Elisha as a child, an adolescent, an adult. Elisha’s birth changed my life. From that moment, I felt more concerned and responsible than ever before. This tiny creature looking at me without seeing me would have to be protected. And the best way to protect him would be to change the world in which he would grow up. For the circumcision ceremony we had invited friends, among them the great violinist Isaac Stern, the philosopher Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel, many writers and survivors. All had come, naturally, for legend tells us that this is the only invitation one may not decline, since a circumcision always takes place “in the presence” of the patriarch Abraham and the prophet Elijah. I remember it as if it were yesterday. We had also invited a number of Hasidim from Brooklyn, and when the name of the newborn—Shlomo Elisha son of Eliezer, son of Shlomo—was pronounced for the first time, an old Hasid cried out, “A name has come back to us.” And he and some of the other Hasidim formed a circle and began to dance around, and in honor of, the newly arrived Jew.
