We don’t really know death. Poets and priests claim to know death, but they don’t. They can’t. It lies beyond a one-way wall. Jerry Manheim passed through that wall last Saturday. He’s gone to us, in body, in mind, but not in memory. Each of us will carry that memory until we pass through the wall ourselves, and the cycle repeats.

So, let’s share and celebrate the memory of Jerome Henry Manheim of Chicago, Ill, son of Camille Fantl and Herman Manheim, brother of Elaine, husband of Sylvia, and father to several children, grandfather to a few more, uncle, cousin, friend, teacher, protagonist, antagonist, patron, benefactor, inquisitor, listener, counselor, author, hero, and comrade to thousands and thousands more. To know Jerry was to cut 3 degrees off the 6 degrees of separation.

This is our tribute to a truly special man. Apparently, I get to go first because I carry half of Jerry’s genes. Lisa and Camryn share the other half. These are our inherited traits. Me with Jerry’s voice; Lisa with his separated teeth; and Camryn with his acting talents. Boy, could he sing and dance! We carry his genotype and phenotype; maybe even his xenotype and stereotype. He was the ultimate prototype. But, oddly, Jerry could not type. The hundreds of emails you received from him over the years, now cluttering your trash folder, those weren’t typed, they were dictated. Perhaps now you’ll forgive him for those mistakes of grammar, syntax and humor.

There’s a special bond between fathers and sons. It’s an evolutionary one, not easily subject to cultural distortion. It’s how the species survives. So I am very much my father’s son. I share his politics, irreligious beliefs, taste for spicy food, love of math and science, and awe at the cosmos, but fortunately not his bad taste in clothing or jokes. I share his commitment to rationality, peace, justice, doing the right thing even at personal cost. His world view is my world view. And that’s good. Because we both know that we lived in an inflationary multiverse with an infinite number of earths. On one of those earths, far outside our detection, the parallel Karl is having this precise conversation at this very moment with the parallel Jerry, who is very much alive, and we’re celebrating the self-destruction of the parallel Herman Cain and Rick Perry.

Jerry didn’t want a bunch of eulogies, and certainly not in a place that had “Jewish” in its name, although “Community Center” is exactly right. Community was what he was all about, at the family level, with his clan (and the number of people here today attests to the strength of that clan), and with 7 billion fellow humans, especially those who are victimized or espouse unpopular views. Having been at the stinging end of the political whip himself more than once, he knew the value of friends, allies and supporters when civil liberties are threatened.

What goes around comes around, and Jerry never forgot that. And so he established the Manheim Family Attorney for First Amendment Rights at the ACLU of Southern California. They fight Jerry’s fight, which is our fight, and will continue to do so long after today. That is my dad’s legacy. I couldn’t be prouder.

Jerry departed earlier than we expected. But, as he knew, the distinction between past, present, and future is only a stubbornly persistent illusion. He was ready to go, and thereby achieved death on his own terms.

Jerry long claimed that he was God. A preposterous claim. Nearly as preposterous as the claim that he was not. As it turns out, Jerry planned his own deification some years ago. Let me read to you his agenda.

All I can say is “he’s got my vote.”

A man’s death is more the survivor’s affair than his own. It is for us to carry on the tradition. That means we have a lot of work to do – Jack – you pay the bills; Kenny – you write the bad jokes; Mom – you call corporate America to complain. The rest of you will get your assignments in due course. Stay vigilant. But today, as we remem-ber and celebrate Jerry, let each of us say “I knew Jerry Manheim. We were friends.”