the funeral critic

He entered discreetly in a rumpled jacket, a crumpled tie, yarmulke askew on his balding head, and took a seat towards the back of the main hall at Benjamin’s Park Memorial Chapel on Steeles Avenue, at the city’s northern border. Short, paunchy and heavy-lidded, with a nose that looked capable of detecting herring at a hundred yards, he could’ve passed for any of a million bedraggled ashkenazim. But he was soon spotted, and a murmur ran through the crowd.

They were gathered to pay respects to Morty Klein, 65, who’d been brought down without warning by an aneurysm the day before at the Home Depot on Wilson, felled three aisles deep as he reached for a 50L kitchen garbage bin. It was the week before pesach, 2018 (or 5778, depending on your calendar), and they were replacing the old bin with the stuck pedal. Karen had told Morty I’m not having twenty people over without a fully functioning garbage bin. When she spotted the HumanScale up on the second shelf, Morty went to reach for it. Karen said we should call someone for help, but Morty lifted his arms and said it’s fine, do you even see anyone? She looked round and didn’t see anyone, and it turned out that was also the last she’d see of Morty. Alive, at least. She couldn’t shake the sound: his body smacking the floor, his head bouncing off the concrete — she tried taking some comfort in what the paramedic had told her at the scene: the way these things go, he was probably dead before he hit the ground.

In the Family Room — backstage, as it were — Rabbi Schlossberg from Beth T’fillah, the conservative congregation off Finch, near Bayview, a shul the Kleins had sporadically patronized over the years, was leaning, half-sitting, half-standing, against the front of a large oak desk, wondering if he smelled of the cigarette he’d had in the car on the way over, as he explained to Karen and the kids (Danny, 35; and the twins, Mike and Miri, 32), and to the deceased’s sister, Bobbi (and her husband, Phil), how it things were about to unfold. He’d spent an hour the previous night with Karen, expressing condolences but also asking about Morty, and getting — she thought — a bit nosy with his questions. She understood he needed material for the remarks he’d deliver today, but he was taking names and numbers like a detective.

He explained to them that first, with the scissors he’d brought (part of his rabbinic travel-kit), he’d help Karen and the kids rend their garments in the customary way. Then they’d walk out together, to the centre aisle, where the front row was held for them. Rabbi Schlossberg would kick things off with his own thoughts on Morty, and a short Torah vort on what it means to be a mensch. Then Danny was to speak on behalf of the family, before handing it back to the rabbi to close with a few verses of Hebrew prayer, and they’d be lead out the building to their cars which were lined up first and second behind the hearse, which they’d follow on the drive up to the veldt, at Bathurst Lawn Memorial. At the cemetery, said Schlossberg, I’ll explain a couple of other things, but those can wait. He took his scissors from their pouch and, after guiding Mike through a recitation of the appropriate blessing, cut an inch-long tear into Mike’s shirt, at which point the funeral director entered and pulled the rabbi aside for a muffled word, then left the room, quietly shutting the door behind him. Schlossberg turned back to the family, his face drained of colour.

Miri said, “What’s wrong, rabbi?”

“No, nothing’s wrong,” said Schlossberg, absently cutting air with his scissors. “It’s just-”

“What?”

“Yudelovitz.”

“He’s here?”

“Apparently.”

Karen lifted a hand to her mouth.

Mike glanced at Miri.

And Danny felt the Percocet kick in the back door of his brain.

—

For years, Yudelovitz, had penned periodic theatre reviews for the Canadian Jewish News, the occasionally-read weekly that remained in print despite or maybe because of the constant rumours of its demise. But there was only so much Jewish theatre to review. Mostly, Yudelovitz taught. Credentialled with a doctorate in Yiddish lit from McGill’s Jewish Studies Program, he lectured a course here, another there, always as contract faculty — “20th Century American Jewish Voices: Malamud, Bellow and Roth” up at York, “Creative Writing 101” (through 105) at George Brown and, at Seneca College by Don Mills and Finch, an eight-week certificate class on endless rotation: “Writing for Business”, every Monday and Wednesday evening, seven-thirty to nine. And he supplemented this threadbare income inking bored assessments of the shtetl-flavoured stagings periodically mounted in the city’s playhouses: some overproduced Yentl at the Royal Alex, an underwhelming Joseph at the JCC on Bloor, a Sholem Aleichem retrospective at the Tarragon (“SURPRISINGLY COMPETENT! — THE CJN”, screamed the ad copy, taking liberties with an exclamation mark and all-caps in the pull-quote from Yudelovitz’s decidedly lower-case review).

But in 2015, as the CJN was once again reported to be haemorrhaging cash, Yudelovitz was approached by the paper’s then-editor/publisher, Kooks Mendel, a coffee-stained giant of a man (5’8”, but round in all directions), with an idea to boost readership and stimulate ad-sales. It was late on a Tuesday afternoon. Yudelovitz was at his desk, drumming up a hot take on the Minsker Yiddish Theatre Group’s production of Shaindele from Slabodke, which had begun a limited run at the Isabel Bader, on Charles, when Kooks shuffled up, wheezing from the exertion and leaning hard on an overworked cane. Kooks had lost his wife soon after their kids were born: now he cared for a grown daughter in a wheelchair and a son, with children of his own, who barely acknowledged him.

What’s up?

“Look,” said Kooks. “I know it sounds crazy,” and he stopped to mop his brow with a kerchief, “but I want you should start reviewing funerals. Lavayahs, shivas — the whole experience.”

Excuse me?

“Look, the theatre stuff is great, don’t get me wrong. But it’s not sexy.”

You want me to review funerals?

“Yes but not notables. Just ordinary schmendricks. Some random dry-goods importer with a warehouse on Orfus Road. A ReMax realtor. Somebody’s aunt. I don’t care. The ordinarier the better. And no one under sixty-five. Let’s not get morbid.”

Yudelovitz pushed back, said you’re nuts. He told Kooks forget it, outta the question. But left alone at his desk, struggling with Shaindele, he began to see the angle: funerals were a type of theatre, weren’t they? You got the cast and the crowd (sometimes thin, sometimes practically sold-out). You got a venue, a story, and occasionally the raw, emotional resonance that would be the envy of a playwright. Not to mention the thrill of potential disaster inherent in any live production: a pallbearer tripping, a casket tipping, someone going horribly off-script. And what’s the worst that happens? A few people write in, call it appalling, threaten to cancel their subscriptions, one or two of ’em actually doing so, and Kooks kiboshes the experiment.

In fact, after the first review — Doris Orbach, 83, at Steeles Memorial — the paper got dozens of complaints (“She didn’t survive Treblinka to have you criticize the acoustics in the chapel”), and a dozen subscriptions were canceled outright. But Kooks’ hunch paid off: the piece was a hit, the talk of shabbos tables across the GTA — not to mention Winnipeg, Vancouver, Halifax and Montreal. Yes, Yudelovitz had found fault with the acoustics; yes, he’d dismissed the rabbi as stiff and derivative, but he’d also praised the nephew’s eulogy (“plain-spoken and moving”), and he’d had kind things to say about the herring and chopped liver platter at the shiva. Readers were riveted and the column was immediately instituted as a bi-weekly feature. Kooks was able to jack up the prices on adjacent ad space. Not to mention the subscription bump. And Yudelovitz earned the envy of his peers when he quickly became the highest paid writer on staff. He was finally able to quit the Seneca gig; never liked working nights, an odd tic for a part-time theatre critic. Mourning hours suited him.

He’d browse funeral-home websites the night before, see what was playing the next day. And his column put the homes on notice. Pews were refurbished. Halls re-wired for sound. Florists and headstone hacks felt the heat. And more than one rabbi had his head handed to him in a bad review. Others, on the come-up and hoping to make a mark, would call Yudelovitz on the down-low, tipping him off, under the pretense of anonymity, to their own performances. “Listen, I heard Rav Leibel’s doing the Feinshtein levaya tomorrow. Word is he’s got a hot dvar.” Yudelovitz had tried at first to preserve his anonymity, but it wasn’t long before his face became almost as familiar as a Riesman-Schwartz, an Eckler, a Caitlin Cronenberg. Not quite Toronto Life-level celebrity Jew, but close. And while most, at least openly, scorned his work as disrespectful, even sacreligious, his eye was fair and his judgment pretty sound.

Nor did the column — and his emergent notoriety — hurt Yudelovitz’ social life. A month before Morty Klein’s demise, for example, Yudelovitz met Shoshanna after her uncle’s funeral (Robert Adler, gastroenterologist, 72); she’d approached him as he walked back to the car at Pardes Chaim, told him she was a fan of his work. She bummed a ride with him after the shiva. And she was hardly the first to hit on him, only the latest in a parade of hungry, long-legged women with dark hair, dark humour, and a trace of sadness around the eyes. Sadness or mascara, either way, Yudelovitz was a sucker for it.

At the outset, he’d show up in disguise: a toupée, prescription-less bifocals, fake moustache. But he quickly tired of the ruse, and — despite what he told his wife — came to relish the recognition, the knowing looks, the respect accorded him in certain circles, which he’d never won reviewing the Shaar Shalom Players’ staging of Shlemiel the First. He’d always thought of himself as a low-wattage, behind-the-scenes type, a way of rationalizing his low-profile life, but as his reviews caught on — along with a sense of his own significance: that what he said, who he was, mattered — he found himself warming to the spotlight.

The bump in pay didn’t just allow him to quit Seneca. He’d long considered himself a clever but hard-lucked day-trader, a sly autodidact just waiting for favourable conditions. But recently he’d been too clever by half, and the raise helped shore up some recent market losses — and helped keep Rachel in the dark about just how close he’d come to needing her to co-sign on a second-mortgage — either that or to go-back to Frankel’s guy, a Ukrainian lender with unforgiving terms.

—

But sometime into the third year of this business the worm began to turn.

For one thing, Rachel had picked up on his odd hours — odder than usual, at least. She’d noticed his phone buzzing with increased frequency, including late at night, and had come to doubt it was all work-related. She hadn’t said anything, but she hadn’t needed to. She’d seen his quickness to grab the phone when an alert lit up the screen, the suggestion he’d something to hide. They had the kids, the house and too much on the line for this sort of nonsense. Plus he loved her, whatever that meant at this point, but it meant something. And compounding things from the other direction: Shoshanna was showing hints of resentment, and a vindictive potential. Perfectly reasonable in the circumstances, but the ice had become too thin for comfort.

And then, finally, there was the Shapiro incident, to which his bruised face still attested. He’d picked up a take-out dinner at United Bakers, and was half-way across the parking lot, digging for the keys as he approached the Subaru. A voice said “Yudelovitz?” He turned to see a short, wiry man approaching at a clip, accompanied by an unsmiling, square-headed friend. The man put out a hand, introduced himself as Len, Len Shapiro. As they shook, Yudelovitz said have we met? The guy said, “We met at my father’s shiva. Abe Shapiro ring a bell?” Yudelovitz vaguely recalled the tone of the review, if not the words themselves. Hadn’t he savaged the son’s eulogy? Mocked the decor at the widow’s house?

Before he could recall precisely, Shapiro Junior smashed him in the face.

“That’s for my mother,” he said. Yudelovitz fell back against his car, fried fish and chips and packets of tartar sauce spilled out across the cement. Shapiro delivered a shot to his belly; Yudelovitz buckled and went down.

“And that’s for my dad.”

Shapiro looked like he was eyeing a kick to the head but his friend pulled him away:

“Okay, Len. You made your point.”

Shapiro called back, over his friend’s shoulder, “That eloquent enough for you, you sick fuck?”

Yudelovitz — breathing heavy — steadied himself as he stood back up, opened the door and lowered himself into the car, where he took a moment to collect himself. Checking his face in the rear-view, wondering if his ribs were just bruised or broken, he wiped the blood from his mouth as he counted his teeth and thought, the guy’s right: the fuck am I doing?

Nor was this the first time he’d encountered an awkward bit of business, the fallout from some nasty piece. And say what you will about the theatre crowd: at least artists were expecting reviews, hoping for them even; even bad ones. Turns out a lotta mourners weren’t. Rachel had called it from the start. “How long can you do this?” she’d said. “You’ll make yourself a pariah. Us. And never mind me: the boys’ll end up paying the price.” She’d thought the whole thing was in poor taste to begin with. And the more reviews he wrote, the less he found he had to say, and the more he’d come round to Rachel’s point of view, even — or especially — through the lense of a freshly blackened eye.

Next day, in the office, he rapped a knuckle on his editor’s door.

Stacks of paper towered over Kooks’ desk, as if assembled by hurried children. Sitting across from him, you’d have to angle your head just so to glimpse his face. He looked up at Yudelovitz, mildly agonized, from a ledger sheet, one hand gripping a pencil, the other poised atop an oversized calculator. He was trying to balance a rickety set of books, and not remotely in the mood for what Yudelovitz has come to say.

“Yes?”

“Kooks, bubele, I think I’m done.”

“Done? What are you talking, done?” Kooks took a bite of what looked like a brisket sandwich.

Yudelovtiz explained himself.

Kooks wasn’t entirely surprised; he’d sensed this day was coming. Still: Yudelovitz was the golden goose at the moment, and without him…

“Is this ’cause of what that numbskull did to you in the parking lot? I told you: if you don’t want to make a police report, at least let’s sue. Send a message.”

Yudelovitz shook his head.

“This about money?” said Kooks. “You wanna discuss a raise okay, just say so, maybe we can work something out…”

“It’s not about the money.”

“Well if you think you can just go back to free-lancing theatre reviews…”

Yudelovitz said it’s not about the money. It was never about the money. They’d get by on his teaching, he said, and what Rachel pulled managing that Rexall outpost at Yonge and Lawrence. Plus a stock tip, he mentioned, a pharmaceutical play that was rumoured to be a lock.

Kooks said I get it.

And he did. But he didn’t want to.

Yudelovitz said don’t get me wrong. I appreciate what you did for me. But lately, it just feels kinda dirty, dirty and mean: just a bunch of cheap shots at downed opponents.

Kooks nodded. He said this’ll kill the paper, you realize that, right? As it is, the ads barely get us across the finish line; you leave and pfff… Yudelovitz said what about Gelman? Let Gelman take over. Eddie Gelman was the paper’s jack-of-some-trades: he penned op-eds on Canada/Israel foreign policy, reviewed restaurants, and — of particular relevance — wrote the obits for those Jews who’d made the news: the entertainers, industrialists, medical pioneers. Obits weren’t funeral reviews, but they were certainly funeral adjacent, no?

Kooks shook his head.

“He doesn’t have your ear. He doesn’t have your lashon. He can put words together but we both know he can’t write.”

Yudelovitz bit his bottom lip. “Sorry Kooks. I really am. But I’m done. I’m out.”

Kooks sighed, then leaned out of sight for a moment before emerging round the side of his desk, one oversized hand piloting his cane, the other bearing two shots of whiskey.

“You’re killing me here, boychick. L’chayim.”

They klinked and drank, and Yudelovitz felt ten sins lighter.

That night, at dinner, he told Rachel. She practically teared up. Over the next month or so, he resumed his former life — the freelance stuff, even the night-classes at Seneca — but with a joy that had eluded him before. And on a sunny Sunday afternoon in February, as he shot pucks in the driveway with the boys, Yudelovitz caught a glimpse of Rachel looking out at them, at him, through the living-room window, and they shared the kind of smile that stays with a guy, sometimes for years.

—

But of course, one’s faculty for appreciation is remarkably limited. How quickly the new — or renewed — becomes same-old, same-olded. The extraordinary in the ordinary comes to seem just plain ordinary, and the anonymous charms of a harmless existence begin to fade. And how easily does a bad gambler convince himself he knows what the fuck he’s doing, evidence be damned. Yudelovitz had fumbled that pharmaceutical play — a sure-fire short that, in the end, had short-circuited — and was back in the red, in the deep end of the red, and running out of options. Rachel of course knew nothing about it, just that he seemed a bit distracted sometimes, tuned out.

So when Kooks called, a few weeks later, for a favour, Yudelovitz was in a mood to listen. He wasn’t all ears, exactly, but he was one ear at least (the boys trading obscenities in the other).

Kooks told him he’d been talking to the CBC about developing a show. Based on the CJN funeral column.

The fuck you talking about, Kooksie?

“A show. They maybe wanna develop a show, a series, based on what you did here. The Funeral Critic, they’re thinking of calling it. They maybe wanna buy the rights. And if it goes, the money could be good.”

What kinda money you talking? And what’s this “maybe”… “could be” business?

“They’re on the fence about it,” Kooks explained. “It’s niche, maybe a bit too dark for their tastes. They read your last few reviews and frankly, were underwhelmed. I sent some of your earlier stuff but who knows if they even looked? I mean let’s face it, kid, you were sorta phoning it in by the end.”

Yudelovitz couldn’t disagree.

So what’s the catch? he asked.

“Come back for one last column. But make it sing, boychick. Like the old ones did. Make it undeniable.”

Jesus, Kooks, that’s a pressure-cooker, but Kooks said, “Yeah, and here’s the kicker: I got a call today from some dame at Netflix.” Seems the woman had a source at the CBC who’d leaked the Mothership’s interest. Now Netflix was swimming ‘round to take a look. “One last column, boychick, and we could be talking Netflix money.”

Yudelovitz went quiet on the other end.

“You there?” said Kooks.

I’m here.

“One more funeral, bubbele. That’s all I’m asking. Just one final review.”

—

Backstage at Benjamin’s, Schlossberg did his best to recover from the news that Yudelovitz was out there amid the crowd, waiting for something to write about. He helped the rest of the family rend their garments, and led them in a brief tehillim, and though no one said a word about it, each of them — the Kleins and their rabbi — was distracted, unsettled.

Karen should have been immersed in grief; instead she fretted: what if Yudelovitz comes to the shiva, what’s he gonna say about the kitchen cabinets? She’d been hucking Morty to replace them for years. On that ill-fated trip to Home Depot, she’d meant to drag him round to the cabinetry aisle before they left, if nothing else to consider, at a minimum, replacing the hardware on the drawers and cupboards. But now she had a dead husband and a kitchen that looked twenty years out of date. Plus what if her sister, Barbara, opens her yap at Yudelovitz and finds a way to mention Karen’s abortive first marriage which is nobody’s business?

Meanwhile the twins, Mike and Miri, had noticed their brother seemed a bit off. Not drunk, not stumbling, and not quite slurring his words, but somehow teetering on the edge of coherence. Which would’ve been fine, or at least something to be dealt with later, if Danny weren’t about to eulogize their father before a congregation several hundred strong, not least among them the funeral critic from the CJ-fucking-N. And they weren’t wrong to be concerned: Danny had tweaked his back that morning lifting the baby from her cot. The pain was sharp and persisted. So, after a moment of reflection, he’d popped a Perc from the reserve, the small plastic cylinder a rainy day fund he’d put aside after Miri and Mike and their parents and his wife had staged an intervention a year and half ago to get him treatment for an addiction that, at the time, had crippled him. Admitting that he’d dipped back into the pillbox would generate more trouble than it was worth; better to just steel the mind, try to focus and muscle through.

And Schlossberg? Schlossberg had dreaded this moment almost as much as he’d prayed for it. It was Schlossberg who’d had the distinction, almost three years earlier, of presiding over Doris Orbach’s funeral — subject of Yudelovitz’ first review — and it were his remarks about the deceased that Yudelovitz had dismissed as “stiff and derivative.” The shellacking had nearly cost him his pulpit. True, Beth T’fillah membership levels had fallen, but not much more dramatically than those of any other conservative congregation. And while his contract was renewed by the board in 2016, he’d heard it was hardly unanimous, and there was talk of another rabbi in free-agency, name of Wolinsky, some hotshot from Chicago with smicha from a respected Brooklyn alter-rebbe. According to a source on the board, they were contemplating making Wolinsky an offer, with the consequence that Schlossberg would be bumped down to assistant rabbi. And never mind the board, or the thrice-yearly Jews whose dues paid his wages, or the spectre of his demotion, but his own wife had seemed to take the review to heart. True, she’d never mentioned it to him, but in the immediate aftermath he’d picked up on a slight, almost involuntary eye-roll the odd time he’d quote scripture to her or the kids, as if imagining what Yudelovitz might make of whatever he was saying.

The thing was, Yudelovitz had been right: Schlossberg’s remarks at the Orbach levaya were stiff. ‘Derivative’ was a charge he dismissed — derivation being par for rabbinic discourse, where novelty isn’t necessarily prized. But how one gives over an idea, regardless of whether ancient or one’s own, separates real rabbonim from the schleppers. And Schlossberg knew that his performance at the Orbach levaya had been nothing to kvell about. He’d since done several dozen funerals, and each time his eyes would scan the room, wondering if his nemesis had returned. And each time, at least initially, he’d sigh with relief at Yudelovtiz’ absence.

But living on this knife’s edge elevated his game.

At some low point after his evisceration in the pages of the CJN, he’d lifted his head and vowed to avenge himself, should the opportunity arise. He knew that each subsequent funeral — on the off-chance that Yudelovitz might be there — represented a potential second shot at his legacy, and he started preparing accordingly. In-depth family interviews, and where possible, supplementary chats with friends and business associates, for the details that’d flavour his vorts. He’d rehearse his addresses, often soliciting his wife’s ear, in bed, after the kids were down. She gave good notes and he became adept at taking them. He hired a public speaking coach, reviewed the recordings that he’d surreptitiously make on his phone when speaking, and sat in on funerals overseen by other rabbis, noting what they did and didn’t do well. He dug up sefarim that transcribed the legendary hespedim of yore. He cultivated his compassion, or at least the ability to express it, at the same time as sensitivities he’d never really thought he possessed, like timing and wit. And just to sharpen his stage-presence, he started doing stand-up at a weekly open mic on College. He wasn’t hilarious, necessarily, but he’d induce the occasional chuckle. And along the way, his self-regard began to recover, at times even verging on arrogance.

And with some success, he ignored Yudelovtiz’ column. Not that Yudelovitz’ critiques weren’t instructive; they were. But Schlossberg had begun to see himself as his own man. Didn’t want to fixate on Yudelovitz, didn’t want to cater to his aesthetic. If anything, he wanted to knock him dead, leave him speechless. And more often than not, when he’d scan the room and fail to see Yudelovitz’ wry mug, he’d sigh as before, only now with disappointment rather than relief. He knew a second review was his only way out of the low-level holding pattern that was, at least til now, the trajectory of his career. A second review, only this time of the type of bravura performance that he’d come to discover he was equipped to deliver, wouldn’t merely correct the effects of the initial disaster, finally redeem him in the eyes of his pastoral flock, but would surely elevate his standing in the larger community, keep Wolinsky at bay, perhaps even lead to a raise, even — dare he dream it? — offers from other shuls. Of course it went without saying that a second negative review would likely sink him for good, end his career as an itinerant rav, at least in Canada, possibly force him back into nursing home management with uncle Shloimy in Passaic.

The funeral director opened the door once again.

“It’s time,” he said.