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Family Tradition

My father, Arnold Fox, was born in the Bronx in 1917, the seventh of eight children of Sam and Jenny (Reva Yentel) Fox. My grandmother was pious, but my grandfather was not. He discouraged his children from being involved in religion, and my father’s older siblings took little interest in Judaism. But in 1924, when my father was only seven years old, his father died, and perhaps because of this, though his worldview was as secular as that of his siblings, he came to enjoy being involved in the synagogue.

As a child my father had not learned to do the traditional synagogue chanting, but while he was in Iowa City in the 1950’s he learned to chant Haftarah. Then after he came to DeKalb in 1955 he volunteered to teach the handful of Jewish children there for their bar and bat mitzvahs. He continued to do that for several decades, and already by 1975 he was such an institution that the community put on a big celebration to honor him, with testimonials from many of his past students.

For my bar mitzvah I learned to chant the Haftarah from my father, and memorized the Shabbat morning service from a reel-to-reel tape that the rabbi at our synagogue made for me. Then when I was in college I worked at Camp Ramah in Wisconsin as the assistant to Miles Cohen, a recently-ordained rabbi who had already been in charge of the synagogue at the camp for a number of years. Miles was an expert in just about everything connected with synagogue services, his standards were very high, and I learned a large part of what I know today during those summers.

After I was married and settled in Chicago I taught most of the children of our minyan to do the chanting for their bar and bat mitzvahs, and my daughters were among my students. They all did everything beautifully, to my great delight.

A few weeks ago my oldest grandchild, Boaz, turned thirteen and our family converged on Washington DC for his bar mitzvah. My daughter Deena, his mother, taught him. He led most of the service, read from the Torah and the Haftarah, and did it all correctly and with calm assurance. Boaz and his sister and cousin represent the new generation, the fourth in our family tradition. Such continuity seems rare in this world, and is something to savor. I am tremendously proud, and only wish that I could share this moment with my father and with Bev.

Created on 21 May 2026, updated on 1 June 2026 by Samuel Ethan Fox