You're a Nerd if (I have never attempted this form before):

You're a Nerd if you try to put your tie on while wearing headphones. (Now how did I ever think of that?)

Dad lost his father’s tefillin:

My father’s father was a significant Reform Jew. He was the treasurer for the organization that proposed a Jewish State to the League of Nations. (We still have one of these formal proposals, written out in beautiful longhand.) Granddad had six children, the first four of them boys. None were religious, but all of his children were proud to be Jewish.

As I got deep into my Baal Teshuvah process, my father apparently remembered his own father’s tefillin. He could not find them, so he asked me if by chance, he had already given them to me. I would love to have had those tefillin! It was quite clear I had never heard of them. My dad was disappointed. He said he hoped he might still find them. I never heard about them again.

My parents died many years ago. A shattering question occurred to me today, and there’s no hope of answering it. There are so many wonderful questions to ask about the past, and their context slips away, covered in the sands of time, before you notice them. Here’s my question:

Why did my father inherit his father’s tefillin?

Dad was the youngest of the four boys. The oldest son was easily the most active in Jewish matters. In fact, a few years after granddad’s death, the oldest would be smuggling guns to aid Israel’s War of Independence. But my father got the tefillin. There must be a wonderful story there, and I’ll never know what it is.