Eulogy to my father

The American Thinker ^ | August 27, 2005 | Clarice Feldman

[Kitten Festival]

No one knows another's life. Certainly no child really knows all there is of a father's. But in broad strokes I will try to tell the things which I knew were meaningful to my father.

He was born in a small village in Poland. I've seen the name spelled in a variety of ways, but phonetically spelled it was Ravitz. Once in an Isaac Bashevis Singer short story he related stopping there briefly in a train trip from Lublin to Russia. My father said it didn't even have wooden sidewalks or outdoor toilets. His father, Morris, was a master tailor. His mother, Pearl, the shrewdest, most generous woman I have ever known, was a seamstress who had never learned to read or write .

His father received a conscription notice .A pregnant wife won a conscript a deferment so my grandmother went to the police station and establishing her expectant state, my grandfather's call to his certain death was forestalled.

My grandmother told me she'd walked to a market in nearby Chelm ( a village in folklore noted for its foolish residents),bought a large apple (she claimed it was a pound in weight), ate it, and my father was born.

About a year later, my grandfather received another conscription notice. Again, my grandmother proved her husband's entitlement to another postponement. Months later my uncle Isadore was born.

[Kitten Festival]

This eulogy provides an amazingly fascinating, accurate and sharp portrait of life in early 20th century America. This is where we come from.

I dare you to read this without breaking up in tears at the end.

[M. Espinola]

Thank you for posting this, it was very moving.