4.2.12 WC: 191694 game that got rained out half way through. We ran to the train station only to find no one tending the token booth. My uncle had one token and so the two of us squeezed through the turnstile on his one token. As soon as we got home he took a dime, put it in an envelope and sent it to the transit authority, apologizing profusely for temporarily cheating them of their dime. A year later he did the same thing, but on a much larger scale. My Uncle Itchie stowed away on a ship headed for Palestine in order to participate in Israel’s struggle for statehood. He did not have enough money for passage, so he hid in a closet during the nearly month long trip, getting food from a friend who was paying his own way over. My Uncle then swam from the ship to shore, evading British authorities. After working for several months he then sent the full fare for the lowest class of service to the shipping company. Those were the values with which I was brought up. You do what you have to do, but then you pay your debts. Religion in my home was not a matter of faith or an accepted theology. To this day, I have no idea what my parents believed about the nature of God, the literal truth of the Bible, heaven and hell, or other issues so central to most religions. Ours was a religion of practice and rules—of required acts and omissions. A cartoon I once saw perfectly represented my parents approach to religion. It showed a father dragging his reluctant young son in the direction of the synagogue and saying: “Atheist, Shmathiest, I don’t care—as long as you come to shul.” Our Judaism was entirely rule bound. Before every activity, there was a required “brucha”—a formulistic blessing appropriate to the activity. “Baruch ata Adonoy”—“blessed be you our God”—followed by a reference to His creation: “who brings forth bread from the earth” or “wine from the grapes” or “fruit from the trees” or “produce from the ground.” Then there was a generic brucha that covered everything not i