Those who know me well will tell you that I have never in my entire life been at a loss for words. Yet, for the first time ever, as I begin to write this eulogy for my father, I find myself in just that position. Simple words, I realize, are surely not equal to the task of memorializing him. But I shall try my best.

My father, who passed away earlier this month at the age of 57, lived his life passionately, honestly, and piously. His actions were always his own and never dictated by others; he was always honest and unceasingly loyal to his friends and his causes. He appreciated life and each day with a fervor, zest, and joy that were visible to all around him. He valued family, learning, and living along with Judaism, selflessness, and — even in the hardest of times — fun. He never failed to have a twinkle in his eye, a song in his heart, a smile on his face, and a tear on his cheek.

Any discussion of who my father was and who he became must start with his parents — his father, Arno, and his mother, Annelie. From his mother, my 95-year-old grandmother, he learned that an iron-fisted will required a balance in the softest of hearts. He learned of a deep love for life, a deep religiosity, a constant smile, and a quiet moral compass that guided him always.

From my grandfather my father learned to never fear the consequences of his actions and, as a result, to always have the courage of his convictions. My great-grandparents died in concentration camps in Europe, and it was not something that my grandfather — and, consequently, my father — would ever forget. This shaped my father as much as it changed my grandfather; they grew, together, out of the ashes of an old world that begged to be rebuilt. Survival gave my grandfather's life meaning: When he lost his parents, God could no longer take anything deeper from him. He took this unimaginable loss — with all its sadness and anger — and transformed it into action, as he came to this country, raised a family, wrote and worked constantly for his beloved Jewish people and Israel. When my Dad left his house after a visit, my grandfather would always say to him, "Geh mitt Gott" — "Go with God." My father, as long as I can remember him, would always answer, very simply, "I do."

My father would often recall to me his fondest childhood memories of sitting around his parents' dining room table as his father and all his old German-Jewish friends argued, usually furiously, about politics, Judaism, and life. The memories of those men — who had survived unspeakable horrors and who had lived on devoted singularly to others and never themselves — formed my father's youngest years. Their stories became his story: Like them, he never wanted or even liked accolades, and he lived simply and humbly. Like them, he had inherited a tradition and a way of life, something precious and something fragile. Like them, he would devote his life to protecting that fragility.

My father's formative years were completed with his college education at Haverford College in Pennsylvania. As much as any other time in his life, my father was shaped by what he found there. Along with lifelong friends, he learned a love for learning that would endure and guide him his whole life, a propensity for study and reflection and an overwhelming sense of honor. Haverford requires that all its students live by an honor code —– not just on tests and academics, but socially and at all moments of the day. That honor code was also something that he carried out of Haverford and along with him for the rest of his life.

After law school my father became an environmental lawyer, first in the Attorney General's Office, then at the Sierra Club, and finally in private practice. In 1980, at a deposition, his life was changed forever when he met my mother. She was to become both his best friend and his greatest inspiration, and he was to become her greatest champion and her closest confidante. They married two years later, and I was born in 1988, followed by my twin sisters in 1991.

Though by day a lawyer — a good one (his professional accomplishments were many) — his true calling came, as it had for my grandfather, in Jewish causes. Though deeply religious and knowledgeable in his own right, he never felt his formal Jewish education was as good as it should have been, and he worked tirelessly toward the improvement of Jewish education. Only through education, he believed, were the Jewish people ensured any measure of security in the modern world. "Give a young Jewish boy or girl a siddur, a Tanach, and a Talmud, teach them traditions, bring them together, allow them to learn and explore and develop," he once told me, "and then you would see Judaism flourish in America and the world."

And so my father set about to continue the mission of his father and rebuild Jewish institutions from the inside out. He spearheaded the construction of a new building for the JCC of Central New Jersey in Scotch Plains as its president. He served as president of Solomon Schechter Day School of Essex and Union. Even in these past few months, when his strength was not what it used to be, he agreed to serve on the board of the Jewish Federation of Central NJ and would come home and recall to me with glee the times when he had voted against everyone else in the room, because they were giving money to where it was easy and politically correct — not to where he felt it was really needed, which for him meant Jewish education.

My father's life was changed irrevocably in 1998, when he was diagnosed with the rare cancer called Carcinoid. He lived with cancer for 10 years — the majority of my life — but he was never sick. In a testament to the will of his mother and father, in the tradition of all the Jews he knew who had stubbornly refused to perish when the Germans told them to — my father lived a normal and complete life. He accomplished nearly all his Jewish activities only after his operation. Yet almost no one, not even my sisters and I, knew the extent of his daily struggle. That was his way, how he wanted it, and he gave me and my sisters the greatest blessing he could imagine for us — a normal life.

I was asked, two or three years ago, to give a toast and an introduction to my father when SSDS honored him as a past president. I spoke then of how my father was a "crier." He cried often, but not always from sadness — rather from the joy of letting life and all its wonders flow into his home on Friday nights, into his words of the haftara on Yom Kippur mornings, or into the sounds of an old German-Jewish melody ringing in his ears.

The hasidim believe that the tzadik — that a man — is the conscience of God. That God, more than just creating man, needs man. That He needs the righteous as much as the righteous need Him. When some tzadikim died, no replacement was ever found for them, because it was considered that their souls had ascended, completely intact, to serve God, and to give their station away on Earth would put too much strain on their new roles. So, we might say, a tzadik dies only when God needs new advice.

But tzadikim are not just allowed to be the conscience of this world — they must be the conscience of the next as well. And so, earlier this month, God must have needed a new conscience.

He made a good choice. Dad, tzadik that you are, we will never replace you. We will never be the same. But we will try to live by what you have taught us and what you valued in life. Dad, my tzadik, you may now truly "geh mitt Gott." I know you will — and so will I.