Questions crowded my mind like a stampede of wildebeest. It was 1943, and I had just been drafted into the American army. How would I face this war alone? Where would I be stationed? What did I need to know? Rabbi Minkowitz will have the answers! I took the stairs two at a time and pulled open the doors. The smell of stale tea and musty books led me to the Rabbi’s study. A glass teacup and a lone sugar cube shared the desk with a stack of papers and an olive green rotary phone. The Rabbi sprang from his high-backed birch swivel chair.

“Ahh, Sidney, good to be seeing you.”