R’ Nison Gordon greeting the Lubavitcher Rebbe
By Larry Gordon
Talk about analyzing and reflecting upon the past. Twenty-seven years provides one with a significant ability to indulge in the practice of hindsight, and that is the number of years that we are marking this week since my father, Rabbi Nison Gordon, z’l,
passed away on the sixth day of Chanukah in 1989.
The odd thing is how my mind can speedily race from one aspect of our intersecting lives together to others in later years, spanning decades within fractions of a second. All that needs to be done is to think, focus, and remember, and it is all there to be plucked from wherever these memories are stored and brought to the fore in living color.
At the same time, after 17 years of these annual essays on this subject here, there is probably little that readers do not know about my dad and his impact and influence on all of us in his immediate as well as extended family.
As has been stated in the past here, an issue that is still remarkable to us is how as a communicator in media dating back to the 1940s here in New York, he impacted on multiple generations of Jewish homes with his insights and ideas on Jewish life both here and in Israel.
Also, by way of introduction, let me say that I am certain that our relationship with our father was no different than most child–parent relationships among those reading this. With rare exception, a parent by nature and even by definition enjoys a celebrated and hallowed status in our lives. And as I have discovered over the last two and a half decades, that impact and influence is not limited to life in this physical world as we know it. These connections apparently transcend time and space and, interestingly enough, even have the ability to redefine themselves and even in some ways grow after a parent passes from this world.
So here is some random free association as I prepare to observe my father’s 27th yahrzeit this Friday on Rosh Chodesh Teves. This year, the calendar days of that cataclysmic event are pretty much the same as they were all those years ago.
My father was a few weeks short of his 72nd birthday when he had what we refer to as a heart attack, though mild, which led to the discovery of significant blockage of the blood flow to his heart. Perhaps the innovation of lifesaving bypass surgery was not as routine as it is today, but for whatever reason, while he should have had the surgery immediately upon the discovery, a decision was made somewhere by a combination of someones to wait a few weeks. That obviously did not work out as planned.
I guess that despite the passage of time, we are all still a bit resentful and hurting about how his doctors came to the conclusion that ended this way. But this is just one aspect of the human inclination that conflicts with inexplicable fate and faith.
Anyway, it was a Thursday morning when my mom called our home in Flatbush to say that there was a problem and that I should hurry to our family home in Crown Heights. By 2 o’clock that afternoon, we were in JFK Airport, pacing, waiting for our flight to Ben-Gurion Airport and kevurah in Bet Shemesh, with the time differential scheduled to land at 10:30 a.m. Friday morning on the seventh day of Chanukah.
It was late December—just like this year—and it was summery in Jerusalem. The sun was shining and menorahs dotted the highways and intersections as is the tradition at this time of year. Since we arrived on Friday morning and were going to be there over Shabbos instead of flying right back, there was a pause in the mourning in kind of a strange way.
I’ve thought about this day and a half in Israel back then many times, and as you can see, I still reflect upon those days with a combination of pain and satisfaction. At that point I had not been to Israel in 10 years. I’ve long felt that my father was well aware of this and how our young families and jobs had us tied down, making travel to Israel (or any place else for that matter) difficult to impossible.
But then overnight—literally—everything changed. Not only wasn’t there any thought about what to do, but there was no time to think. The next thing I knew, I was back at home packing up a few things and I do not even recall who drove me to the airport. It was Shabbos Chanukah in 1989, a weekend that coincided with the New Year weekend, and there were just about no hotel rooms available anywhere in Jerusalem.
Anyway, we found a place, and we were there for probably the longest 36 hours of our lives. Now all these years later I can recall the hurt, pain, and exhilaration of being in Jerusalem, along with some pockets of joy as Shabbos did its best to interrupt the sadness that consumed us.
It was a turning point in our lives, and my siblings and I are eternally grateful to my father for the insight he had in calculating the necessity to incorporate the experience of Eretz Yisrael on that weekend occasion and all the subsequent times that we may have wanted to think twice about traveling to Israel. Being presented with the opportunity to daven at his kever usually tipped the decision-making process in the direction of stopping everything else and just going.
We were planning on being there for this 27th yahrzeit but had to change our plans last week as my father-in-law took ill and is presently hospitalized in Brooklyn. As Chanukah approached a few days ago, I could not help but recall all those years that I stood over my menorah and watched four wicks flicker, which signaled to me that it was time to go to the airport so that I could daven Ma’ariv at the Kotel on the eve of the sixth night of the chag.
Life features many conflicts and even contradictions; for me, this was a sustained one that mercilessly came around again and again as Chanukah arrived. But as the children grew up, I no longer had to go myself, and the distance in time from that fateful first weekend of Chanukah provided me with a perspective on this experience.
So the passage of time changes some things but not everything. I know that I will always be a kid who wants his father back and would do anything possible to achieve that. In the meantime, I walk up that hill in Bet Shemesh where he was interred in the holy land of Israel on that summery morning on erev Shabbos on that Chanukah morning all those years ago.
As I approach the site where my father is buried, I always say the same thing: “Dad, I’m here.” I know he knows that I am there, but I say it anyway, possibly because it reminds me about the life-altering event that took place at that location all those years ago.
When I thought that we might have to delay our trip, I was concerned about that matter of who would fulfill my father’s request that one of us visit his kever on his yahrzeit. And up until about a day or so ago, I was thinking about who I knew in Israel who would be willing to make the trip and act as our shliach and representative at this important and auspicious time.
Then I learned via our family WhatsApp group that one of my nieces and a great-nephew were in Israel and that they would make the trek to Bet Shemesh on Friday morning this week. My father’s granddaughter, Rachel Blander, and one of his great-grandsons, Mendel Hodakov, will both be there. The news was comforting, and I am certain that in the higher realms, in places beyond our intellectual reach, my father will enjoy a sense of nachas at the visits of both of them to observe his yahrzeit.
For me, I’ll be saying Kaddish here on Friday morning and feeling a sense of simultaneous fulfillment and loss, just as I felt that Friday morning 27 years ago on that mountain in Bet Shemesh. That feeling that I am missing something will probably never go away. At least I hope it doesn’t.
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