Within the awful sadness of the last two weeks, I am so grateful to my father that I am still able to see his unique personality and spirit around me wherever I go.

For example, right now I can see him smiling his huge Cheshire cat grin at this ceremony we are holding in his honour. There was nothing Dad liked more than ceremonies in his honour. What was it he liked to joke when holding friends in conversation? - “Enough about me, now you talk about me!”

I don't think I'm biased when I say my Dad was truly special. My sister Anne nailed this on the head  when she shared this with the family last week. “Dad was just as wonderful in private as he was in public. Great men are rarely, if ever, great men at home, but Dad was even greater.”

Dad was an amazing Dad. He loved each of his children unconditionally, but was never afraid to express his opinion. He made it an effortless transition from father to friend with each of his four children. Dad believed that God was a personal God who would guide him from within his own conscience. Likewise for us, Dad was a personal father who intrinsically managed to guide us along the right path. In this light, even after he is gone, we feel he is still here guiding us, pointing us in the right direction.

This isn't to say he didn't have his faults. When he was right, he was right, and there was no arguing with him. And if being too passionate is a fault, he was guilty of that too. His passion for Israel was always apparent, no less when seeing him cry out in despair at the latest conflict “Why is this happening?”But this despair was true also of his passion for Arsenal. “Why is this happening?” he would exasperate at their latest defeat. And in this instance, he truly didn't have a clue why it was happening, because he knew nothing about football.

We'll all have our memories of my father. And each of these memories will be unique. Because my Dad got around! In the last week I have heard so many people tell me of how my father married them, bar mitzvahed them, conducted memorial services for their loved ones. And on each occasion he got the mood and he got the people just right. How do I know this? Because this was his skill – he got people, he just got them.

He got me too. Through all the time we spent together, we had an understanding of who each other was. So what that we were products of different generations and backgrounds. So what he was a  successful author and rabbi when I was finding my way. So what that we were different in so many ways. But that didn't matter to Dad because he never chose to mould us in his own image. He loved that we were all different than him and revelled in our individuality.

So how will I remember my Dad? I'll remember his smile, his entertaining exasperation, his passion, his ideas, his love of red wine, his appalling knowledge of football, his childlike enthusiasm, his sense of humour, his terrible attempts at exercise, his Volvo with its GOY numberplate, his name-dropping, his incredibly skinny legs, Mum fussing over his hair every morning, his letters to the Times, his 100 ways of making tuna, his passion for making photo albums, his passion, his entertaining exasperation, his smile.  

But how should we all remember him. Well, Dad always said he would have to write his own eulogy as no-one else was good enough. So to conclude, these are his final words from his book “Ritual Slaughter”:

I would say, as I finish this book, that the end of the matter is that it is people and not theories which shape our lives. I have been fortunate that many have gracefully touched my life and their touch has enhanced it. My Zaydeh may have been the first, but he was not the last. He did however set the standard, and he made me respond gratefully to any human creature who offered me love, understanding or wisdom. My brother Chanan used to laugh at me as a growing adolescent when I joyfully accepted a drink, “One thing about Sidney, he never says no”. This was true then, it has been true since I crossed the sea to England to start my adult life in earnest. It is still true, and I shall die happy if someone offers me something to which I will be able to say in my dying breath, “Yes”.