Grandfather, it’s Me, Bernie Staring down at the vine-covered mound in the shadow of grandfather Fleischman’s gravestone, I closed my eyes and thumbed through memories of Hebrew lessons given in grandfather’s room at Tanta Fannie’s house in Coney Island. That first July day of 1940, I entered grandfather’s bedroom, the afternoon sun fell on a large unframed picture of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt hanging on the wall over his cot size bed. Under the one window in the room was a cold, silver cast-iron radiator with three pairs of white cotton socks on top. Next to the bed was a maple end table with a wood-framed photograph of a youthful grandfather and grandmother Fleischman. My grandmother in the photograph, whom I never met, was a plain-looking fleshy, small woman with a broad smile. Standing a little behind her was grandfather, wearing a long-sleeved shirt and dark trousers with suspenders. His face had a melancholy expression. They were standing on the boardwalk with the sandy beach and white-capped waves of the Atlantic Ocean behind them. A sailboat was on the horizon to the left of grandfather, puffy clouds floated above them, and white, wide-winged sea gulls wheeled over their heads. Grandfather sat on the bed and had me sit next to him. “Bernie,” he said, “listen good with those big ears of yours and next March you will belong to the Jewish community for ever, as a man. You want to be a man, don’t you?” I nodded my head and looked at him as if for the first time; he had a long thin face, pale-gray pupils, and a bushy mustache that covered part of his full upper lip. His eyes were encircled by bluish shadows, and his thick graying hair was cut short with no sideburns alongside his ears. Though I had known him for years, I knew that we were now entering upon a new relationship: I was no longer merely a grandchild. He was about to become my teacher, I his student. A wall of silent expectations was rising between us; it would be my responsibility to surmount it. He opened the end-table drawer, removed a dark-striped, fringed woolen prayer shawl with a slightly frayed edge, and said, “You will wear my talis whenever you attend shul. It will always remind you of our biblical commandments and your teacher, Grandfather Fleischman.” He placed a black yamulke on my head and carefully folded the shawl, placing it at his side on the bed. “Grandfather,” I said. “How will a prayer shawl be able to tell me about the bible?” I looked past his sunken pale-gray eyes and stared at President Roosevelt’s picture, fascinated by the long cigarette holder gripped between his teeth. As a swirl of smoke rose from the cigarette, the president looked directly at me with his laughing eyes. “Bernie, look here,” my teacher said. He held out one end of the fringed prayer shawl. Tell me what you see, here, at each end of the talis. Yes?” His long thin fingers held a bundle of tassels toward me and I could see his lengthy yellow fingernails that were cut square past his veined flesh. Faint smells of old sweat and ancient prayers touched my brain and I leaned back away from him. I said, “There are a lot of tassels looped through each end of the shawl. They look longer than my biggest finger and each one is made of twisted threads.” I sat staring at the tassels waiting for my teacher to say something, something that I must have missed. I felt as if I did something wrong, and I didn’t know why. Suddenly he lifted the shawl up and dangled the tassels close to my face. “You have eyes but do not see what they reveal,” he said in a soft voice. “Now, once more, look close, tell me about the union of the tzitzis and the prayer shawl. Yes please?” He gently placed the shawl end with all the fringes, (he called them tzitzis), into my hands touching my fingers as he withdrew his hold. His brown-flecked skin felt cold on my flesh, like the lucky pebble I carried in my pocket. “Well,” I said with a long drawn out breath. “The fringes, no tzitzis,” I corrected, “each has knots in them. Look, there is more than one knot in many of them, maybe in all of them.” I wanted to look into his eyes to see if I found what he wanted me to, but kept my head bent close to the prayer shawl, as if I was still searching for new sightings to report to him. “Now count them,” he said. “What?” I said. “Bernie, I want you to count the knots tied in all the tzitzis.” He handed me the prayer shawl and got off the bed. I watched him go through the hallway to the bathroom door. As he opened the door he gave me an over-the-shoulder look, and I felt his gray eyes on my face. He closed the door behind him. I began to count the knots, not knowing what to feel. Was it a joke? Just then Tanta Fanny brought me a glass of milk and a Drake’s cupcake, the chocolate kind with white cream in the center. She didn’t say anything, just smiled as she put the glass of milk and cupcake on the end table. Her odor lingered long after she had left the room: chicken fat and onions. Grandfather returned, sat on the bed, folded his hands on his lap, and said, “Nu Bernie, how many knots have you counted?” I held knot number four hundred sixty-three between my thumb and index finger so that I wouldn’t lose my place, and replied, “Four hundred sixty-three, Grandfather. But there are more to be counted from this end of the prayer shawl,” I quickly added. “Good,” he said. “Keep counting. You’re almost there.” The photograph on the end table caught my eye. I imagined that the white sea gulls flying above my grandparent’s heads had flown out of the frame, past President Roosevelt and through the window. My mouth fell open as my eyes followed the gulls into the backyard. Grandfather said, “Bernie, stop daydreaming and finish counting the knots before I get too old to be your teacher.” He reached out with both hands and pulled gently on my ears. I glanced at the photo on the dresser and saw the sea gulls back inside the frame, and continued counting. “I think I’m finished,” I said holding the talis in one hand and the mass of fringes in the other “So? Tell me the number.” He sat there with his head tilted slightly to one side glancing from me to the fringes clasped in my hand. “I’m not sure, exactly. But, there may be six hundred twelve tied among the fringes,” I told him as I began to twist a few fringes around an index finger. “You did good, Bernie, almost perfect.” He smiled, parting his lips, exposing his perfect, square, false teeth. “It’s not easy to keep track of all those knots hidden in the forest of fringes dangling at the ends of the talis. Yes Bernie, there are six hundred thirteen knots in all, and that is the number of commandments God obligated every male Jew to follow once they achieved manhood.” His dark eyes focused on a distant horizon as he continued. “These commandments are all in the Torah, our five books of Moses.” Grandfather took the prayer shawl from me, stood up, and placed it over his shoulder with the knotted tassels hanging across his thighs. “You see, Bernie, every time you put on the prayer shawl you are touched by a reminder of His Words.” Grandfather then kissed the shawl and recited a Hebrew prayer from memory. The unfamiliar sounds spread warmth as they reached inside me. Tonta Fanny entered the room wearing slippers and a full sized, white butcher apron over her green print housedress. She spoke Yiddish to grandfather, a language I didn’t understand. He nodded in the affirmative and she removed the white socks from the silver cast iron radiator, picked up the empty milk glass, and walked with her gliding step down the hall towards the kitchen. She walked as if she were ice skating, sliding one foot then the other forward, barely lifting them off the floor. I could see the heel of her stocking feet slightly rise up off her slipper as her toes pushed the slippers in front of her. I held my breath, expecting her to float into the air and out the window like the white seagulls in the photograph. “Bernie,” Grandfather said while lightly shaking my knee with his long, thin fingers to get my attention. “Let me translate ‘Bar Mitzvah’ into English for you so that you understand what you will become. Yes Bernie? ‘Bar’ is ‘son’ in Aramaic, which is the ancient language of the Jewish People, and ‘Mitzvah’ means ‘commandment’. So on your thirteenth birthday, my little man, you become a ‘son of the commandment’. After your Bar Mitzvah you gain some new rights: You can lead a Jewish service, be counted in a minyan, enter into binding contracts and you may marry. In other words, in the eyes of our people you are recognized as a man.” A feeling of fright gripped me and I didn’t know what to say. Did he mean I had to go to court? What kind of contract do I need? Why should I be a man so soon? After all, I was only a seventh grade student. Slowly I raised my eyes to his and in a quivering voice asked, “Grandfather, who do I have to marry?” Grandfather Fleischman’s grave stone stood taller than I, rising up above my head, reaching toward the wide-winged gulls racing with the clouds, while pressing its gray-weight downward, holding grandfather Fleischman tight under the vines. I removed my lucky black pebble with brown spots from my tweed coat and placed it on top of his head stone, turned, and walked slowly away, feeling his dark eyes on me.