I really liked my father. He really liked babies.
One of the main reasons I liked him was his dislike for pretension. He was a very sincere man and he believed that everything in the world that we do is done better with care and sincerity.
The attribute of his that I would most like to emulate is his patience. It was natural but also cultivated. I think his patience was the central characteristic for all the things we respect about him: his kindness, his intelligence, his commitment to family and community.
His patience was a Jewish kind of patience, which had its roots in self-reflection. Not the kind of self-reflection which separates one from the world but rather which gives one a more natural attachment to life and earth through understanding our commitments and constantly orienting and re-orienting ourselves to the yoke of our commitments. "Ol HaTzibbur" "Ol HaMishpacha" "Ol Malchut Shamayim" and to be misamayach in that avodah. He made sure you knew he considered himself a lucky man: lucky to have work that he loved, lucky to be jewish, lucky to have his family.
He wasn't always a terribly communicative man. He believed the only way to teach the most important things is to model them day in and day out.
I'll remember him most for how much joy he got from his children. All my siblings have special memories of him.
How I would sit in shul with him and he would bend down and kiss me on the keppe as if I were still a child.
I miss my father. I really liked him. He really loved babies.
