From the corner Jacob could see the pale brown stones of the synagogue. Its domed sanctuary rose above the roofs of three-bedroom war-boom homes. Jacob hunched his shoulders forward and thrust his hands into his pants pockets, tilting his head against the November wind; he wondered if passers-by would mistake him for his father. Everyone in town had known Abraham Katz. He had delivered vegetables from his truck to the two grocery stores in town for fifteen years. When Jacob was still a kid his father took him along on Sunday mornings on his route. They would wake up well before dawn and drive his father's blue pick-up truck to a farmers' market a few miles outside of town. Jacob knew all the men had been waiting just for them. Jacob had to push off from the truck's door frame and jump to the ground, but his father stepped down easily, taking a farmer's hand as he did, saying "Well, hello there, Bob. How's life treatin' you nowadays?" Pop was a celebrity.

As the sun peeked over the Allegheny foothills they'd be served doughnuts and hot coffee. "Don't tell your mom," Pop would wink as he ate two or three doughnuts and drank as many cups of black coffee. "She thinks it's bad for me, but I tell her, it's what keeps me so damn good-lookin'," he said and patted his belly where it stretched his shirt over his belt. Sometimes the men's voices dropped lower as they glanced sideways at Jacob and talked about a place called Korea and some poor boys who'd been shipped over there to fight. Jacob's father had been in the first big war against Germany and had a picture of his ambulance squad that hung in the upstairs hallway. Watching the farmers' anxious whispers turn into clouds of steam in the cold morning air, Jacob tried to imagine what Korea looked like. He pictured war as twenty-odd men standing next to an ambulance, holding cigarettes and mugs.

"Pop, you've got the best job," Jacob said one Sunday afternoon when he was eight. It was winter, and the truck's wide wheels spun slowly along snow-muffled streets. "Everybody knows you." Jacob's father had taken one hand off the steering wheel and patted his son's thigh. "You'll do better than this, kiddo." Jacob couldn't think what job could surpass the freedom and glory of a high blue truck and doughnuts.

This Tuesday morning when he was thirteen, still an hour before school would start, he walked alone past Janet's house. It was tiny and pale blue with lace curtains in the front windows like eyes soft-closed in sleep. A week ago he had tripped on an uneven square of pavement there and felt that Janet must have seen him. When he recovered his balance he hadn't dared to look back at those lace eyes, fearing that he might see her body's outline behind them. This morning, though, he stepped carefully over the irregular concrete.

Jacob had walked this route every Saturday morning with his father. After his Bar Mitzvah, four months earlier, he had become a member of the Shabbos minyan, counted among the ten men necessary for community prayer. He loved to watch his father as he stepped into the dark entryway of the shul, removed his brown bowler, and slipped a yarmulke over his thick brown hair. That seemed to be his father's one and only religious act. Once inside the beit midrash, his father found his friends David Zipowitz and Marty Stern, and they began their routine of talking and davening, stepping and winking,  laughing and bowing. Jacob thought of that rectangular room with its dusty prayer books and stained carpeting as a club room to which his Bar Mitzvah had earned him membership. When one of the older members of the minyan complained about water leaking through the stained tile ceiling, Jacob would shake his head in commiserating disapproval. With his own friends he shouted and punched shoulders in greeting, but in the synagogue, and especially within the beit midrash, he shook hands and nodded earnestly. All this he learned from his father on Saturday mornings. Jacob knew the prayers by heart, but he often lost his place in the siddur while he watched his father.

Two blocks from the synagogue Jacob passed Moe's Grocery. Moe was his uncle, his father's brother, and Jacob made a mental note that he would be working from six until nine that evening. He bagged groceries in the checkout line, sorting cans and tins from soft bread and fruits, keeping cold items together. He thought of every packing job as a puzzle, like the math problems he did in algebra where each x, y, and z had a perfectly precise value. Or like the games in the book his father had given him for Chanukah the year before. His father had smiled and watched Jacob complete the first puzzle in a matter of a few minutes. "Oh, Pop, it's really not that hard," he had said and immediately regretted his nonchalance. His father shook his head. "I never went passed sixth grade, you know." "I know, Pop." Jacob had put the book away, and it had stayed in his desk drawer until two nights ago, when he took the book out and attempted to show his friend Al how simple the puzzles were.

"Damnit. This one's a lot harder than the other one. I can't figure it out."

Al tried for a few minutes to find a relationship between two rows of numbers and a column of symbols.

"Forget it, Al," Jacob said, leaning across his bed where they had sprawled with their pencils. "It's not worth it. It's too complicated."

Al watched as Jacob shoved the book of puzzles under a pile of comic books and boys' magazines that lay in the corner.

At the door to the synagogue, Jacob reached up and touched his fingers to the mezuzah, then kissed them. The motion was routine, but this morning he thought of the scroll rolled up within the mezuzah's silver frame, a prayer to remember the oneness of God in every time and place, and to teach that oneness to your children. The foyer was utterly still, and he held the street door closed behind him so it wouldn't slam. He took his yarmulke from the pocket of his Boy Scouts jacket and put it on the top of his head, as his father did. "Good morning, Mr. Zipowitz," he said to his father's friend, who extended a hand to him from the doorway of the beit midrash. "Jacob," the older man said, and put a hand on Jacob's shoulder, squeezing hard. Soon ten men had arrived, a minyan, and they began to daven Shacharit, to sway and chant and mumble the morning liturgy.

As they chanted the Amidah, marking the service's midpoint, Jacob remembered that his Boy Scouts troop had a meeting after school. He raised his eyebrows and shrugged. Last week he had called his troop leader and told him that he would have to miss their meetings for the next several months. "And I have one more badge until I'm eligible for Eagle Scout, Sir," he reminded Mr. Rekulak. "Then you'd better get yourself to these meetings, young man," Mr. Rekulak had said and hung up the phone. Jacob listened to the dull moan of the dial tone for almost a minute.

Once the previous spring his father had forsaken the Sabbath to go with Jacob and his Boy Scout troop on an overnight retreat. "God wants our devotion, but He understands these things," his father said as they drove past the synagogue late on a Friday afternoon. The night before Jacob had overheard his father and his poker buddies arguing quietly in the living room. "So this is how you teach him? Almost a Bar Mitzvah, and you're taking him camping on Shabbos." Jacob had recognized Mr. Zipowitz's voice. Mr. Stern said, "I don't see the danger, so long as he knows, the law's there for a reason." And then Jacob heard his father's low, thick voice, "I trust Jacob to know. He's a good kid. He does what's right."

Fourteen boys, their fathers, and Mr. Rekulak were already gathered in front of the high school. The boys were wearing their blue uniforms, and a few of them were chasing each other around the parking lot, shouting girls' names at one another like curses. Jacob and his father stood quietly next to the yellow school bus. Jacob's father adjusted his hat.

"It's those darn shiksa girls, driving the gentiles mad."

Jacob had laughed and watched the corners of his father's mouth twitch at his own joke. Jacob thought of Janet, his own shiksa crush, and decided not to mention her.

They camped that night in a state park and ate pork and beans for dinner. "Don't tell your mother," Pop winked as he scooped himself a second helping. Later that night they went stargazing. Jacob stood next to his father, pointing out as many constellations as he could name.

The beit midrash was on the first floor of the synagogue, used during the week for morning and evening services. The ten men assembled that morning bowed and swayed next to the mechitzah, though no women stood on the other side. Looking at it Jacob thought of Janet and blushed. At the Halloween dance a few weeks ago he had watched her dance with one boy after another. She had two thick, brown braids, and he wondered if any Scout ever learned to make knots that perfect and smooth. He sat out the evening in the junior high gym, getting up only to refill his plate with brownies or to use the men's room. Afterwards he walked home a block behind her.

Suddenly Jacob felt the silent weight of the room pressing him into the floor. Nine sets of eyes had settled gently, expectantly upon him.

"Jacob," Mr. Zipowitz was saying.

Other than Mr. Zipowitz and Mr. Stern, he knew only a few of these men by name. They were all there because of him, because of his father. Three weeks and four days. He remembered standing on the sidewalk opposite Janet's house after the dance as a boy from their class waited on her doorstep, hoping for a kiss. He remembered that as her front door opened he heard the sound of the ambulance coming toward him. He followed the blazing lights as they passed him in a craze of screaming sirens, turning onto his street. And he never knew if Janet kissed that other boy or not, because he ran after the ambulance as if he had always known where it would stop.

Neighbors had gathered on his front lawn. His mother was wearing her work uniform, a pleated white apron over a faded red dress. She stood motionless, illuminated by light from the street lamps, her arms folded over her chest. She was watching two men in blue jumpsuits carry a stretcher down the porch steps. Jacob ran over to the stretcher. Someone had pulled a sheet over his father's face.

"Another heart attack," his mother said behind him. "He didn't suffer."

Jacob turned around to ask her how did it happen and why did it and what do I, but she had already started walking back into the house, a neighbor's arm pressed to her round, low shoulders. One of the men in blue slammed the ambulance door shut. He watched the ambulance move slowly down the street, without sirens, until it passed out of sight. All the lights in the house were on and he thought he heard running water and the familiar clink of dishes being washed and put away. Turning away from the house he began to walk, head down, and to guide his steps between blocks of pavement. Eventually he saw that he had retraced his steps to the junior high and stopped opposite the gym doors. "Yackety Yack" was playing.

In the beit midrash the men were still waiting. Jacob cleared his throat. He opened his mouth and closed it. Three weeks and four days.

"Yisgadol v'yiskadash, sh'mei rabah." The words fell out his mouth like rotten teeth, sour and dull. He extolled the glory of God, the Source of all life. Closing his eyes he saw his father waving to him from the driver's seat of his vegetable truck. He saw his mother and relatives quietly sitting in his living room during the week of shivah, eating noodle kugel and drinking Schnapps for a week of mourning. His Uncle Moe saying "You're the man, now, Jacob."

Oseh shalom bimromav. He had prayed with these men morning and evening for three weeks and four days. He stood even with most of them and taller than some. He closed his eyes again and saw his father laughing with Marty and David, and himself a small boy: they towered above him, and he lost his place in the siddur. He asked God who makes peace in heaven to bring peace to all the world.

"Here," Marty said as the men began to put on their coats. "I've been meaning to give you this. It was your father's. He left it at my place the night before...after our poker game."

The hat was faded the color of cinnamon, and the felt had worn thin in several places around the brim. Jacob thanked Mr. Stern and put the hat on, then his Boy Scouts jacket. Outside, day had forgotten morning, but a chill wind was still blowing over the tops of the small houses. Jacob pulled the hat down around his ears and stuck his hands deep in his pockets. Hunching his shoulders forward, he walked the blocks to school wondering if anyone would mistake him for his father.

Rebecca Davis, BK'98, is a Senior Editor of Urim v'Tumim.