Most of my life, I asked myself: “What would my father do?”
And then I did the opposite.
That strategy worked—until it didn’t.
My apologies that this is in English, but my Hebrew is too rusty and I am too sleep-deprived to do it in Hebrew. But we have a printout in Hebrew for those who want it. He was a man who reinvented himself. The Abba many of you knew—kind, thoughtful, full of ideas—is the Abba I knew too. But I also knew another version of him. A man who carried his mistakes quietly, who built and rebuilt himself more times than I can count.
I didn’t always understand him. And I definitely didn’t always agree with him.
But as I stand here now, I realize—his story wasn’t just about mistakes. It was about what he did after them.
Reinvention & Redemption
When I was in my early teens, our home was foreclosed on. We were evicted from another. I had to visit my Abba in jail. Then, when I was 19, I asked him to leave. And he did.
I remember that moment so clearly. After telling him to go, I got in my car and drove to work. And as I drove, the weight of everything hit me. It was one of the few moments in my life I can remember crying. Until now, that is. That drive to work is burned into my memory—the conflict, the grief, the anger, the relief, the guilt. I will never forget it.
He left for Israel, and over the next year, my mother considered following him. I didn’t believe he had changed. I didn’t trust that things would be different.
But then my grandfather, Marcelo Rozenfeld, whom I named my son after, sat me down and asked me:
“Do you think it will work out?”
I didn’t hesitate. “No. I don’t.”
Then he asked me something else: “If it doesn’t work out, what will happen to your mother and your younger siblings?”
And finally, the question that changed everything:
“Could you live with yourself if something happened to them and you weren’t there?”
That was it. That was why I moved to Israel in 1996. Not because I believed in second chances. Not because I trusted my Abba. But because I needed to be there if everything fell apart again.
But it didn’t fall apart. And in those two years, something else happened—I changed.
Before coming to Israel, I lived in fear of everything. Would other people know how messed up I was? I was embarrassed—by my parents, by myself, by our poverty, by being foreigners. You name it, I was ashamed of it. I lived in fear of my own shadow.
Then, somehow, during those two years, something shifted. I don’t know why or how, but I stopped being afraid.
Courage isn’t the absence of fear. Courage is doing what’s right even when you’re afraid. My Abba never outright said that, but he lived it.
Coming Full Circle
In 1998, I returned to the U.S., not for vacation, but because if I didn’t return every 11 months and 29 days, I would lose my residency. This was my second trip back since leaving for Israel.
For a variety of reasons that don’t matter now, I stayed to finish my college degree—mostly so that the U.S. would allow me to return one day.
And during those two years of college, I became a U.S. citizen so that I could return to Israel freely, without making yearly trips just to maintain my residency.
But by then, something had changed.
I didn’t want to leave. Because Israel is home. This is where I would want to be. But my wife doesn’t share that view, which is why I live in the U.S.
The Welcome Brothers
While we were apart, my parents became foster parents to three siblings—Nati, Donna, and Hila. And I admit, I was angry when I heard that.
I didn’t feel he had the right to help others when he had screwed up our lives so badly. I angrily called them the replacement kids, and he didn’t take that well. Looking back, I realize that wasn’t fair. I was holding onto my own pain, my own resentment.
But he wasn’t trying to replace anything—he was trying to be better. He was trying to atone.
And today, I am proud to call them my siblings, even if we are decades apart in age. They are my siblings, and they have their own stories to tell, but I am proud they joined our family.
I wish I had said that to Abba while he was alive. Instead, I tell them now: “Whatever you need. Whenever you need it. I am there for you.”
The Salesman, The Consultant, The Problem Solver
Abba had a rare talent—he could sell anything to anyone.
Our last name in Hebrew shares the same root word as to sell, and trust me, he lived up to it. He sold me on the idea of hiring him as a consultant. He sold clients services he had no authority to promise. And, in the military, he even sold his own lieutenant on going AWOL with him.
And when he worked for me? That was a whole other level. He would sit with clients, confidently tell them what services they needed, and then come to me and say, “Okay, I sold them on this. Now figure out how to make it happen.”
He wasn’t the lawyer—I was. But in his mind, that was just a technicality. He would tell me not just what the law was, but how it should be, and then leave me to work out how to make it so.
The Final Discovery
The day after he died, we found something unexpected—a 12-page handwritten story in the back of a legal pad.
Someone stumbled upon it—on my birthday. We don’t know why he wrote it. We don’t know if he ever intended for us to read it.
But we’re glad he did.
In it, he described his time in the military, including a story I had never fully understood until then.
In 1973, he had requested time off three times to get married, and each time, the paperwork got “lost.” So he did what he did best—he found another way. He arranged for a fight to break out between *two different military units* to create a distraction so he could go AWOL and get married.
His lieutenant was a problem, though—so my Abba found another solution. Turns out, his lieutenant also wanted time off to visit a girlfriend nearby.
So they left together.
Because, really, what’s more romantic than ditching your military post together?
That was my Abba. Rules were suggestions. Problems had solutions. You just had to find them.
His honeymoon wasn’t ruined by the MPs coming after him—it was ruined by his in-laws, who showed up at his hotel in Netanya just one day into the honeymoon.
He could outsmart the military, he could outmaneuver a court-martial, but in the end, he was no match for family.
The Lasting Words
When I was younger, I was ashamed of who I was. I lived in fear. But my father, for all his mistakes, lived without fear. He once told me that *problems have solutions—you just have to find them.
It took me years to realize that was his way of telling me: Don’t be afraid of life.
And now, standing here, in the place I never wanted to come to but never want to leave, I can almost hear his voice.
“You’ll figure it out.”
And I finally understand.
And now, Abba, you can rest—because I’ll figure it out.
With gratitude,
Andres Mejer
