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The ME expedited the autopsy and released Daniel Epstein’s body quickly so that his funeral could be held on Sunday morning, graveside services in the same cemetery in Trenton where my parents were buried.
It was a gray day, and a restless wind scattered dead leaves along the gravel paths between sections of the cemetery. I parked and headed toward the green awning in the oldest section, where aged granite tombstones, faded after years in all weathers, stood erect over the final resting places of generations of Trenton’s Jewish dead.
Epstein’s son and daughter, along with their families, took the seats in front of the open grave, and Saul Benesch and Henry Namias sat behind them, along with other elderly people I assumed were Epstein’s contemporaries and friends. I stood in the back beside a woman I recognized from the Talmud study group.
Rabbi Goldberg gave a brief eulogy, focusing on Daniel Epstein’s dedication to his family, his heritage and his synagogue. Then Epstein’s son spoke about the example his father had set for him.
My eyes teared up and I wondered about my father’s funeral. Had anyone spoken in my place? Had my cousins been there, had they wondered about my absence?
One by one, Epstein’s family and close friends stepped up to sprinkle dirt over the coffin, and I had to turn away because of how deeply the experience affected me. I had not been there to speed my father along on his journey to the afterlife, and I would forever feel that pain.
I stood beside an elaborate tombstone dedicated to Philip Gross, “husband, father, grandfather and Holocaust survivor.” Beneath it was inscribed “Never Forget.” I heard the sound of the Kaddish prayer, and then the gears grinding as Epstein’s coffin was lowered into the ground, quiet sobbing coming from the family.
It was difficult to compose myself, and I took a couple of deep breaths and wiped the tears away from my eyes. I turned to find Saul Benesch approaching me. He wore a khaki trenchcoat over a dark suit, and he seemed somehow smaller than I remembered.
“It’s a terrible thing,” he said. “We’re not safe in our own houses anymore.”
“Did you know Mr. Epstein for a long time?”
“From the old days,” he said. “I had trouble with the Hebrew for my Torah portion, and he coached me. He was a mensch, even back then.”
“Was this at Shomrei Torah?” I asked.
Benesch nodded. “I was raised Orthodox, but my wife, may she rest in peace, was an Italianer, a Catholic. The only rabbi who would marry us was the one at Shomrei Torah, so we joined here.”
“The Jewish community back then must have been very close,” I said. “Did you know Mr. Feinberg back then, too?”
He shook his head. “Aaron? He’s a baby. I knew his father of blessed memory—he was a big macher at Shomrei Torah when my wife and I joined. But Aaron is fifteen years younger than I am. It wasn’t until he came home from college and got involved in the temple that I got to know him.”
The family left the gravesite and began to walk toward their limo. “You’re going to the son’s house for shiva?”
I shook my head. “I don’t... I can’t...”
Benesch put his hand on my shoulder. “It’s all right,” he said. “We each grieve in our own way.”
I watched him walk slowly back toward the line of parked cars, and then turned to walk toward where my parents were buried. When my mother passed away, my father bought a joint headstone and had everything engraved on it except his date of death. He had also bought a pre-need package that paid for all the expenses of a coffin, opening the grave and so on.
I thought it was morbid at the time, but when he died I was grateful that I could handle everything long-distance. Now I stood in front of the grave and looked at the stone. “Levitan” was engraved at the top, with my father to the left and my mother to the right.
I realized that was the way they’d always slept in the wood-framed double bed they had bought, along with a whole bedroom suite, soon after they married.
A tilted water pitcher had been engraved above my father’s name, with the words “Husband, Father” beneath it. Our last name implied that we were Levites, from the ancient clan whose members were responsible for washing the hands of the priests at the Temple in ancient days.
As is common for women, a candelabra was above my mother’s first and maiden names – Sylvia Gordon – with “Wife, Mother” beneath it.
What would my stone say? I was no one’s husband, no one’s father. I wasn’t a Holocaust survivor like Philip Gross. What would stand for my life?
My eyes teared up again. Where would I go, when my time came? A single plot there in the same cemetery? Would I be buried beside Lili? If we didn’t marry, we’d need separate stones, wouldn’t we? Was it too early to consider buying the plots?
Maybe Lili would want to be in a cemetery with her parents. Her father had been buried somewhere in Miami; I knew that she’d gone to visit his grave while she was there to look after her mother.
I shook off those grim thoughts. I found a pair of small pebbles and placed on one each side of my parents’ headstone, in the Jewish custom. As I was walking back to my car, the rabbi intercepted me.
“Have you learned anything from Joel’s emails?” he asked.
I told him about the man Joel had corresponded with, who went by the moniker NotwhoIthinkIam.
“From some details in his messages, I have the impression that this person lives somewhere in Trenton,” I said. “Have you spoken to anyone in the congregation who had similar concerns?”
“Not that I can recall. Do you think this is the person who killed my brother?”
“That’s a big leap, Rabbi,” I said gently. “Right now I’m just following leads.”
He nodded. “I appreciate that. It’s just... officiating at this funeral, when Daniel Epstein died a violent death just like Joel, I can’t help but think of him.”
He looked at me as if the connection had suddenly appeared to him. “Do you think the same person could have killed both of them?”
“I don’t know. There are certainly connections – for example, that document in Yiddish that I found in the ruins of Shomrei Torah, where Joel had been camping. Daniel translated it for me. But it’s also possible that Daniel was the victim of some kind of home invasion, as scary as that sounds.”
“It’s times like this that I have to remind myself that everything that happens is part of God’s grand plan,” he said. “Even if His purposes are unclear to us.”
I remembered my conversation with Rick about how a benevolent God could have allowed a tragedy like the Shoah to happen. “That’s the definition of faith, isn’t it?”
He smiled. “Maybe you should lead the Talmud study sometime.”
“Oh, no, I’ll leave that to you,” I said. “You’re continuing the group, aren’t you?”
“Of course. I have to believe that it is what God would want.”
We shook hands and he strode back to where the line of cars was snaking its way out of the cemetery.
I looked around me at all the graves and stones, those with an accumulation of pebbles on the top and those that looked like they had been ignored, that there was no one left to mourn those who had been interred there. I felt a sense of peace wash over me. The Jewish people had survived centuries of slavery, persecution and exile. Trenton, while by no means a garden of Eden, was at least a place where these souls could rest.
Could there be rest, though, for Daniel Epstein, for Joel Goldberg, Rabbi Sapinsky and Myer Hafetz, if we did not know the truth of what happened to them?
That, it occurred to me as I walked back to my car, was where I came in. Was I terminally nosy, as I often wondered? Or was the curiosity I felt about solving crimes really God’s hand moving through me?
Either way, I still had more investigating to do.
