Batya Casper Remembers Her Father
I have been asked to write about my father, Moshe Dov (Bernard Moses) Casper,z”l, which means ignoring the nurturing love of my mother’s influence. So that is what I will do.
My father, Moshe Dov—Bernard Moses—Casper, was the uber nurturer in our home. It was he who checked that the front door was locked at night, who read bedtime stories to my brother and me before lights out (when he was home,) who said our nightly shema with us, (again, when he was home,) who repeated shema with me again later when I woke him crying after a bad dream.
On Friday nights, when my brother and I were quite small, he’d sit me on one knee and my brother on the other and read parshat hashavua to us from our little beige book of Bible stories.
My fondest memories are of him sitting behind his desk, reading, writing little notes on the margins of his books, pausing to think. The house was quiet during those hours. His reading made me feel calm, deeply, profoundly, safe. He was civilization at its best. I grew to share his appetite for books. My dad was a deep thinker and a man of love, song (he had a beautiful voice) and laughter. More than anything, he was gentle. People gravitated to him both for his charm and his gravitas.
We knew when he’d been to the abattoir (to supervise the shechita,) or a funeral, because he always washed his hands immediately upon entering the house. We knew when he’d visited convicts at the jail because he’d cloister himself in his study on his return.
Occasionally, I guess when school was closed, my dad would take me to shul with him. I’d play behind the corners, under the desks, absorbing the musty smell of the wood and the shadows lurking in the corners. I loved being there during my dad’s “work hours,” loved all the men and women who came to talk with my dad. Still today, I feel most at peace sitting in shul-- on weekdays.
My dad taught, unconsciously, by example. As a child walking in London with my dad, we witnessed a somewhat scruffy African man knocking into a broad bosomed, well-dressed woman who was carrying a bag of oranges. The oranges fell from her grasp, rolled over the sidewalk and into the road. The woman was furious. My father bent down and scrambled, with the man, after the woman’s oranges, returning almost all to her. I remember my dad’s hand resting on the back of the African man. I remember my dad looking angrily at the woman. We left the scene. I made some comment about the incident. My father said the man had simply not looked where he was going; the woman had no right to humiliate him by shouting at him on the street. “It is against the din (Jewish law) to humiliate anyone, any time, for any reason.”
My aunt, a doctor’s wife, was visiting my mom. She told her how put out she and her husband had been, the previous evening, when a woman knocked on their “surgery” door—after hours---to ask for pills for her sick husband. “Imagine her nerve?” my aunt was saying, “Of course, we sent her to the pharmacy.” That night, before I recited my shema, I told my dad that story. “Imagine how worried that poor woman must have been about her husband,” he said. “ Think how much kinder it would have been, had they given the woman the pills.”
Shema time was our hour for conversations. My dad reiterated over and over that, whereas other nations might be descended from royalty, we trace our beginnings to slavery. It is because of our experience as slaves, he’d tell me, that we are obligated to identify with, and help, others who suffer.
I so wanted to learn to play the violin. My parents recruited a teacher. My job: to practice. Each night, I scratched away at my fiddle till the neighbors clamored at our door begging me to stop. One evening, my dad played a few bars to show me how to use the bow. His playing was so beautiful the neighbors came again, in amazement. They couldn’t believe my transformation.
When I grew to adolescence, it was my father who taught me biblical Hebrew and the T’nach. He was the best of all teachers. I’d sit in his desk chair; he’d sit or stand opposite me. We had an imaginary map on his wall so he could clearly delineate where Assyria-Babel, Syria, Judah and Israel, and Egypt were. That’s how I learned what it meant that evil would come from the north, it’s how I was introduced to the ever turning tide of history and nations. He taught me about the prophets till I could see them, till I could hear them talk. He taught me the syntax and rhythms, the repetitions of biblical poetry. He taught me the rules of biblical grammar. I remember every word of what he taught. I loved studying with him, just as I loved listening to his drashot (sermons) on Shabbatot. I remember so many of them, too.
As most adolescents, I was profoundly disturbed by God’s relationship to humans, sorrow, pain, and evil. I recall at least three times when my dad stayed with me through the night, talking, discussing, pondering. He never ran out of time or patience.
My dad never spoke about what he did, but when he passed away, during his shiva, hundreds of people showed up to tell us of the acts of kindness he had performed for them. Old men told how they’d known my dad since their earliest days in the shteebble of my father’s grandfather. Others told us how he had helped them escape Europe after the war; a group of men came saying they were my father’s brothers in arms—from the Jewish Brigade. Strangers told us so many stories of how my dad had sent them from the gates of hell to Israel. I can remember at least 6 women—widows—who came to the shiva to share with us how my dad had looked after them since the death of their husbands, how he had called them every week to ask how they were, and what he could do for them.
He was the most wonderful man I have ever known. Other than my brother, I will never know another like him.
I have been asked to write about my father, Moshe Dov (Bernard Moses) Casper,z”l, which means ignoring the nurturing love of my mother’s influence. So that is what I will do.
My father, Moshe Dov—Bernard Moses—Casper, was the uber nurturer in our home. It was he who checked that the front door was locked at night, who read bedtime stories to my brother and me before lights out (when he was home,) who said our nightly shema with us, (again, when he was home,) who repeated shema with me again later when I woke him crying after a bad dream.
On Friday nights, when my brother and I were quite small, he’d sit me on one knee and my brother on the other and read parshat hashavua to us from our little beige book of Bible stories.
My fondest memories are of him sitting behind his desk, reading, writing little notes on the margins of his books, pausing to think. The house was quiet during those hours. His reading made me feel calm, deeply, profoundly, safe. He was civilization at its best. I grew to share his appetite for books. My dad was a deep thinker and a man of love, song (he had a beautiful voice) and laughter. More than anything, he was gentle. People gravitated to him both for his charm and his gravitas.
We knew when he’d been to the abattoir (to supervise the shechita,) or a funeral, because he always washed his hands immediately upon entering the house. We knew when he’d visited convicts at the jail because he’d cloister himself in his study on his return.
Occasionally, I guess when school was closed, my dad would take me to shul with him. I’d play behind the corners, under the desks, absorbing the musty smell of the wood and the shadows lurking in the corners. I loved being there during my dad’s “work hours,” loved all the men and women who came to talk with my dad. Still today, I feel most at peace sitting in shul-- on weekdays.
My dad taught, unconsciously, by example. As a child walking in London with my dad, we witnessed a somewhat scruffy African man knocking into a broad bosomed, well-dressed woman who was carrying a bag of oranges. The oranges fell from her grasp, rolled over the sidewalk and into the road. The woman was furious. My father bent down and scrambled, with the man, after the woman’s oranges, returning almost all to her. I remember my dad’s hand resting on the back of the African man. I remember my dad looking angrily at the woman. We left the scene. I made some comment about the incident. My father said the man had simply not looked where he was going; the woman had no right to humiliate him by shouting at him on the street. “It is against the din (Jewish law) to humiliate anyone, any time, for any reason.”
My aunt, a doctor’s wife, was visiting my mom. She told her how put out she and her husband had been, the previous evening, when a woman knocked on their “surgery” door—after hours---to ask for pills for her sick husband. “Imagine her nerve?” my aunt was saying, “Of course, we sent her to the pharmacy.” That night, before I recited my shema, I told my dad that story. “Imagine how worried that poor woman must have been about her husband,” he said. “ Think how much kinder it would have been, had they given the woman the pills.”
Shema time was our hour for conversations. My dad reiterated over and over that, whereas other nations might be descended from royalty, we trace our beginnings to slavery. It is because of our experience as slaves, he’d tell me, that we are obligated to identify with, and help, others who suffer.
I so wanted to learn to play the violin. My parents recruited a teacher. My job: to practice. Each night, I scratched away at my fiddle till the neighbors clamored at our door begging me to stop. One evening, my dad played a few bars to show me how to use the bow. His playing was so beautiful the neighbors came again, in amazement. They couldn’t believe my transformation.
When I grew to adolescence, it was my father who taught me biblical Hebrew and the T’nach. He was the best of all teachers. I’d sit in his desk chair; he’d sit or stand opposite me. We had an imaginary map on his wall so he could clearly delineate where Assyria-Babel, Syria, Judah and Israel, and Egypt were. That’s how I learned what it meant that evil would come from the north, it’s how I was introduced to the ever turning tide of history and nations. He taught me about the prophets till I could see them, till I could hear them talk. He taught me the syntax and rhythms, the repetitions of biblical poetry. He taught me the rules of biblical grammar. I remember every word of what he taught. I loved studying with him, just as I loved listening to his drashot (sermons) on Shabbatot. I remember so many of them, too.
As most adolescents, I was profoundly disturbed by God’s relationship to humans, sorrow, pain, and evil. I recall at least three times when my dad stayed with me through the night, talking, discussing, pondering. He never ran out of time or patience.
My dad never spoke about what he did, but when he passed away, during his shiva, hundreds of people showed up to tell us of the acts of kindness he had performed for them. Old men told how they’d known my dad since their earliest days in the shteebble of my father’s grandfather. Others told us how he had helped them escape Europe after the war; a group of men came saying they were my father’s brothers in arms—from the Jewish Brigade. Strangers told us so many stories of how my dad had sent them from the gates of hell to Israel. I can remember at least 6 women—widows—who came to the shiva to share with us how my dad had looked after them since the death of their husbands, how he had called them every week to ask how they were, and what he could do for them.
He was the most wonderful man I have ever known. Other than my brother, I will never know another like him.
