During the service, Kaddish is said three times.  During the first time, my voice was uncertain and croaky, so the leader said the prayer along with me.  But by the last reading, I found my confidence and read it in a strong voice.

When I returned to my apartment, I felt nervous energy coming from my mother and Sophia.  My mother was going through a pile of my father’s paperwork.    He was a real “paper saver” who kept bills and receipts from decades ago.   I showed my mother how to use the shredder I bought my father last year, something he never even plugged in.

Sophia was involved in another matter – our trip home.  When we learned that those so-called “bereavement fares” were a joke (and cost more than the regular fares), we used our American Airlines frequent flier miles to come to New York.    Earlier that day, we learned that if we wanted to, we could make a multi-day stopover anywhere in the continental U.S. on the way back.   Sophia said we could use a few days of rest after the last few weeks of stress and sorrow.  We asked my mother to come along wherever we went, but she wanted to go back to work.   I went through my list of bloggers, thinking whom to visit, but we decided on Albuquerque because I saw that they are having a world-famous International Balloon Festival next week.   We booked the flight, but then we realized the most of the hotels were already filled.  So, when I came back from services, Sophia was all frustrated from trying to find a hotel.   She asked for my help, but I told her I was exhausted.   The week’s tensions were finally hitting me.  Until now, we had all been too busy to feel tired.   From the minute we arrived in New York, it’s been visits to the hospital, arranging for the funeral, and sitting shiva.  I felt my body collapsing and went to my parents’ room and quickly fell asleep.

The next morning, I woke up in the same bed.  Sophia was sleeping next to me.  My mother was asleep in the living room.   It was pretty early in the morning, but the New York City Sanitation trucks were already rolling outside.   I had a morning hard-on.   I moved against Sophia and she told me to get lost.  “We’re separated, remember?”  Besides, she was up half the night looking for hotels in Albuquerque and was upset that I woke her up.   I went to take a shower.

I turned on the water and stepped inside the shower stall.  It was nice to feel the water against my back.  I’d been so tense.  Still hard, I started playing with myself.   I looked down at my penis and laughed — I remembered being in the exact same spot doing the exact same thing when I was fifteen years old.   Maybe I was just too tired from the last two weeks, but for some reason, after a few minutes, I lost interest in what I was doing.  That would never have happened to me when I was fifteen.

I stepped out of the shower and dried myself off.    Through the closed door, I could hear that my mother was now up.    I could hear the grinding of the shredder ripping up my father’s receipts from 1995.  I could hear that Sophia was now awake also.  I could hear her watching the “Alias” episode that she had taped on my my mother’s ancient VCR.   Well, for a minute, at least.  Then I could hear her telling my mother off for switching channels and taping a Food Channel show and the cable menu instead.

With my cock still up, I couldn’t leave the bathroom… just yet.  I wiped the “fog” from the bathroom mirror and looked at myself standing there.    While we were sitting shiva, we had covered all the mirrors — as is traditional.  Now that the mourning period was over, was my father looking down at me now from heaven?   Do I even believe in that stuff?  And if he is, couldn’t the same be said for my Grandma and my late Aunt Ruthie?  Jeez, are all of my deceased relatives seeing me now with an erection?  How embarrassing. 

But It didn’t seem weird at all to think of my father as I looked at my penis.  After all, the male circumcision is what bonds the Jewish male to the Jewish people.   I remember when I was a little kid, I used to take a shower with my father.  I remember looking forward to the day when I could have hair on my chest and a man’s penis hanging there, not a boy’s penis.  Suddenly, it occurred to me that, as the only son, I’m now the “man of the family.”  But what does that mean?   My father was so much more of a “man” when he was my age.  He had a steady job, a steady marriage, and a son. 

“You have none of these.” I thought I heard my penis say to me.

“You’re right,” I said.   

"You know it’s Rosh Hashana in a few days," my penis continued.

"I do."

"The Jewish New Year is the ideal time to make changes in your life.   You can start to become the man you want to be."

My wants as a man have so far been pretty simple so far:  good Chinese food, the open thighs of a woman, and a subscription to HBO.   Maybe it was time to become as accomplished a man as my father.  To know what it actually means to be a man.

"You stood up and said Kaddish at the minyan.  That’s a good start." said my penis, being encouraging. 

"Thank you," I told my friend.

Sophia knocked on the door.

“Hurry up, Neilochka.  I need to use the bathroom.  And… who are you talking to anyway?”

Today was our last morning of sitting shiva.  In the Jewish tradition, at the end of the shiva, we are supposed to leave the house and walk once around the block.  None of us knew the reason for this tradition, so yesterday, we asked a few of our visitors.  We received many different "answers," including:

1)  to get some exercise after sitting all week.

2)  to show the rest of the neighborhood that you’re done sitting shiva.

3)  to take all your tsuris (Yiddish for trouble) and get rid of it by throwing it on the first neighbor you meet!
 
Then Sophia looked it up online and found the most convincing answer:

Walking around the block is a symbol of the beginning of a return to normalcy.  Also, there is a belief that the soul of the departed hovers around during the shiva, when everyone is talking about the person that died.  In the old country, the cemetery was located at the edge of the shtetl (a village).  At the end of sitting shiva, the bereaved would "escort the soul" to its final resting place.

So many friends and neighbors came this week and said so many beautiful things about my father.  At times, my mother and I gave each other little glances when the praise for my father went over the top.  It’s hard to think of your father or husband in "saintly" terms.  As kind a person as he was, he also had his quirks, and I’d like to remember those as well as his good deeds.  My father did plenty of things that drove me crazy.  He was a neatnik, a hoarder, an obsessive scheduler, and the slowest dresser that ever existed.   But that’s what made him my father.   I want to remember everything about him, good and bad.

I’m not much of a spiritual person, but even I felt my father’s presence as we prepared to take our post-shiva "walk around the block."  When we stepped outside, it was a little windy, so Sophia asked me to go upstairs and get her a jacket.  As I turned back, a wind blew and the front door of the apartment building flew wide-open.  I didn’t think much of it until I went upstairs and found that we had left our front door unlocked from when we were sitting shiva and the wind from the opening elevator made it fly open, too!  It was a little eerie.  But just in case it was my father’s spirit, I said hello to his photo in the living room, and then returned downstairs with a jacket for Sophia.

We took our walk around the block.  It was very emotional.  But as we took each step, things began to feel a little more normal, as we were moving from a state of bereavement back to a regular life.  As we came around the corner, we approached Shoshana, an orthodox Jewish woman who lives in my parents’ building.  Even though she was wearing an ugly skirt, I said to myself, "She has a really nice ass."  I guess I was feeling a little bit more normal.  The wind blew.  I’d like to think that it was my father, agreeing with me about Shoshana’s ass.

If a rabbi comes to make a shiva call and there are no available parking spaces outside so he parks "illegally" in the parking-lot of the next-door supermarket, is he required to buy something from the store or is it considered stealing?

My friend, Barry, explained to me how the Catholic wake works:  the family sits facing the open casket for a couple of days.  In the beginning, everyone is all reverent being in the presence of the deceased.  By the end, the family is talking about the Yankees while the body is still there.  After the funeral, the family finds it easier to return to their normal life.  It’s a system that seems to work.

Jews have their own system, which is done the opposite way.  It is called "sitting shiva."  After a death, the burial occurs as fast as possible.  Then there are seven days of sitting shiva.  The family sits in the house and is visited by family, friends, and neighbors.  It is a bit of an odd system, since you end up retelling the story of "what happened" dozens of times, as new people show up.  But since it is a Jewish event, there is always a lot of food involved.  In fact, you are supposed to bring food for the family so they don’t have to cook.  In reality, it doesn’t exactly work out this way.  You are put in the position of being a host to large groups of people at the exact point when you are most exhausted from the funeral.   At least Jews do thing differently.

It is considered a "mitzvah" (a good deed) to "pay a shiva call" so many neighbors come, even those that aren’t close to the family.  A few times, my mother and I didn’t know the names of the people.  Sophia came up with a plan where we would look over at her, signaling  that it was time for action.  Sophia then would stand up and say:

"Hello, I’m Sophia.  Thanks so much for coming.  What’s your name?"

As crazy a system as this is, it is nice to meet all of my father’s friends and co-workers.  We heard some funny stories about my father.  My uncle Edward had the best story, which is about how my father became a physical therapist. 

It seems that during the Korean War, my father was assigned to be an MP (Military Policeman).  This is hard to believe because my father was a scrawny Jewish guy with Woody Allen glasses.  He was assigned to transport North Korean prisoners.  He was issued a large rifle and told to do three things if there was any trouble:

1)   Yell, "Stop."
2)   Yell, "Halt, or I’ll shoot."
3)   Shoot.

One day, my father was transporting a North Korean prisoner, when the prisoner broke free and began to escape.   My father followed the rules: 

1)   He yelled, "Stop," but the prisoner kept on running.
2)   He yelled, "Halt, or I’ll shoot," but the prisoner didn’t listen.
3)   My father lifted up the heavy gun, pulled the trigger, and the gun fell on the floor, shooting into the air.  My father got scared and ran the other way.

Later, that day, my father was brought into the captain’s office.   My father was told that he was going to be court martialed.  The captain took one look at my father and realized that he was the worst possible choice for being a military policeman. 

The captain spoke to my father:

"I made you an MP.  Let’s see if I can do better the second time around.  I’m going to send you to a military hospital in Hawaii to learn to be a physical therapist."

At that point my father would have agreed to anything.  This is how he became a physcial therapist, a job he had for 50 years.