Seeing one’s father cry is an intense experience. I feel it to this very day

Photo: AP Images

When I was a kid growing up in the Twin Cities, my father belonged to a B’nai B’rith lodge. This puzzled me at the time. We were the only frum family that belonged to this lodge. This was not a thing that Orthodox Jewish people did. Like gentile fraternal organizations — the Elks, the Shriners, the Knights of Columbus — B’nai B’rith brought Jewish men together for camaraderie and social service.

But my father was a hard-working, 24/6 family man, not the “go bowling with the guys at the lodge” type. He never attended any of the meetings, never joined the activities. His social circle was contained almost wholly within the shul and day school community, and I never knew him to hang out with the other lodge members.

One day I saw him making out a check to pay his membership dues to B’nai B’rith’s Aaron Milstein Lodge #49.

I innocently asked, “Why do you belong to a B’nai B’rith lodge?”

My father told me that the lodge was named after a kid he grew up with, and he felt an obligation to belong. Now I was even more curious. I pressed him for details.

The “old neighborhood” my father grew up in during the Depression was populated entirely by Yiddish-speaking Jewish immigrants. His chevreh were first-generation American kids like himself. The Milsteins were another immigrant family in the neighborhood. They had two sons — Aaron, and Bernie, younger by 15 years.