OPINION: This Chanukah, I’ll recall my late brother Danny
My brother Danny won’t be with us by the Chanukiah this year, but his memory as a sibling, friend and carer is forever, writes Alex Brummer
Alex Brummer is a Jewish News columnist and the City Editor, Daily Mail
The relationship among brothers is an enduring theme in the narrative of Genesis (currently being read in synagogue) and Exodus. The earliest recorded ‘brother’ story is that of Kane and Abel, which did not end well. Of Ishmael and Isaac we know little.
But the dramatic chronicle of Jacob and Esau has cascaded down the generations. It could have ended in catastrophe with Jacob, his wives and flocks having to traverse lands controlled by Esau.
He was the hunter brother much loved by his father Isaac, who despised Jacob for the purloining of his birth right. But after Jacob had wrestled all night with an extraterrestrial being and been renamed Israel, he summoned up the courage to be reconciled with his brother after a generation apart. Following elaborate preparations for the meeting, including a generous gift of livestock, the reunion was one of hugs and kisses rather than warfare.
Later biblical sibling relationships were also less than smooth. The confrontation between Joseph and his elder brothers ended up with the future hero of Egypt being dumped in a pit. It is only when we get to Moses and Aaron that we finally find a brotherly relationship that worked in harmony even if both of these heroes made mistakes along their life journeys.
All of these connections were very much on my mind this month when me and my family, together with rabbis and many members of the Brighton and Hove communities gathered at the tranquil Meadow View Jewish cemetery last week to unveil the memorial stone to my younger brother, Daniel, who was suddenly taken from us in January.
It would be immodest to compare our relationship with that of Moses and Aaron. Indeed, as children we often fought like cats and dogs, once breaking a chair in an all-out confrontation in the then Ramat Aviv hotel in Israel. Yet as we matured, it became a much more tranquil and loving kinship.
Daniel or Danny, as he was widely known, is never far from my mind or from those whose lives he touched. The inscription on his memorial stone, ‘A carer and pillar of the community’, properly describes his life. Not a day passes when I do not still reach for the phone to share some aspect of our daily and community lives.
There is a great emptiness especially on erev Shabbat, when we would reminisce about the great days of the Hove community and latest dispatches. Reading recently of the death of chazan Simon Hass, my immediate reaction was to phone Danny. One of my enduring memories was of Hass visiting Hove for Shabbat and combining, during services, to sing with the late chazan Kalman Fausner, a fellow Pole who had spent time in pre-Israel Palestine, in an emotion-filled rendering of part of the Musaf prayer. As the community has changed, only Daniel would have remembered.
Danny lives on in the hearts and minds of so many. At a recent symposium for the charity I chair, the Abraham Initiatives (UK), a stranger approached asking if was Daniel’s brother. He wanted to thank me for Daniel’s support of his elderly mother who lived on the same apartment block.
Every Friday, he would knock on her door with chicken soup, sometimes home-prepared chopped liver or fish balls. It was as much part of his Shabbat routine as organising the calling up in shul, teasing his fellow congregants and chanting the Haftorah when there was no one else to do it (quite often).
When I called the shul’s chairman, Stanley Cohen, on the eve of this year’s Yamim Noraim to wish him a happy New Year, his tearful remembrance was dressing the Torah scrolls and shul, as ever, in Daniel’s company. Danny won’t be with us by the Chanukiah this year, but his memory as a brother, friend and carer is forever.
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