M y father, Melvin S. Landow z”l, grew up impoverished, in a tenement in Brooklyn’s Coney Island neighborhood. From the age of nine, he worked to help support his family, offering his services first as a shoeshine boy, then delivering newspapers, then as a “barker” at the famed Coney Island amusement park. (His trademark “bark”
Working in an environment where I was constantly exposed to death and the fragility of life, I began to understand that we are all in G-d’s hands
She wasn’t expected to survive her first day, and certainly not her first week, but to the surprise of the doctors, she did. We named her Chaya
“What zechus did my mother have? Well, the only zechus of hers that I can think of is that she wasn’t cremated”
With little family support in Israel, we found ourselves at loggerheads much of the time, and our relationship was under continual strain
Then, one Friday, my father called to tell me that my mother needed someone to spend Shabbos with her in the hospital
