Mr. Kops

When I gazed up at my teacher’s kind face from my desk in the front row, his bald head always reminded me of a leftover party balloon floating toward the ceiling. From his black silk kipah all the way to his toes, I thought he must have been at least seven feet tall even before he slipped into his thick-soled, tightly-laced walking shoes. They always seemed to need a shine. His name was Mr. Kops and he taught my third grade Hebrew School class at Congregation Beth El.

My father had once told me, “You can judge every man by the shoes he wears.”

If that was true, I wondered why Mr. Kops didn’t polish his shoes or seem to care about their weary condition. But even scuffed, his sturdy black footwear matched the dark nylon socks, extra-long suits, and knitted tie that floated back and forth across his chest as he wrote on or erased the green board that hung on the wall of that crowded classroom. I can still smell the chalk dust that salted the hem of his jackets and collected in small piles on the gray linoleum  floor behind his wooden chair.

Once, when he crossed his legs while reading to us, I noticed pale skin showing through a ragged hole on the outside of his left ankle. I tried to picture Mr. Kops darning that sock while he watched a Yankees’ game, but that didn’t seem realistic. I decided he’d probably turn his sock inside out, wash it,...