Good With Kids

One of my favorite pictures of my brother is a snapshot where no one is even looking at the camera. Rick is in the middle, his daughter and my girls flanked on all sides. My youngest, maybe six months old at the time, is slumped over on his lap, fast asleep. The others are looking at Rick’s laptop. I had no idea what they were watching at the time, but since then my girls have relayed that he showed them funny parodies of Dora the Explorer where she used foul language and was anything but her usual saccharine self.

The photo perfectly encapsulates my brothers approach to children, whether his own or anyone else else’s. On the one hand, he had boundless love for all kids. He had incredible patience for them. He loved getting down on their level, allowing them to ask him for endless favors and attention or to climb all over him, as this and many other photos show. On the other hand, his sense of humor and irreverent personality prompted him to do things that many would have considered “inappropriate.“ Of course, they loved him all the more for teaching them to break the rules and color outside the lines.

Always hilarious and fun, Rick would make anything into a game. He made up funny voices and turned any object into a puppet. He pushed them way too high on the swings, telling them not to be such babies when they got scared. He had a Palm Pilot with Internet access before most people even had the Internet on their desktops, and kept kids entertained for hours with trivia contests aided by nascent search engines. They all remember him belting out the lyrics to the My Little Pony theme song and offering prizes for history quizzes. He brought them into his world, letting them watch Jackass or Animal House because he knew it would make them laugh.

When my oldest turned six, Rick was the entertainment at her birthday party. He led a mean game of Simon Says, cutting no slack to the kindergartners who messed up, and raising the arm of the eventual winner with the gusto usually reserved for heavyweight champions. When he realized that I did not have an actual prize to offer, he reached into his wallet and gave the kid ten bucks. I’d never seen anyone so happy. The kid was jubilant as well.

I’m glad my kids remember Rick for his warmth and humor. I’m only sorry they weren’t old enough to appreciate his more serious side. Rick was an activist committed to fighting antisemitism with an intensity we could use nowadays. Many of us remember the 1991 Crown Heights riots, when three days of antisemitic demonstrations resulted in a mob murder of an Australian yeshiva student, Yankel Rosenbaum. Months later, when no arrests had been made, his brother Norman visited Rick’s law school class to describe his efforts to seek prosecution of the perpetrators. Hundreds of students heard the same story that day, but only Rick was so moved that he felt compelled to act. He organized a massive rally attended by over 10,000 people, mainly alerted by one of the hundreds of faxes he sent to every Jewish organization he could find.

Always a low-key guy, Rick barely told our family what he was up to, and it was almost by accident that we found out and decided to attend. It was something to see. A bipartisan Who’s Who of New York politicians spoke out, including Rudy Giuliani, Chuck Schumer, Al D’Amato and many others. Even amid these polished speakers and dignitaries, no one compared to Rick for pure passion and unrelenting call for justice. Soon after, the investigation was reopened and a trial ensued.

After graduation, Rick worked in DC as an aide to Congressman Jim Saxton. Alisa Flatow, a 20-year old student from NJ, had been murdered in a terror attack on a bus traveling to Gush Katif. Her bereaved father Stephen Flatow had been making the rounds on Capitol Hill, attempting to find a sponsor to amend the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act of 1976 so victims’ families could sue countries designated as state sponsors of terrorism.

As he described it at a later memorial for Rick, the bereaved Mr. Flatow had visited innumerable Congressional offices and was on the verge of believing his goal impossible. Certainly he had been told that many times. Then he met Rick, who never wanted to limit himself to what seemed possible. Once engaged in a just cause, Rick’s relentless nature drove him until he had secured his goal. He found sponsors for the amendment and soon after it became law.

Rick would have turned sixty this weekend, had he not died suddenly at age forty-eight. No doubt, if he were alive today, he would be fighting the antisemites with incomparable creativity, dedication and gusto, while still hanging out with all the kids, cracking them up and pushing boundaries as always. I can hear him teasing them now. I know the glee we’d feel just having him around, making each other laugh and feeling the love.