The Visit

Courtesy of "Metropolitan Diary": 

As he pulled the car away from the curb at my hotel, my Uber driver, Chaim, who looked to be in his late 20s, cleared his throat: “Would you mind if I asked the purpose of this trip?” His electronic instructions were to bring me to Beth El Cemetery, just over the George Washington Bridge.

“Sure,” I said. “I’m going to visit my grandfather’s grave; no one from our family has been there since 1959, about a year after he passed away. That’s when we moved from New York City to the Midwest. I had just turned 2 years old.” I then added, “It’s not that we haven’t been back to town — we all have always visited New York City frequently. I think we’ve just always been a family who studiously avoided cemeteries — you know, the ‘creep out’ factor.”

“Why now, then?” the driver asked? 

“I’m not completely sure,” I replied. 

And then in a bashert moment if there ever was one (Yiddish for “meant to be”), Chaim smiled at me in the rear view mirror and gently said: “Well, I happen to be a rabbi in case you’d like me to say a blessing or read the Hebrew on the headstone.” 

A couple of hours later, as we were headed back to the City, and after Chaim had done exactly what he had offered (a beautiful recitation from Psalms and some help with the Hebrew inscriptions), I must admit, this basically secular Jew couldn’t help but feel that Grandpa Jack, a deeply religious Jew whom I never had the chance to know, had somehow sent this lovely man, Rebbe (Uber) Chaim, from above.

—Jacqueline Jacobs Caster