The Brooklyn Flea Market Expulsion

Buy what lasts; sell what fades

Editor’s Note: This is the story of one man’s meltdown, but Howie Calderon feels like a man of the moment — David Michael Slater

Howie Calderon feared it was inevitable: One day, his daughter wouldn’t just be embarrassed by him in the eye-rolling, slightly-rebellious-teenager kind of way. She’d be mortified. Whatever pretense he had of being a well-balanced, successful person would be peeled back. She’d see his sense of inferiority, his inability to control boiling rage, his arrived-upon certainty that everything he might want lay just on the other side of the narrow East River, standing permanently out of reach. And, worse of all, she would conclude that, like her father, her days are meant to be endured, rather than embraced.

From the start of an unseasonably cold October Sunday, he had the sickening feeling that the day had come, like a soldier with a premonition. Despite 12-year-old Erica’s appeal to spend the day at a friend’s house, he’d insisted she accompany him to the Aqueduct Flea Market. He didn’t want to miss any time with her, shared custody and all.  His ex’s new identity as a boutique fitness instructor resulted in this scheduling shift, so he had her on the day when, eight months a year, he sold cell phone accessories: armbands, protective cases, chargers, and belt clips, as well as some vinyl LPs. Mostly punk and new wave.

Seated, his knitted, wool New York Mets hat — the kind with a big, orange pompom — swayed with the gusts. His half-consumed bacon, egg, and cheese sandwich, and Styrofoam coffee cup prevented his New York Post from scattering. Erica wore a light raincoat, unbuttoned, with a black sweater and dark jeans. She had cleared a space on the table for her laptop. A pair of wired headphones covered her ears. She glanced down at Programming in C. He’d told her to do her homework first, but, given the circumstances, how strict could he be with her? Everything about the day felt denied: she’d been denied a chance to hang out with her friend, he’d been denied time with her on the one day he didn’t have to work and the flea market itself had been denied its home. A few years earlier it had been chased from its racetrack home in Queens to make room for a casino. Now it resided in what had been a vacant Brooklyn lot. The move, to Howie, was certainly a downgrade.

The mostly empty aisles had turned into wind tunnels, like between midtown skyscrapers. In this place where they hawked products ranging from knockoff Rolexes to cheap underwear in a babel of tongues — Mandarin, Urdu, Spanish, Korean, Thai, Creole, Hindi, Amharic, Swahili, and Arabic, among others — all vendors ostensibly were united in the common purpose of commerce. Yet whatever customers there were had come nowhere near his stall. So many had switched to fulfilling their every need via Amazon. Erica could see how hard it had become just to make his car payments, and childcare support to Francesca, who had married some white shoe lawyer and no longer needed a portion of his pitiful salary. Needless to say, his position as assistant director of the daycare at the Central Queens YMHA didn’t pay enough to live on. Here, Erica could see firsthand the futility of his attempts to earn enough extra cash so he could move out of his mother’s apartment, where he’d returned after his divorce and the onset of the illness that would ultimately take his father’s life and compel him, for the briefest of times, to attend synagogue daily to say the Kaddish.

“Cold?” he asked.

“I’m not cold, I’m bored,” she said. “Well, maybe a little cold.”

“Told you to bring a hat and gloves,” he said, in an annoyed voice, before telling himself it wasn’t her fault she was stuck here.

When she didn’t respond, he added, “Listen, you can take the keys and sit in the car for a bit. You know where we parked, right? Or you can …”

Sound waves hit his chest before invading his ears. The bassline, the computerized 200 beats per minute merged with too-fast-to-understand words in something resembling English. With this music, if that’s what one called it, interactions with customers — they had to show up eventually, didn’t they? — seemed all but impossible.

“Fucking Guyanese rap.” Howie thought the words had remained in his head, but apparently, he’d spoken them aloud, projecting above the noise.

“Dad, bad word,” said Erica.

He couldn’t afford another run-in with Ganesh, not after the two had nearly come to blows only to have Derrick, his vendor neighbor — who, 40 years after his high school football days, still moved well enough to sack a quarterback —  get between them. The warning from management had been clear. Howie had been deemed the offending party, even though the rules clearly stated music must not be played loud enough to drown out conversation. Yet management did nothing to stop these seismic waves from reverberating off the blacktop like tiny earthquakes. Neither did the other vendors.

Erica cranked up the volume on her headphones. She wouldn’t say anything, but the music was preventing her from doing her computer programming stuff, or whatever she was trying to accomplish. Who knows, maybe one day she could make a decent living programming or designing.

The music was so loud. The bass. The beat. Dum. Dum. Dum. Like a wrecking ball, crashing down on Howie, stripping away whatever veneer that displayed to the world that life had gone as he’d planned.

“Daddy!” Erica said, sounding alarmed.

“It’s OK, I got this,” he said, straining to make himself heard above the noise.

He got up to walk towards Ganesh, telling himself it would just be a conversation — calm, reasonable conversation —  feet from giant speakers pulsating the latest sounds from South America at 10 a.m. on a perfectly good New York City morning. He’d only taken a step when he saw his path blocked by a large-60-something African American man sporting gray dreadlocks.  Derrick, who’d known Howie’s father for 30 years and had apparently promised the terminally ill Saul Calderon that he’d look after his hapless son for as long as he kept hustling on Sundays.

“Caldi, goddamn it, I was about to make a sale, and I had to come to stop your ass,” Derrick said, the smile vanishing from his face and with a seeking-a quarterback-to-sack look in his eyes.

As long as he’d known him, Derrick shortened Calderon to Caldi. The surname that had been passed down all the way from Spain’s Golden Age, the time when Muslims, Christians, and Jews supposedly debated esoteric theology and wrote poetry together before his Sephardic ancestors, as well as the Muslims, had been driven from Iberia at sword’s point. The name had followed the family from Valencia to Fez to Santiago de Cuba to the Big Apple. Howie had never much been interested in the religion of his forebearers. Yet he carried a sense of pride and had always wanted to visit Israel, a possibility that seemed increasingly remote as he advanced into middle age. During the previous summer’s round of fighting between Israel and Hamas, he’d brought in a small blue and white flag with the Jewish star and placed it on his table. Management requested he remove it. The flag violated the “no political statements” clause even though a walk through the aisles would reveal the display of a dozen other national flags.

“D, get outta my way,” Howie said, adrenaline flowing, useful fear dissipating. “Just going to talk, that’s all, talk. Remind my pal Ganesh about the rules here.”

“Not gonna happen,” Derrick said, bending his knees, assuming something between a football and sumo stance. “You’re not getting hauled outta here in cuffs or an ambulance. Not on my watch. Not in front of your girl. I’m gonna talk to him, all right.”

Howie took three deep breaths. Imagine the outcome you want. Now, think of the steps you need to get it. That mantra came from one of the many self-help podcasts he consumed taking the bus to and from the Y. He was loathe to drive to work since parking spots in his Woodhaven neighborhood were too precious to relinquish. Though he didn’t have much patience for reading, he could listen to podcasts for hours and devoured episodes on ADHD, anger management, and obsessive-compulsive disorder in search of some clue into his inner workings. If he retained any sense of optimism for himself, it was that he’d crack his own code.

“Ok. Go ahead,” Howie said, before turning around to sit down, still shaking a little, his righteous indignation having no outlet.

For as long as he could remember, he had this lurking rage trying to burst through all his veneers. From his teenage years through his mid-20s, different specialists offered various diagnoses, back when, thanks to his parents, he could afford things like therapists and medication. Years later, he’d marvel that his Cuban-born, boxing, union-organizing, short-tempered father had actually consented to send his son to therapy. Impulse control challenges. Difficulty managing anger. Many more days than not, he’d held it in check through sheer will, enough so that he’d launched a DJ career on FM radio, gotten married, and kept a child alive long enough to grow into a preteen who could design websites and virtual worlds. Sooner or later, though, the rage would win: trashing the program manager’s office when poor afternoon ratings cost him a daytime slot, breaking his foot kicking a table after learning of Francesca’s affair. More than once, he’d asked himself the question, was this just the way his brain was wired? Was he simply his father’s son, always looking for a fight, but lacking the old man’s ability to throw a punch? Not that his father didn’t try to teach him, before screaming that his hooks and jabs were worthless and that he’d better work on his sprinting because that’s the only way he’d ever survive a fight.

Erica stared at him.

“It’s OK, sweetie,” he said. “Just a misunderstanding. I kept it together.”

“Congrats,” she said, rolling her eyes. “You didn’t lose your shit today. You should get a medal.”

“Language,” he said.

“You should talk,” she replied. “And don’t call me sweetie. I’m not six anymore.”

He searched in vain for something clever or funny to say.

“Dad, if those were white dudes blasting music by The Disease, would you be as mad?” she asked.

His brain filtered out the accusation, focusing on the band, trying to place his daughter’s reference.

“The Disease? You mean The Cure?” he said.

“The Cure. The Disease. Whatever. You wouldn’t care. But it’s a person of color….”

“What?”

“Dad, because it is a person of color, you go through the roof,” Erica said.

“What? Don’t I love James Brown, Stevie Wonder, Aretha Franklin, Living Color?”

Derrick returned, towering above them, offering a restrained smile, like a diplomat who’d just averted a minor skirmish in a far-off corner of the world.

“Yo Caldi, it’s all good,” Derrick said.

Erica had him wrong: He wasn’t an Archie Bunker type; he’d grown up going to school with kids from all over the planet. His best friend in junior high school was a kid named Hussein, from Tunisia. Now, he spent his days looking after children whose parents came from places like Uzbekistan and Tajikistan. And didn’t he have a black friend in Derrick? He knew it wasn’t the most politically correct thought, but he didn’t relish feeling like a visitor, a minority, in the neighborhoods and flea markets where he’d spent his whole life, save for the few years he’d lived with Francesca in Ohio. He couldn’t help but feel that the Calderons of Queens had been displaced.  Or that, somehow, Jews like him weren’t quite part of the international club of vendors, not anymore.

“Yo D, why you dissin’ my name?” Howie responded.

“Why you dissin’?” Derrick laughed dismissively. “Trying to sound like a Brooklyn brother instead of a Queens White boy? That’s cool,” Derrick said. “You finally carrying Fear of the Black Planet?”

“Derrick, you know I got respect for Chuck D and Public Enemy. But the whole Farrakhan thing, I can’t sell that,” Howie said.

Derrick turned toward Erica.

“All right, all right, Caldi, ain’t gonna relitigate this. Young lady, your father’s a funny man,” he said.  “Love your eyeballs. They remind me of your grandpa’s. We are so lucky to have you here again with us this week.”

“Like I have a choice,” she said.

“Oh, it’s like that, is it young lady? Well, we’re still blessed to have you,” said Derrick.

Howie unintentionally raised his voice. The wind picked up again.

“Derrick’s a dad. He understands. I only get to see you three days a week. That’s not enough. You’re the best part of my life. Don’t you think I’d rather we spent a day at a museum? Coney Island? Like we used to? D, you know my ex switched her days, teaching Pilates or whatever. She did this just to spite me, D, cut into my time with my girl.”

Derrick stood by, awkwardly, glancing over his shoulder at his table, making sure there were no customers or hat thieves.

“Why do you always have to talk bad about Mom?” Erica said.

“I’m sure she sings my fucking praises.”

“Dad. Bad word again!”

“Gonna let you two have your moment,” Derrick said. “Looks like we finally got some live bodies in here. Let's hope they use their live hands to reach for their full wallets.”

As Derrick walked away, a pair of Chinese women—they could have been Korean, say, or Vietnamese, but in his mind, they were Chinese—marched by in puffy coats and nearly matching track pants.

Then his brain played the most amazing scene: he’s giving a rundown of his merchandise in perfect Mandarin. The ladies turned to him in rapt attention, carrying a look of utter shock, then joy, that this middle-aged white man was speaking to them in their language. His mind could play this scene just as easily as he could conjure a scene from Ghostbusters, Back to the Future or The Empire Strikes Back. Then his mind snapped back to reality.

“Cases for iPhone. Android. Best price ever,” he said in his best Ebbets Field, hotdog vendor yawp. The women walked right by. Didn’t even glance.

Erica had once again blocked out the world with headphones. Were her eyes moist? He tapped her on the shoulder; she looked at him with near fury but dutifully removed the headphones.

“What?” she said.

“Look, sweetie, I know this is like, ancient history for you. You probably don’t even remember a time when your Mom and I were together.”

“I do. I remember,” she said.

“You do? Well, for me, it’s like yesterday. I never wanted Mom to go. I know there were reasons, that I could be hard to live with. I’m still mad about it, OK,” he said. “And I hate that, with her, you have all this stuff, and with me, you don’t even have your own room. Just Grandma’s couch.”

“I don’t mind, Dad,” she said. “I love being with Grandma. Her couch isn’t that bad. We don’t need our own place.”

“A girl your age, any age, should have her own room,” he said.

Howie was startled by the appearance of a trim, middle-aged man inspecting his table. His accent reflected an Indian-subcontinent origin. The man said he was a runner seeking a new armband to listen to his podcasts while he trained for next year’s New York City Marathon. He’d already gotten his spot. Howie made the first sale of the day, holding the crisp $10 bill like a giant fish plucked from the sea.

“What are you listening to anyway?” he said, as she once again removed her headphones.

“Podcast,” she said. “ ‘Learn to Code with Me.’ Interview with a woman who learned in prison. Pretty cool, actually.”

A dim idea flickered and then burned inside his brain. He jumped out of his seat, like a scientist who’d made a big discovery, maybe the secret of time travel.

“I should start a podcast,” he said.

“You?”

“Yeah, me,” he said. “You know I was on the radio for five years. Most of these people, they don’t even know how to talk, how to use cadence.”

“What in the world would you talk about?” she asked.

“I don’t know. 80s music?” he said. “No, how about this: The divorced dad’s podcast. A show about divorced dads who are trying to parent, trying to do better. Maybe dealing with things like anger or regret. Maybe I can get Derrick over there to be my first guest?”

“You could talk for an hour without cursing someone out?” she said. “You’ve got no equipment. You don’t know editing software. Or how to find a host platform. Or how to build a host site. You’re not even on social. And your hard drive totally would crash if we put on Adobe Audition.”

“That’s where you come in,” he said.

“Me?”

“You’re kind of a coding wiz,” he said.

“I’m not a coding wiz. And, it’s not the same thing. Recording and editing are really different from what I know how to do,” she replied.

“You could figure it out. It’d be like a fun project for you. I bet we could find some of the equipment we need here,” he said.

“You’d be good, Dad. And it might be fun, but Mom would never let me,” she said.

“Does she have to know?”

His thoughts were once again submerged in soundwaves, vibrations, and a beat that did not make him want to dance. Ganesh had cranked the music again. The bass notes lodged themselves in his ears as if rattled by invisible beings. And the words, all about women, cars, money, guns. The man, he thought, was playing with him, taunting him.

“Ganesh!”

“Daddy!!”

He and Erica were having the best moment they’d had in months. Now it was ruined by a man who’d broken the code and a promise. Howie knew he had a real grievance. He was about to get up when he saw a young couple, college-aged maybe, laughing and strolling down the aisle, hands clasped, arms swaying in unison. Look at those smiles; an entire world of possibility existed between them. What he wouldn’t give to feel that lightness again. They were approaching his stall! Calm down, he told himself. Be personable. Try to ignore the music and your thudding heartbeat and make the sale.

Then, something about the boy’s sweatshirt caught his eye. He recognized the red, black, white, and green flag. Then he read the words. “End the Occupation.” And “Jews Against Zionism. Free Palestine.”

Jews Against Zionism? His mind couldn’t compute this kind of madness. Jews against the world’s one Jewish country? He didn’t ask for his adrenaline to pump. Didn’t tell his body to go into a fight-or-flight response. It happened involuntarily, stemming from the most primitive part of his brain.

Erica reached for his hand but he brushed it aside as if he were swatting a fly. He’d make amends later.

The college boy, with his facial hair, like a pale imitation of a grunge musician, casually eyed Howie’s merchandise while the girl stood a step behind, looking at her phone.

“Get out of here!” Howie bellowed. “Jews Against Zionism, are you out of your mind? Might as well say, “Jews for the Gas Chambers” or “Jews for Being Tossed into the Sea.”

The college boy, awakened from his stupor, looked at Howie and then rested his gaze on Erica. He smirked. Not like a film villain's elongated smirk, but just enough of a provocation to set every neuron in Howie’s body pulsing in an absolute frenzy. College boy’s companion showed no obvious signs of her political leanings, but the way she stood right by his side and glared at Howie like he was a wanted war criminal made her feelings clear enough.

“You talk like that in front of your daughter?” the college boy said. “Don’t worry little girl, we’re working for you. We’re working for a world free of colonialism and racism and sexism and Zionism.”

“You won’t have to be ashamed of what’s been done in your name,” the girlfriend said. “Like we’ve been ashamed.”

That did it. Howie stood, kicked the chair he’d sat on, and raced out from behind the table.

“Talk to my kid like that?” Howie said, hands raised. “I’ll break your nose.”

“Chill dude,” the college boy said. “We’re just here to shop. We were having a little conversation. An exchange of views.”

Something in Howie’s eyes communicated that the time for exchanges of views has passed. He must have looked like a deranged predator, for the couple turned and started to jog away, holding hands.

Howie advanced, looking like he would attempt to run them down. That’s when he saw Derrick, once again in a position to block his advance.

“Caldi, goddamn it,” said Derrick. “You can’t mess with customers. What’s the matter with you?”

“Bad enough what they said about Israel,” Howie said. “They said it to my daughter.”

“I get you Caldi. I get it, but you gotta calm down,” Derrick said.

As much as Derrick represented a physical problem, he presented a moral one, at least to the part of Howie’s brain still capable of higher thought. Derrick has tried to be his friend. Even now, Howie knew, Derrick was attempting to help him. Yet Derrick stood in the way of Howie unleashing all that had built up inside. Sometimes, when one’s ready to fight, it doesn’t matter if you’re fighting a friend or an enemy.

“Let me pass,” Howie said. “I’m not playing.”

“Caldi, you fool. Put your hands down.”

Everything jumbled in his mind so that he could no longer see Derrick. At least, not Derrick the friend, the human. Derrick transformed, becoming every boss that had let him go; every program manager who’d told him he didn’t have the voice for the airwaves; he was the flea market manager, telling him, ‘Just one more scene, and you’re out;’ he was the judge awarding more child alimony than he could possibly pay; the wealthy WASPY lawyer that married the woman who had once been his wife, the college boy calling for an end to the Jewish state.

This fight was about to go down.

Erica approached and screamed, “You two stop!”

That should have been enough. Howie knew it. Hearing her voice, having her plead, should have shamed him into regaining control. Yet lashing at the nearest human was easier than calling off whatever process his body and mind had started.

He threw a left jab. It wasn’t terrible, it had speed and snap. Still, Derrick easily dodged it, then crouched, all his muscles and limbs moving in concert. Before Howie could see Derrick’s left fist move, he felt the crack against his ribs. A flashpoint of pain, the crunching of bones, perhaps shattering.

“Ah shit, Caldi, look what you made me do,” Derrick said, almost talking to the sky. “Saul, I’m trying to look out for him, look what your kid made do. What was I supposed to do, Saul? He threw a punch.”

“Daddy!”

Erica had run to him. Through his thick coat, he felt her hand on his arms.

“Little lady, you saw what happened, I had no choice,” Derrick said, shrugging his shoulders.

“Can’t breathe,” Howie wheezed out.

“If you can talk, you breathe, Caldi,” Derrick said.

He went down to one knee. Tears in his eyes. He couldn't see the vendors and customers who’d gathered around, though he could sense eyes upon him, couldn’t even hear the music.

“You didn’t have to hit him. You know you didn’t.” She stood over her dad, straight up, as if she were staring down Derrick's eye-to-eye and not looking up at him.

“Little lady…”

“Don’t little lady me. You’re going to drive him to the hospital.”

“What? Ah, I’ll call an ambulance. I can’t just leave. Got stuff to sell…”

“I can drive,” Howie wheezed. “Can take myself.”

“You’re going to help pack up the car and drive us to the hospital,” she said, ignoring her father, before adding, “Please, Derrick.”

Struggling for breath and facing a stabbing pain, Howie couldn’t help but think with both pride and embarrassment that his little girl was doing her best to take care of him.

“I feel you, little lady, I do,” he said. “But me and Caldi are done. We’re done. Can’t deal with this.”

With great effort, Howie managed to raise himself to a seated position, but no further.

“I’m sorry, they made me so mad,” Howie said.

“Were they right, Daddy?” she asked. “About Israel?”

He didn’t answer her. Not right then, anyway.

A residual crowd still stood around; no one offered to help. Then, Hector, the manager, wearing a warm-up suit and trailed by one bulging security guard, arrived on the scene. Upon seeing him, Howie thought the man might have made a convincing villainous manager in the WWE.

“Caldi, Caldi, Caldi,” Hector said as if he’d been waiting all day to hear those words. He spoke with a bit of an accent. Howie had never bothered asking him where he’d been born, or anything about him. The man didn’t exactly invite conversation. “Ah, I see your little girl is here. I’ll keep this clean then. Clean and simple. You’re bad for business. You’re outta here. You’re never selling anything at Aqueduct again. In fact, I don’t want you setting foot here, understand?”

“This isn’t right!” Erica said to Hector, in her loudest voice.

Howie groaned. Erica squatted next to him.

“You don’t need to stick up for me,” he said, gasping. Before Erica had a chance to answer, she saw a shadow spread over the two of them. Derrick stood before them.

“Caldi, now I ain’t talking to you, but you got insurance, right?”

“Yeah D,” Howie said. “I got insurance. You don’t have to worry about me.”

“Insurance or no, you ride in that ambulance, you get a $5,000 bill, guaranteed,” Derrick said. “Like I said, I ain’t talking to you. But I’m driving you to Jamaica Hospital.”

****

“You got to do something, Daddy,” Erica said to her father after they’d sat in the waiting room awhile. “Something about your temper.”

Howie turned to Erica, whose face was illuminated by the fluorescent blue light. A white-bearded man who, judging by his stench, might be homeless, sat across from them. A baby’s cry nearly drowned out the TV, blaring a Sunday political talk show.

Do something. That’s right, she reminded him that he was going to do something. He was going to start a podcast, with Erica’s tech help. He’d somehow, someway patch up with Derrick, who’d gone through a divorce of his own decades earlier. Howie would have him on as a regular guest, an on-air sidekick, though, sure, some bloggers would accuse him of tokenizing Derrick. Their on-air rapport would serve as an example of repair as racial tensions simmered throughout the country. There were lots of fathers like him, struggling to raise kids, rebuild their lives, explain the world to their kids, find some semblance of self, and maybe even date again.

Francesca would find out about the whole thing after a few months but it would already be too late to put a stop to it as the show had been downloaded hundreds of thousands of times. Within two years, he’d be earning enough from paid advertising that he could resign from the Y. He’d move into a high-rise condo on Queens Boulevard or, gasp, maybe even the city. No, not the city, he’d need to be near Erica’s school. He’d book celebrity guests. Then, one day, Howie would make a casual comment about Guyanese rap, or, maybe he’d be too blunt about his views on Zionism and the Palestinians, and soon enough, all the hounds on social media would be out for his blood, declaring him an irredeemable racist and ….

Awaiting an x-ray, he realized he couldn’t even have a visualization without screwing things up. As if he was incapable of imagining himself doing anything that didn’t end in catastrophe.

He realized something else. Looking at his daughter, hearing her voice in his, mind, something like a revelation came over him. There should be a podcast, but it shouldn’t be his, couldn’t be his. Not he, who’d always have this thing inside him. He could beat it back some days, most days, but not all days. Too much resentment in him, he thought, not enough space to imagine how things could be different.

“Hey Erica,” he said, the pain evident in his voice.

“Try not to talk, Dad.”

“I’m not dying here, kiddo. The podcast idea,” he said. “Been thinking, it’s you who should be the host, not me. I should be helping you. Girls who code. Kids with crazy fathers. I don’t know. It’s your voice people need to hear, not mine.”

She didn’t say anything for a while. “Both of us, Dad.  “We could do it together.”

Bryan Schwartzman is an award-winning journalist turned nonprofit communications professional whose fiction has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize. His work has appeared in news outlets such as JTA and The Forward and literary publications such as Books N’ Pieces and The Jewish Literary Journal. He currently hosts the podcast, Evolve: Groundbreaking Jewish Conversations and lives with his family outside Philadelphia.

What are five tiny delights that lift your spirits and make you happy?

• Hitting a tennis ball hard enough or placed well enough that it’s unreturnable

• Listening to the perfect song at the perfect time and figuring out what that is

• Reading with my children at bedtime, a practice I keep up even though one is already a teenager

• Spending some rare time out with my wife, Amy, sans kiddos

• Trekking around cities or nature

What are five tiny JEWISH delights that lift your spirits and make you happy?

• Druging Hebrew up from the back of my brain and trying to converse with a willing partner

• Ripping off a piece of hallah or slurping on broth from hot matzah ball soup

• Connecting pop culture to Jewish studies, like exploring the sources of Lenord Cohen’s use of Hineni

• Hearing one of my children recite a standard prayer in synagogue, such as the V’ahavta