Of course Rabbi Rosenberg would perform the bris. Who better to welcome the newborn son of Moses and Lily Richler into the covenant? Yudel Rosenberg wasn't only the family patriarch, who happened to be both a rabbi and a mohel, qualified to do circumcisions; he was the rebbe, as much guru as leader of Montreal's Hasidic community. They called him the Skaryszewer Illuy, the Genius of Skaryszew. He was a Ba'al Shem, a Master of the Holy Name. Scholar and author, teacher and mystic, Rabbi Rosenberg couldn't walk down a street in the neighbourhood without people seeking a blessing for their child or a word of comfort for themselves. He couldn't enter a synagogue without all present standing up out of respect. Nor could the seventy-year-old walk those streets wearing his long beard and fur hat, black coat and white stockings, without also being called a maudit Juif, a damn Jew--or muzhi Zhwiff, to his Yiddish-tuned ears--usually from a passing vehicle. Now semi-retired, the rabbi had suffered a stroke a year before. The illness hadn't diminished his intellect at all or his stamina by much, but it had left him with muscle tremors.