Eulogy

The following is a synopsis of Jonathan Kaplan’s eulogy for his father, given at his funeral on December 31, 2009:

"When thinking of my father, the book of Ecclesiastes comes to mind as a work that captures the essence of my father’s approach to life. As the author says in chapter 8, verse 15, “And I commended delight, because a person has no better thing under the sun, than to eat, and to drink, and to be merry; for this will go with him in his labor during the days of his life, which God gives him under the sun.” Dad was truly a person who sought to seize life and enjoy it as much as he could. He stayed local to North Miami, Florida (he didn’t like to travel), but he knew the city and its people in all their vibrancy and diversity. His staples were Starbuck’s Coffee and the American fare served at Jimmy’s Place. That didn’t stop him, however, from sampling jerked chicken or any number of the myriad of cuisines in his adopted home city. Not only did he eat the diversity of food in North Miami, but he also delighted in people throughout the city regardless of socio-economic status, creed or ethnicity. As someone said on the memorial thread on the Rangefinder Forum, “What a great life Al had, right to the end! We should all live life so well.”

"Life for my father was something he observed through the rangefinder of a camera. As a photographer, he always sought to capture the essence of what was before him. That meant paying attention to the angle of the camera or the amount and quality of the light in the room. Pop was not a passive participant in life. He knew that one could also shape the picture by the angle of the camera or by letting more light into the room. Life, just like a picture, was a reality you could help craft as well as portray.

"Dad was not a religious person in a traditional way. I remember him once telling me about his Bar Mitzva. The sanctuary was directly above the function hall of the synagogue. Instead of going all the way downstairs to the nosh afterwards he went out the front door of the synagogue and straight to the movie theater to catch the afternoon feature. I also saw a similar contrast in the last month of his life. The night before he first fell ill he lit a chanukka menora in his kitchen. He observed this commandment of Jewish religious life. Yet, not a week later he was complaining to me about the rabbi who had come by to visit him at the hospital. He was upset that the rabbi kept telling him to get up and pray every morning. My father was upset at the rabbi’s “approach.” As was typical in such conversations, I told Dad I agreed with the rabbi. He told me we would talk about it when I next came down to visit him. We never had the conversation as he passed shortly after I arrived at the hospital to see him.

"Pop’s relationship to his own religious tradition bespeaks his posture towards life in general. Life, in all its facets, is not something one accepts blindly. Life should be interrogated. One should always plumb its depths and question the assumptions of those who claim to have all the simple answers. This feature of my father’s personality expressed itself in his involvement in North Miami politics and in his conversations with his friends and families. As I grew older, I came to understand that for my father one’s conclusions didn’t matter so much but rather the integrity of one’s argument and that one’s conclusions were well reasoned.

"When I last saw my Dad a few days before his first hospitalization, we had a very vivid conversation about how he was trying to understand and appreciate his life. The conversation had been sparked by his conversations with a friend of his about what tied his blog – The Price of Silver – together. Most blogs are mono-focal; Pop’s was not. As we sat in Starbuck’s, my father related that what he thought tied his life together was that he was a teacher. In the last decade the various photo forums in which he participated and his blog became his classroom. As one person remarked on the memorial page to him on the Rangefinder Forum, “We lost a good friend, one that enjoyed people! He enjoyed sharing his knowledge and swapping ideas with everyone! Our loss is Heaven’s gain!” Even as a little child, my father was always teaching me: scribbling schematic drawings on napkins at Dunkin Donuts, explaining the physics of a car spoiler to an 8-year old, teaching me how to fish, develop film, take pictures, build stuff, tie the countless knots he knew, constantly teaching. Today we say good bye to a teacher, a friend, a cousin, a father – I only hope that I am able to pass on the good that I learned from him . . . may his memory be for a blessing!"