“After a year, Joseph’s father married an Egyptian woman of his own, his third wife altogether, and nine months after that, he had his first Egyptian kid. Joseph watched with the usual boredom. He grinned his way through the promotion ceremonies, the wedding, the bris, the second bris, and then his father’s fourth wedding, the third bris, and the first bar mitzvah. At the age of 147, Joseph’s father finally died.”

Saki Knafo is writer at the Huffington Post. He has written New York Times Magazine profiles of the record producer Gabe Roth and the filmmaker Spike Jonze. He lives in his native Brooklyn.