Remembering Eric

Remembering Eric.
My cousin Eric died suddenly at 56, I wrote this obituary for his three daughters and his mother my beloved aunt Lina…

When I was 11Eric and I were playing cowboys and indians in nonna Clemy's balcony... we had taken some boxes and made a wagon from which we could shoot the indians attacking us... Eric was barely speaking, and it is the cowboy and indians which got him to start talking, and he never stopped...

It was around 1969-70 that I remember Eric visiting Orit and me in our new Jerusalem apartment for shabbath.I remember him spilling wine on the, just washed and ironed, tablecloth because "the kiddush glass must be filled to the top... on Saturday a.m. Eric went to the makeshift synagogue in our building... and of course he had to criticize the arrangement, or the prayer sequence...

It was four years later, in early 1974, that I had moved to Paris and started a tradition of going to aunt Lina's for Saturday lunch. Being alone (the family joined a couple of months later), we used to spend the meal on some political argument or other, between Eric, Jacques, Yanne and myself... But it was in the late afternoon that Eric took me to see the various Quartier Jiufs of Paris, we walked and talked and eat till the late hours of the night... and I have to admit that Eric taught me allot of my knowledge in Judaic tradition...

Rest in Peace, Ezra Eric Sutton... my cousin, my pupil, my rebbe!

Ivo