Susan Boltin
I don't like speaking in public; I find it nerve-wracking. Oddly enough, for all his being a frequent and accomplished public speaker, Dad did too…especially when the occasion was personal. I remember a quiver in the hands and a quaver in the voice, almost undetectable, but distinctly there if you were intimately acquainted with all the nuances, the light and shade of his speech and manner.
Growing up as the daughter of Elaine and Arnold Bloch was often challenging. My mother is a bright, capable woman with highly developed social skills and a deep sensibleness about the world. I think she sometimes saw herself as being in my father's shadow, but in truth it usually felt to me as though things in our family were the way she made them. I saw Dad turn to her, always, for advice, for wisdom, and for validation. She filled in a lot of gaps for him, especially in the social arena, where he shone if in the company of people who stimulated him but often floundered out of his depth when the simple social niceties were called for. Dad mostly got away with being taciturn because he was brilliant, but at the same time I often saw his innate shyness and reserve misinterpreted as standoffishness.
Being Dad's daughter was a big ask. Expectations abounded, and it was never possible to measure up. He had an incisor-sharp wit and intelligence, an ability to retain and retrieve information, to cut to the heart of a matter with clarity and single-mindedness. He was the most industrious person I have ever known, invariably sitting at his desk in his study by 6.00 am, and I could never understand why he always described himself as inherently lazy. Although he defined inactivity in himself as idleness, I know that even when his body was still, his mind was churning. He had an insatiable thirst for knowledge which he constantly sought to quench. I still have no idea how he managed to read so much. He was up to date with law journals and with periodicals covering the gamut of Jewish thought, religion and politics. He was an avid reader of novels, especially detective fiction. We had four newspapers a day delivered, as well as a whole range of weekly magazines, and he read every one of them. Dad's library was extensive, reflecting his interest in history and geography, in ethics and religion, in art and architecture, in politics and philosophy, and did not contain a single unread volume. He was the only person I ever knew who could lay claim to having actually read his entire collection of coffee table books from cover to cover. And when he was reading, the sky could fall in and he wouldn't notice, so focused was his concentration.
But for all his commitment to his work, he was no workaholic. He was equally committed to his recreation, and it was sheer pleasure (though exhausting) to watch him throw himself into a holiday, from the planning to the execution. He completely immersed himself in whatever absorbed him, be it a game of Scrabble, an art exhibition, a fishing trip, a driving holiday through Victoria, a romp in the sea at Frankston, a visit to the ruins of the Forum in Rome. Meticulous research went into which restaurants to patronize in which part of the world, and whenever and wherever I traveled with him I learned as much from him as I did from the professional guides.
For much of my childhood, he was a "Shabbat father". I saw very little of him during the week. He was up at the crack of dawn, and left the house before we went to school... often even before we were out of bed. He always came home after we'd finished eating dinner and sat in solitary splendor with his newspapers at the kitchen table while he ate, and then disappeared either to one of his innumerable meetings, or to a social engagement. My parents had subscriptions to the theatre, to the ballet, to the opera. They rarely missed a movie and frequently went out for dinner with friends, (Just as an aside... I sometimes think Dad's accomplishments pale beside my mother's ability to manage their unbelievably hectic social life without keeping a diary!)
I didn't see much of Dad on Sundays, either. Again, there were meetings, there was his work. Family time was reserved for Shabbat and holidays. When I was very young I recall him taking me with him sometimes on Sunday mornings to visit building sites, and I hated it…hated the long drives all the way out to places like Burwood and Springvale on bumpy, unmade roads. It felt like the end of the earth in those days. But mostly he went alone, and Sundays were when my grandmother took us for pony rides at St. Kilda and to feed the swans at the Botanical Gardens.
So Shabbat was the time Dad was around, and it didn't occur to me that it wasn't enough. We never went out for meals, though we often had guests. On Friday nights he was always exhausted, and invariably flaked out on the couch straight after dinner. Shabbat lunch was more leisurely, and he was more focused on us. I liked seeing him relaxed, I liked watching his animation when caught up in discussion, I liked seeing his pleasure in the meal my mother prepared. I especially liked the bickering between him and my grandfather, and the unspoken but ever-present tussle between them for ascendancy in the battle for which key to sing the zemirot in. Before I was Bat-Mitzvah I sat with him in Shul every Shabbat morning, and it was a conscious loss when I couldn't do that any more.
I remember my father, the protector. I remember an occasion when I was being chased in the street by two boys, screaming and terrified, when suddenly I heard a shout and my father was there, running around the corner. I remember him raging through the streets of Frankston looking for a dog that had had the temerity to bite my sister Jenny. I knew I was safe when he was around. Nothing could touch me, because nothing and nobody had his strength, his ferocity.
I remember my father, the disciplinarian. He had a short fuse, but it was selective. He did not suffer fools, and was enraged by dishonesty. The two occasions on which I remember him disciplining me physically both resulted from my lying. It wasn't the original misdeed, whatever it was, that angered him, so much as the fact that I lied about it. I was afraid of his anger, it was awesome and to be avoided at all costs.
I remember my father, man of compassion, sought out and sought after for his wisdom, for his knowledge, for his connections, for his counsel, for his open hand and his open wallet. He never said no. In both his personal and his professional life he was guided by the Biblical exhortation "tzedek, tzedek tirdof" (justice, justice you shall pursue), and I remember his explanation that the repetition was meant to teach us that both the ends we seek and the means we employ to achieve them must be just.
I remember my father, connoisseur and collector. He had a deep appreciation for beauty, whether in the form of an artfully constructed sentence, a fine meal, a building, a particular combination of shapes or colours, a piece of music or jewelry, a painting or a sculpture, a detail of nature. When he reached a stage of life when he could afford it, he became a keen collector of Judaica. He often conceived of and commissioned works that had multiple layers of meaning, and patronized artists who created tributes to Jewish history and religion in a range of media - oil, charcoal, silver, tapestry. He gave equal time and value to the old and the new, surrounding himself both at home and at the office with artwork that afforded him sensual as well as cerebral pleasure.
I remember my father, man ahead of his time and yet rooted in the values of the past. I remember an aversion to political correctness for its own sake before the concept ever existed, tempered by a consciousness of the need to fit in, to set an example, to submit to duty. It seemed to me there was in him an ongoing tension between conformity and self-expression. He sometimes surprised me by allowing things I was sure he would forbid, and angered me by forbidding things I thought were eminently allowable.
I remember my father, the sexist. Maybe that's unkind. He didn't see women in any way as "less", but he unquestionably saw men and women as having different roles and responsibilities, and that was reflected in his parenting. He dealt differently with my brothers than he did with Jenny and Robyn and me, and that applied to what I saw as positives as well as to negatives. Geoffrey and Stephen were subjected to harsher discipline, but they were never expected to help clear the table or wash the dishes. And they got bikes. The boys had more pressure on them to perform at school, and he took far more interest in the outcome and direction of their education and career paths than he did in mine. And yet I know he saw me as every bit as capable as them.
I remember my father, the clown. He had a wonderful sense of the ridiculous, and of course a highly intelligent humor. I loved hearing him laugh. I loved his all-too-rare playfulness. I loved the silly jokes he told over and over… what's red, hangs from the ceiling and whistles like a bird?
I remember my father, man of logic and of doubt. I remember his constant struggle with faith, with the dichotomies of practice and belief in a world which often deemed them archaic and irrelevant. I remember discussions that went in endless circles, finally coming to rest in an acceptance that a prescribed lifestyle carries with it benefits that accrue regardless of the source of the prescription.
I remember my father, the Zionist. I remember debates about what that meant, the search for a definition, and I remember his own quirky conclusion that a Zionist is one who believes that he should be living in Israel, and feels guilty that he doesn't. I guess it worked for him. He was certainly intensely connected to Israel, and embraced the freedom for outward religious expression that it afforded him, as well as the freedom from existing as part of a minority. He had a soul-deep love and understanding of the land, of the state, of the nation, it's history and geography and sociology and politics.
I remember my father, man of the community. For him that meant moving out of his comfort zone and addressing himself to the entire breadth of Jewry in Melbourne. He accepted and understood that its continuity and survival depended above all else on education, and that involved putting his money - and his children - where his mouth was . . . immersing himself in a life-long effort to ensure that Jewish education of substance would reach the less committed and the less affiliated, because the others would take care of themselves.
I remember my father, the family man. Of all his many parts, above all else, the family man. His own childhood was, I think, lonely and not easy. He grew up in London during the war, born into a renowned and respected family, product of a broken home at a time when broken homes were rare in the orthodox Jewish community, evacuated during the Blitz to live with an autocratic and demanding Rabbi who schooled him in Gemara in the early mornings and late into the night, before and after he put in a full day at the local school. Dad delighted in his family, he held it as the highest value to hold it together, and perhaps my greatest regret for his early death is that he missed out on the joy he would have got from his grandchildren. He was utterly enchanted with those he did know, and displayed a softness as a grandfather that I didn't always perceive in him as a father. I deeply regret, too, that my children don't have the benefit of knowing him.
When a man has the sorts of gifts and talents that my father did, and especially when his life is cut short, there is a danger of mythologizing him. It is all too easy, too tempting even, to cast him as wholly good, wholly admirable, and that would be doing a disservice to his humanity. So alongside my acknowledgement and appreciation of what I truly believe to be his greatness, I consciously affix to the pin board of my memory snapshots that emphasize and encapsulate his fallibility, his ordinariness. I will not allow myself to forget the mannerisms, the tics and twitches the vanity that saw him deny his baldness, the fretting over his constant struggle with his weight. I retain the image of him reclining, feet up on his desk, picking his toes. I picture him leaning against the bench in the kitchen opposite the fridge, noshing the fried fish my mother had made for Shabbat morning while she admonished him to "leave some for the kids". My nose still wrinkles at the acrid smell of cigars which transports me back to my childhood, and the oddity of his intolerance of the smell of a cigarette being smoked a hundred feet away while remaining completely insensitive to the far more pungent and pervasive aroma of his cigars, which drove the rest of the household crazy.
I nurture my recollections of his obsessiveness, both a blessing and a curse, and its many manifestations - his perfectionism and high expectations of himself, his scrupulous cleanliness and attention to his clothes and grooming, his compulsive arranging into ordered rows any bits and pieces on his plate or on the tablecloth. Vivid is the memory of his valiant and invariably unsuccessful efforts to maintain his patience during the tortured Shabbat afternoons when he was teaching Stephen to leyn, along with Geoffrey's countdown (10...9.. .8.. .7...) to the inevitable moment when Dad would lose his temper and Stephen would storm out of the room in tears. And I cherish the memory of the affection in his voice when he called me by the nickname he was the only one ever to use for me - "Su-Su" - or even, occasionally, the hated "Suey-Duey".
Not a day goes by that he doesn't enter my mind. Not one, in over 17 years. I feel it as a blessing and an honour that he was my father, that I was in a position to learn from him. He had a unique combination of intellect, drive, dedication, responsibility, commitment and work ethic. His children all have parts of it, but none of us the whole. He expected a lot of us, in some ways, but perversely I sometimes feel he didn't expect enough. He often railed against mediocrity, yet ultimately he accepted it in those he loved. He allowed me to get away with being less than I could be, and, contrary and human as I am, that has been cause for both relief and some measure of resentment.
I find it's impossible to reflect upon my father's life without also reflecting upon his death. It's an awful irony of life that as time helps our minds to grow and engage and create, it lets our bodies betray us and distract our attention from where we'd far rather be involved. The body is just there... until suddenly it is not. Who ever gives a thought to it until suddenly it demands our attention by misbehaving... and so greedily, devouring so much more than it's fair share, and disabling our minds, causing our focus to concertina into the minutiae of our physicality.
He got sick. It was unbelievable to me, incomprehensible, impossible. I became expert in denial. If miracles there be, one would eventuate for him, because a world without my father was unthinkable. The time came, though, when reality would no longer allow me the upper hand. Watching his initial disbelief, his fear, his determined struggle and, ultimately, his decline, was terrifying and heartbreaking for all of us. Selfishly, I sometimes wished he would help us to understand and cope - after all, he was the most steadfast person I knew, the solid, certain, untouchable rock… so who better? But that would have forced upon him a level of acknowledgement and acceptance that I'm not sure he was capable of. I think maybe he wanted to believe in miracles too. At the end, I wanted to say goodbye, to talk about love and gratitude and legacy. I tried, but he wouldn't let me. I guess it was just too hard.
I am so sorry that I did not have nearly long enough to get to know my father in my adulthood. He still had so much left to do, so much left to give, and I was angry for years that time ran out for him. I try to internalise Einstein's aphorism that "time is relative, its only worth depends upon what we do as it is passing," and I do believe that Dad did and gave much more than many manage in a longer lifetime. After he died, there were so many letters, and visitors, and telegrams... letters and letters from people I'd never heard of... stories about things he'd done, quietly, to help. It hurt that I hadn't known. I was sad and even a little guilty that there were strangers out there who in some ways knew him better than I did.
I held his hand as he died and I knew the course of my life would change because he was no longer in it. My father certainly had his frailties, but to me he was a man bigger than life, and he was not supposed to die.... certainly not at 56, while he was so passionately engaged with life. But he did anyway. We don't get to choose. We just get to remember.