Jackie Danicki

Last April, Antoine and I went to Los Angeles to see how he liked it, because I thought perhaps we could move there someday in the not too distant future. While we were there, we were invited to have Shabbos dinner with my dear friends, brought to me by the blogosphere, Robert and Karen Avrech.

I was nervous. First because Robert is very protective of me in a quite father-like way, and had never met Antoine, and was deeply suspicious and wary of him. Secondly, Antoine and I were both raised, more or less, as Catholics. I had never been to a Shabbos dinner, and neither had he. When the Avrechs, who are Orthodox Jewish, had so graciously invited me to stay in their home for a week in December 2004, I spent a lot of time worrying about doing the wrong thing. What if I put a milk dish in the meat sink and they have to bury everything in the backyard?!

On the Friday evening when we got to Casa Avrech, I was further intimidated by the fact that Karen’s parents would be joining us. Her father, Rabbi Philip Harris Singer, was a renowned Torah scholar. Her mother, well, she was the wife of a big deal rabbi, the mother of another rabbi, and the mother of Robert’s beloved Karen, a no-nonsense beauty who seems to possess the ability to see your soul with one cursory glance.

I was, as they say on this side of the pond, bricking it.

Upon arrival in Pico-Robertson, I slowly started to relax. This was after the ‘opening ceremony’ for the dinner, during which Rabbi Singer and Robert sang the prayers, and Robert blessed his youngest daughter. That part sort of shook me, thinking about Robert and Karen’s late son, Ariel ZT’L. But after that, the tension left me. Because, in a turn of events that I never would have expected, Rabbi Singer and his wife both had a lot to say to Antoine.

Over the next couple of hours, I was mostly silent - and delighted - as Antoine and the Singers talked about London, European history, and a hundred other topics about which they carried on quite animatedly. I could not have been more pleased, or more grateful to Rabbi Singer for putting Antoine at his ease and making the evening so fun for him.

When our cab came, Karen and her mother took Antoine to the kitchen to wrap up some food for us to take back to our hotel (but of course). Robert and I stepped out onto the front porch.

“Jackie, Antoine is GREAT! He’s so smart, he knows so much! What a nice guy! I’m so happy for you!”

“I’m so relieved, Robert!”

“Yeah, good thing, too. Because if he was anything less, I’d have kicked his butt.”

This is what I thought of when I read on Robert’s blog that Rabbi Singer died yesterday morning. I also thought that it was very appropriate that, within minutes of meeting him, Rabbi Singer had taught me something - specifically, that Jews don’t believe you have to be a Jew in order to get to heaven. All this to say that the world has lost a scholar; Antoine and I are both thinking of the Singer family today, and wish Karen a safe trip to Israel, where she will sit shiva at her brother’s house and bury her father.

Filed under: Life