We just had the first shiva for Harris and I'd like to share a bit more about him if folks will indulge me. (Also I have pictures of him now.) https://twitter.com/RafiLetzter/status/1252408523557724160

A remarkable thing about him was his enormous talent for languages. To the best of my family's combined memory he spoke conversationally or fluently:

English
Hebrew
Yiddish
La Dino
Spanish
Italian
French
Russian
Portuguese
German
Latin
Old Church Slavonic
Patois
St Kitts Creole.

The last one he apparently learned in the few weeks before a trip to St Kitts, and became fluent enough in to chat comfortably with native speakers he encountered there.

Folks at the shiva also told stories of how kind Harris was. When my great aunt grace's housemate moved out out and into an old age home, he made a point of visiting this much older woman and keeping her company.

(Pictured: Harris on the left, my mom in his lap, + my aunt Jean)

Harris also had a hard life. He was a man born in the late 1940s and was gay and, we believe, autistic. As a kid, he didnt have the resources that at least some kids today have. And even though he was brilliant and interesting he had a lot of trouble getting through the world.

It's hard to imagine a life in counterfactual, so who knows the life he might have lived if he'd been born in another time. But I know that before he died he shared with his sister that he had decided it was okay that he was gay. (contd)

And he told my second cousin, who is gay and married with children, that he was proud of him.

(Pictured on the right in 1988 at my parents wedding, with my older cousins.)

Harris retired a decade ago and moved into the community for the elderly I mentioned in my previous thread. This was the happiest period of his life, his sisters and cousins believe.

Apparently he spent his time until fairly recently visiting art museums and theaters all over Boston and New York. He would hear about some strange little play being put on in Yiddish or Spanish or one of his other languages and plan a trip.

Many people at the zoom shiva said the last time they saw him was out in public on his way to some play or gallery. And when they ran into him he would spend hours telling them about it if they let him.

A worker at the old age home said he was a fixture of the community, one of the few residents who befriended both the Russian Jews and English speaking Jews who lived there.

When he was younger and worked for the state, he used that talent for languages and bridge building to help Spanish speaking incarcerated people get their needs met and navigate bureaucracy.

I dont have any note in particular to end this on. I regret not spending more time with him when he was alive, or having as full an understanding of him as a person as I do now. Z"l

(There is apparently a trove of his poetry online somewhere. When I find it I'll attach it here.)

Oh! One more funny story my mom told about Harris is that when she was living in Israel as a teenager in the 70s on Young Judea's yearcourse program, he wanted to practice his Hebrew but only had an english typewriter. (contd)

So he'd mail her pages and pages of phonetically-transliterated Hebrew written in English characters. Like:

Shalom Marjorie!
Ani rotzeh l'hagid lach mash sh'kara b'avodah sheli hayom... and so on for hundreds and hundreds of words.

Turns out I need to correct this thread: Per my mother, it was St. *Lucian* Creole, not Kitts. And his full Hebrew name was Chaim Uriah ben Yaacov u'Bedunna.

I regret the error!