Tribute: Ilana mercer – daughter Seattle/Washington/U.S.A

“My father, Rabbi Ben Isaacson, had a brilliant and original mind. Before his death, אבא was working on books about the greatest Hebrew prophets, who, indubitably, were his true muse. A column of mine, “Job: Jewish Individualist,” written for American readers and well-received by them, instantiates and is greatly influenced by his original thinking. I wager that no rabbi would view Job as a scrappy dissident, who argued with G-d and won on the merits of his argument. But dad did! The Book Of Job, in dad’s interpretation, was a radical philosophical masterpiece, to which my father’s thinking—at once scholarly and original—was well suited.
From my father, of blessed memory, I got a fierce sense of immutable justice, a deep love of the best of literature and music (J.S. Bach above all), and an analytical habit of mind. I love you, אבא.—ilana אילנה Isaacson Mercer.