Ilana Lindenblatt

I learned that Mr. Lyndon Blatt was dying when I was in London this past November on business. I had awoken from a dream that his daughter Ilana, who is one of my oldest friends, was engaged. I called her up and asked if there was something I didn't know, because I inherited a witchy quality from my mother.

I learned that Mr. Lyndon Blatt was dying when I was in London this past November on business. I had awoken from a dream that his daughter Ilana, who is one of my oldest friends, was engaged. I called her up and asked if there was something I didn't know, because I inherited a witchy quality from my mother.

I occasionally have dreams about people, and it turns out that they're predictive, or at least thematically correct. She laughed, sadly, and told me she wasn't engaged. No. That her father was dying. And that perhaps the thing I had sensed across the ocean was her sadness. He has cancer, she said.

I occasionally have dreams about people, and it turns out that they're predictive, or at least thematically correct. She laughed, sadly, and told me she wasn't engaged. No. That her father was dying. And that perhaps the thing I had sensed across the ocean was her sadness. He has cancer, she said.

He was receiving a palliative chemotherapy treatment, and the doctors didn't have a guess as to how long he would live. Weeks or months. Nobody really knew for sure, but the end was inevitable. And inevitabilities... In this story, they are everywhere. I hung up the phone and I thought about Mr. Lindenblatt.

He was receiving a palliative chemotherapy treatment, and the doctors didn't have a guess as to how long he would live. Weeks or months. Nobody really knew for sure, but the end was inevitable. And inevitabilities... In this story, they are everywhere. I hung up the phone and I thought about Mr. Lindenblatt.

His first name was Yehuda, though it feels seditious to even say the first name of a childhood friend's father. I thought about how he was a runner, back when it was just called jogging. How he drank rice milk before alternative milks were the style. How he would walk through the house in his running shorts and no shirt, which absolutely none of the other dads did.

His first name was Yehuda, though it feels seditious to even say the first name of a childhood friend's father. I thought about how he was a runner, back when it was just called jogging. How he drank rice milk before alternative milks were the style. How he would walk through the house in his running shorts and no shirt, which absolutely none of the other dads did.

How he thanklessly and happily took on the burden of driving Alana and me both ways to our losing basketball games and our even losing our play rehearsals. We were in Brigadoon together, don't ask, when my mother was pregnant with my youngest sister. How he taught me to say, hello, how are you, in his native Hungarian, which has proved useful in my life twice so far.

How he thanklessly and happily took on the burden of driving Alana and me both ways to our losing basketball games and our even losing our play rehearsals. We were in Brigadoon together, don't ask, when my mother was pregnant with my youngest sister. How he taught me to say, hello, how are you, in his native Hungarian, which has proved useful in my life twice so far.

how he walked around on Shabbat with a walkie-talkie, because in addition to working at his family's camera store in Midtown, he volunteered for the Jewish Ambulance Service in Manhattan Beach near their home. And I thought about the fact that Mr. Lindenblatt survived the Holocaust. In my neighborhood in Brooklyn, in the surrounding neighborhoods too, it seemed as if everyone was a survivor.

how he walked around on Shabbat with a walkie-talkie, because in addition to working at his family's camera store in Midtown, he volunteered for the Jewish Ambulance Service in Manhattan Beach near their home. And I thought about the fact that Mr. Lindenblatt survived the Holocaust. In my neighborhood in Brooklyn, in the surrounding neighborhoods too, it seemed as if everyone was a survivor.

We all had the Holocaust in our past to varying degrees. We knew whose fathers were Holocaust survivors, and whose grandmothers had numbers on their arms, and whose aunts never made it out of the ghetto. All discussed as part of our Holocaust education at the Yeshiva High School that Alana and I attended in Queens. And let me tell you, on the matter of the Holocaust, we were educated.

We all had the Holocaust in our past to varying degrees. We knew whose fathers were Holocaust survivors, and whose grandmothers had numbers on their arms, and whose aunts never made it out of the ghetto. All discussed as part of our Holocaust education at the Yeshiva High School that Alana and I attended in Queens. And let me tell you, on the matter of the Holocaust, we were educated.

But here it is anyway. In my most bitter moments... In times when I realize how much of my foundational education was given over to the war and how little was given over to, say, gym or art or the other humanities that would have helped me in life or at the very least in work meetings, I say I went to a Holocaust high school, a magnet school for Jewish death studies.

But here it is anyway. In my most bitter moments... In times when I realize how much of my foundational education was given over to the war and how little was given over to, say, gym or art or the other humanities that would have helped me in life or at the very least in work meetings, I say I went to a Holocaust high school, a magnet school for Jewish death studies.

I say my school taught us master's-level World War II history and also just enough math and science to pass the New York State Regents exams. I'm joking. But am I? I left high school having read Macbeth not once, but Elie Wiesel's Night three times over the course of my education. I can probably autocomplete any sentence from Anne Frank's diary if you start me off with three words.

I say my school taught us master's-level World War II history and also just enough math and science to pass the New York State Regents exams. I'm joking. But am I? I left high school having read Macbeth not once, but Elie Wiesel's Night three times over the course of my education. I can probably autocomplete any sentence from Anne Frank's diary if you start me off with three words.

I have forgotten more about the Holocaust than I ever knew about the American Revolution. Again, I'm mostly hyperbolic here. Lots of people hated their high schools, and even more people of my generation have aged up to find that their formal education let them down in some crucial way or another.

I have forgotten more about the Holocaust than I ever knew about the American Revolution. Again, I'm mostly hyperbolic here. Lots of people hated their high schools, and even more people of my generation have aged up to find that their formal education let them down in some crucial way or another.