Free Christmas for Joshua - A Novel by Avraham Azrieli Page A

Levinson.
    “ And the name of the bride’s father’s witness?” Rabbi Mintzberg looked at Aaron.
    “ Aaron, son of Golda and Herschel.”
    “ Last name?”
    “ Brutsky.”
    “ Broo-tseh-kee? ” The rabbi creased his eyes. “Let’s see now. From Galicia?”
    “ That’s right,” Aaron said. “My father came from the Zmigrod Shtetl before the war. My mother is from Bialystok.”
    I watched the assistant’s pen travel slowly, drawing the Hebrew letters on the parchment. He turned the ketubah around, pointing. “Sign here.”
    Aaron signed, handed me the pen, and winked. “Ready to dance?”
    The rabbi cleared his throat. “And where is the yid from?”
    “ I live in Arizona,” Aaron said. “But I grew up in Lakewood, New Jersey.”
    “ Azoi. ” Rabbi Mintzberg nodded. “Which synagogue?”
    “ Rabbi Ackerman’s.”
    “ A Hasidic boy?” Rabbi Mintzberg clicked his tongue. “Well, nobody’s perfect, yah?”
    Mordechai and his father laughed, and the rabbi’s assistant said, “Could be worse!”
    “ And the father?” The old rabbi looked at me, his eyes large and watery through the thick lenses. “Also from a Hasidischer stock?”
    “ No,” I said. “A regular Jew. My Hebrew name is Reuben, son of Abraham and Sarah.” This was the way I was called up to the Torah at the synagogue. The parents of every convert to Judaism were Abraham and Sarah, the ancestral parents of the Jewish nation, and Rabbi Rachel had chosen Reuben for me as it shared a first letter with my nickname, Rusty.
    The assistant scribbled the Hebrew letters carefully. “Family name?”
    “ Dinwall,” I said, and spelled it out of habit, “D-I-N-W-A-L-L.”
    “ Deen-Aeh-Oyl? ” Rabbi Mintzberg creased his forehead. “A Littvak name, yah?”
    I shook my head.
    “ Hungarian?” The rabbi’s eyes lit up. “A Gurr Hasid?”
    “ Not really. My father’s family originated in Scotland.”
    “ Say-cott-lund? ” Rabbi Mintzberg pursed his lips. “ Azoi? ”
    “ I’m not sure where exactly.” I held up the pen. “My great-great-grandfather, Patrick Dinwall, sailed across the Atlantic on a whaling ship and worked in the Great Lakes region as a trapper.”
    “ Trepp-err? ”
    “ He was known in the fur trade along the Canadian frontier for inventing a paw-trap to catch otters underwater.” I winced as Aaron kicked me under the table. “They named a lake after him. You can still find it on the map: Saint Patrick Lake.”
    Rabbi Mintzberg repeated, “ Pah-tree-kheh? ”
    “ Back then,” Aaron said, “they couldn’t pronounce Pinkhas.” He laughed, but no one else did.
    I signed the ketubah and turned it around.
    The stocky assistant tilted his hat back and peered at my signature. “What’s this?”
    “ My legal name,” I said. “That’s how I sign checks. Do you want me to sign with my Hebrew name?”
    The assistant wasn’t listening. He moved the ketubah slowly until it was in front of the old rabbi, who bent over it, lifting his glasses, and examined my signature, reading it aloud: “ Keh-rees-tee-anne? ”
    “ That’s right.” I pulled the driver license from my wallet. “Christian Dinwall. My full and legal name.”
    Rabbi Mintzberg uttered a strange squeak and turned to his assistant, who said something in Yiddish, which I didn’t understand. But I saw Dr. Levinson’s face go white. He whispered urgently in his son’s ear, and Mordechai said, “How could I know? She calls him Daddy!”
    Aaron sighed. “Dr. Dinwall’s first name is Christian, but he’s no longer a Christian.”
    “ That’s right,” I said. “I’ve gone through the whole conversion process twenty-some years ago.”
    “ True,” Aaron said. “Our rabbi can confirm it.”
    The assistant flipped open a mobile phone. “What’s the rabbi’s name and number?”
    “ Rachel,” I said. “Rabbi Rachel Sher. Area code—”
    “ Ray-shayle? ” Rabbi Mintzberg shook his head. “ Oy vey zmeer! ”
    “ A woman?” The