Aukie.

My grandfather Aukie opened his kosher butcher shop in Portland, Maine in 1934. He built it from nothing, in the middle of the Depression, in a city where the Jewish community was small and the work was hard. He was known for his craft — the precision of his cuts, the care he took with every customer, the quiet pride of a man who fed his community.

He died in the 1950s. Long before I was born. I grew up with his name spoken the way families speak of people who left too soon — with a kind of reverence that doesn't need explanation. He was loved. That much was always clear.

I never got to shake his hand. Never sat across from him at a table. Never heard his voice. But I loved him anyway — the way you can love someone you only know through stories and silence and the shape of a life that ended before yours began.

Making pastrami is how I reach for him. There is something deeply honest about taking a piece of meat and transforming it — through salt and smoke and time — into something that brings people together. Aukie knew that. I'm still learning it. But every brisket is a letter I'm writing to a man I never got to meet.