Words of My Father

8/8/96

Dear Dad,

Finally I am here in Europe. It is thrilling to finally be here – to finally get to practice the languages I’ve studied – to be learning so much Czech especially. The Opera Workshop was a good experience for me. I understudied the role of “Don Ottavio” in Don Giovanni. So, now that is under my belt. I got to sing a small part also in La Bohème, “Parpignol” – very short – but, it was experience.

I am still very nervous and insecure about my singing – I’m still more comfortable with straight acting – but – I think with more practice, and experience, I will become more confident. As part of the Opera Workshop, I felt like I fit in – I felt very much a part of everything even though I was disappointed to not get to sing in Don Giovanni. I learned that I do have a lot to offer to Opera – that I can sing it, and with some hard work, I can sing it well.

I still feel that I don’t need it. For me I think this is a very good place to be. I think when we need thigs, then we have no choice, and when we are not free to choose our own paths, we can easily stumble. I wish to live life as a series of choices, always free to choose, free to make mistakes, and since I am free, I am therefore responsible, and not simply a passenger on the train of life, but the captain of my own train (like Fred would have said.)

I think of you often while I am here. I hear your voice guiding me. I don’t know how well I have ever told you just how much I do Love you, father. Your words to me as a child still guide my living today.

Today I was in a beautiful old town called Tábor (which is Czech for “camp”) south of Prague about 100 kilometers. I stood by a wishing well, a 50 hallers coin in hand (about 2 pennies) and I thought of my life, and of Cheryl, who will soon be my wife, and of what I wanted in life, and of what I have. It was a quiet moment, no fanfare – but I realized that the only thing I really wished for was exactly what I have.

My life is burgeoning today with the promise of fruit. Yes, there are things that I want – but, all things are within my power to achieve or attain.

Here I am in a small town called Sedlec-Prčice, 70 kilometers south of Prague (your beloved city of the Brotherhood of the Common Life). I am, for this month, a teacher of English to 11 Czech students, ranging in age from 14 to 50. It is very difficult to teach this language – but it is fulfilling work. I feel very much that I am contributing positively to their lives.

…

Back in Opava, where we had the Opera Workshop, I had a dinner with a group of people including the founder and organizer of the whole affair, Dr. Harry M. B. Hurwitz (Harry to me). He explained his philosophy on life, and I heard your voice. He said he thought of Goethe, of his spending half a lifetime (more) working on Faust, and of the lesson of Faust as he saw it. He said Faust was a man who did many bad things, many foolish things – but that the reason Goethe has him saved at the end – is that he woke up every day – and tried – tried to learn something new – throughout his whole life, despite a deal with the devil – he sought to accomplish something, through all his foolishness, most of all, he cared whether or not his life had meaning, and whether or not his life had any effect on the world. Harry explained how to him what was always most important wsa that he leave the world a little better than he received it. Harry said it, but I heard your voice saying it to me 20 years ago.

I remember bemoaning my fate to you, as a child, that in all the world, I had no “peers”. You taught me that E. A. Poe and Shakespeare and Keats, and Beethoven and Schubert, and Plato – these were my peers, that I must listen to their voices as if they spoke to me. Today I no longer lament – Today, I have a peer. My dear love, Cheryl, is the most wonderful woman I have ever known, and ever loved. I am complete with her. I am me, wholly – my faults and my talents.

I am happy in my life. Funny that I can be so happy and yet still very sad. Sad for the ugliness that I see – sometimes sad for the ugliness I tolerate.

When I was in northern Moravia, I took one day to visit Auschwitz (known hereabouts as Osvětím). I can not fathom such hatred, such violence, such inhumanity. I later took a tour of the Jewish Quarter of Prague. There is a synagogue there, restored, whose interior walls are completely filled with the names of victims of the Holocaust, from the Czech lands. Not only can I not fathom it, I refuse to. I will reserve no place in my heart for hatred – only enough for sorrow to lament it – and hopeful for courage to combat it – for it still exists today – in Bosnia – in America, in the Czech Republic.

I have visited here some old Jewish cemetaries. Some badly damaged by the Nazis and/or communists. I found in one many Adlers. I wonder if they were related.

I wonder why I know so little about my own family. I know only that they came mostly from Russia. I believe all four of my Grandparents were born in America – the first generation here. I believe your granfather’s name was Pearlovsky – though I have never seen it written, nor ever heard of another Pearlovsky.

I wonder at this silence – this void in my life. I wonder why I have run away so many times. I wonder why I so rarely call or write, why I have hardly known my immediate family as anything more than familiar acquaintances for so many years.

I wonder at how life goes on – how we all get older. How I am almost 30 – and how I feel like I have lived four or five lives – disjuncted and not just one.

But I do believe that I have a voice – one which I am still (or perhaps just) now discovering. A voice to say many things – to write many things, to do many things, and mundanely – to sing many things (though that is not the voice I meant.) I also know that that voice is the voice of your son.

Dad, I love you,

Jonathan