THE HOLOCAUST IS OVER WE MUST RISE FROM ITS ASHES

innovation that included my sister and my brother-in-law and a petite French womanand her giant husband wearing a French hat, who wanted Father to sign something.The dream took place in Tel Aviv, Geneva, and Paris simultaneously. Father standsbetween two doors, not knowing which one to enter. Father, who was with one footin the grave just the day before, was facing two doors. On that day he was rationalagain.“Dreams should not be investigated. I see the café in Paris, and it turned out thatthere is a happy end. If you open one door, you are in this hospital; if you open theother, you are in the luxurious hospital with guards and everything.” In other words,everything is sick. The world is a hospital and we are its patients. But there is ahôpital ordinaire and a hôpital de lux. “The simple interpretation,” he said, “is thatit depends. ‘Two doors open to a man,’ it says somewhere in Midrash. I don’tremember where, but it occurred to me this minute. I know more than I know. Itcould be that I dreamed about an illustration of the two doors. Then it connects tothe whole fantasy. You helped me find myself in this matter.”I had never heard this before or after from my father, the man whose light, alongwith my mother’s, illuminated my life. He actually said this, on his sickbed, on thethreshold of his grave. Before he passed through one of the doors to the next world,from this hospital to a world of luxury, he told me that I helped him find himself in thematter. The matter was the conclusion of his life, no less. My warm and selfrestrainedfather, whose biggest compliment was, “I have no complaints,” yet alwayshad something to say— about a mispronunciation, a necktie off center, the wrong eyecolor—and I had to know if this was real criticism that should be pondered andacted upon, or just a reminder of humility, to ensure that I do not become arrogant.One rebuke as a compliment and another as education—but always criticism.I turned off the computer, kissed him, left the room, and cried my heart out. I weptfor my father who was going to die, and would not be comforted. For that oneprecious moment, my father, you returned to the living? Only to say those wonderfulwords that so few children hear from their parents, especially if their parents areYekkes from Germany?Now, years later, when I read my father’s dream I can discern some secrets. Iwent looking for the Midrash and found two gates, not doors. A door, deleth inHebrew, is an old biblical word, and our sages and their Midrashim did not favor it.