We made aliyah 16 months ago. For the first 14 months, everyone asked: How are you adjusting, and how is your Hebrew? Can you read the newspapers and understand the TV news? And when are coming back for a visit?

The answers to those questions were always quite simple: We are doing fine and not encountering anything that we cannot handle (sometimes with some help from children, grandchildren, or strangers). My Hebrew is better than it has been in 40-plus years, but I am far from fluent. I can manage, though, in almost every normal circumstance as almost all Israelis “have some English” – or so they think. I can struggle with newspaper articles, as long as I have Google Translate and a dictionary for Shabbat. I catch enough of the broadcast news to know what they speaking about – but not to the extent that I would go out and make an investment based on my understanding of what was said. That one is a real struggle, but everyone insists it is the best way to continue to improve your Hebrew. As for the final question, around Sukkot, we were talking about a visit – but that ties into the other questions.

Writing about my father, Irving J. Abramowitz, is very difficult. It is difficult because he was a modest person who would not want a “big deal” made of his passing. It is difficult because, to me, he was my father; growing up, I thought everyone’s father was like my own or did the things that my father did for us. As I grew up, I realized just how special a father I had.