Patrilineage.

We buried my grandfather Douglas Weisfield on Sunday.?May his soul reconnect with our Creator.

He was born in Tacoma, Washington in 1933 and grew up in Seattle.?

In those days in Seattle being a Weisfield meant something.?

His father's grandfather, Max Weisfield, fled lethal anti-Jewish violence in Russia in the 1880s and moved to the Golden Land of Seattle in 1892, after a brief stint with his entire village in frozen Winnipeg.?During the Klondike Gold Rush, Max left his family in Seattle to peddle picks and shovels in Alaska.?When Max returned from the Klondike, he found his 7 year old son Mory hawking newspapers on the Seattle docks to support the family. He had been gone so long that his son did not recognize him.?

After re-establishing himself in Seattle, Max ended up proudly carrying the first Torah scroll through the streets of Seattle—then a frontier town where loggers, miners, sailors, and Native Americans from the?Duwamish, Suquamish, Muckleshoot, Snoqualmie, Tulalip, and Puyallup Nations rubbed shoulders in muddy streets.?Max was a community leader who helped establish the Bikur Cholim synagogue in downtown Seattle for his fellow Jewish immigrants,?oversaw the community's Passover matzoh baking, and started Seattle's first Jewish cheder (religious school).?When my dad was Bar Mitzvahed in Seattle, he met an old-timer with a Yiddish accent who remembered Max dancing in the streets with Seattle's first Sefer Torah.?He told my dad that Max was a great bear of a man.

Max begot Sam.?Sam taught himself to repair watches, and he opened a little store called Weisfield's Jewelers with his brother-in-law Ralph Goldberg in 1917.?His motto was, "If Sam Weisfield can't fix your watch, throw it away!"?He knew how to advertise. He knew how to leverage credit. Sam built Weisfield's Jewelers into a Seattle institution and then into a regional empire.?If you lived in the Northwest in that era and you were getting married, you probably bought your ring at Weisfield's.?He was a founder of Temple De Hirsch, which strived to synthesize Judaism with the American values of the day.

Sam begot my Great Grandpa Richard, whom I met as a child.?There's a picture of me as a toddler, in shorts, suspenders, and a bow tie, sitting on my Great Grandpa Richard's lap.??He was a pipe smoker, a Shakespearean, a University of Washington graduate, a World War II veteran who served in the Pacific, a lover of puzzles and ciphers, and an able businessman.?He sent away to San Francisco for a suitable Jewish bride and married my great grandmother Blanche Coney, whom I remember fondly (she took me to pancake breakfasts and always bought me children’s books).?Great Grandpa Richard quarterbacked Weisfield's expansion into a regional empire which reached over 100 stores at its peak, and which diversified into other types of retail beyond jewelry.?He was a civic leader. He was on the board of the Seattle Symphony and dined with the mayor.?He and my Grannie Blanche?hosted formal Sunday?dinners where he would carve the roast beef.?And he had a yacht!?Assimilation was his goal, and he achieved it.?In December he had a Christmas tree and in April he hosted an Easter egg hunt.?The son of a watch maker, he made himself into high society.??

Richard begot my Grandpa Douglas, whom we buried on Sunday.?Grandpa Douglas begot my father, Richard Weisfield.?Richard begot me.??

I should pause here to note that every male Weisfield mentioned here thus far is a Kohen, a hereditary holy priest, directly descended from Aaron the High Priest, the brother of Moses.?I am a Kohen, by way of my dad Richard the Kohen, by way of his dad Douglas the Kohen, by way of his dad Richard the Kohen, by way of his dad Sam the Kohen, by way of his dad Max the Kohen, by way of our patrilineal forefather Aaron, the brother of Moses.?This is a true fact.?We carry a unique DNA marker on our Y chromosome to prove it.

Grandpa Douglas loved Bob Dylan, Bruce Springsteen, fast cars, and good wine.?And more than any of that, he loved books.?

He was a sharp dresser.??

He was sincere in his passion for simple things, like milkshakes and wrist watches.

He was part of that generation of American Jews who went to Reform temples, joined Jewish fraternities (his was Zeta Beta Tau) and Jewish country clubs because they were excluded from the good non-Jewish ones, voted Democrat, and supported Israel when supporting Israel had a different political valence than today.?Israel was a progressive cause.?Democrats and liberal Christians and American Jews and Black civil rights leaders rooted for the Jewish state to be born and to survive.

I remember how excited he was about the Arkansas boy wonder during the 1992 Clinton-Gore campaign.

He was brainy.?Even erudite.?I believe he was the president of his high school Latin club.?He graduated from the University of California, where he studied history and literature.?In his eighties he would sit and read multi-volume histories of the Middle Ages, the Viking dynasties, and the American Civil War.

He loved gadgets.?At one point in the 1950s he owned a German sports car with a two-stroke engine, which required him to pour in both motor oil and gasoline at every fill-up.?I remember his early Atari video game console, his early Mac computer (probably in 1991 or so), and his early CD player.?He collected and catalogued CDs, which he called "discs."??

He read me Kipling's Just So Stories when I was a kid.?He also wove a long ongoing tale about a dog and a crystal mountain, whose details are lost in the fog of time.

He had me watch the old movies he loved: Gunga Din, Singin’ in the Rain, Mutiny on the Bounty.

He took me and my sister Shellie on elaborate educational trips of discovery: to San Diego to see the zoo and wild animal museum and antique car museum, and to New York City to see the Statue of Liberty and eat at Katz's Deli and see a Broadway show.??These trips were the purest embodiment of how he expressed his love for us: by passing on his knowledge, tastes, and experiences.

He liked Mark Twain and Ogden Nash.??One of his Ogden Nash poems I still know by heart: "The turtle lives 'twixt plated decks/Which practically conceal its sex/I think it clever of the turtle/In such a fix to be so fertile."

He was not a man of the people.?He was not a good fighter or a good negotiator.?He was not a businessman.?In fact whatever business he touched went belly up.?He was not cut out for business.?I heard from my aunt that he had wanted to be a rabbi, but his parents disapproved.

Physically, he was jerky.?Verbally, he was gruff.?Emotionally, he was distant.?He loved his children and step-children but he didn't always show it in obvious ways.

There was a loneliness about him, as if he did not quite belong in this world with these people that surrounded him.

He was happier with books than with people.

In some ways he was a disappointment to himself.?He went bankrupt.?He ended up working as a car salesman.?He had on-again/off-again estrangements with his kids.?I asked him once what he was proudest of in his life.?It was the wrong question.?There was an awkward pause, then he made a self-effacing joke.

He was born into the shadow of high expectations.?His dad and his grandpa created a public legacy:?a business empire that bore the family name, two synagogues, civic institutions.?Grandpa Douglas did not do things that get engraved on bronze plaques.?Maybe he would have excelled as a scholar, teacher, librarian, or historian, but he did not go into those fields.

So what he leaves is a private and intimate legacy.?He shared his private world with his kids and grandkids—educating us about books, food, ideas, movies, historical facts, and epigrams—motivated by the sincere belief that?good books, good music, good food, and good wine could help make this difficult and lonely world a little bit more inhabitable.?He taught us family history.?He sent us newspaper clippings about the symphony and the opera.?He opened magnificent bottles of wine for special occasions.?He taught me the pleasures of Tokaj and Sauternes.??He taught me about sartorial relics like cufflinks and tie tacks.?He made roast beef sandwiches and taught me that horse radish goes on roast beef and mint jelly goes on lamb.?He did his best to be the best husband, father, and grandfather he could be.?

To me and my sister, he was a loving and committed grandfather.??

At his memorial service he requested that we play “Forever Young” and serve champagne and caviar.

We honored his wishes.?