Tag Archives: High Holy Days

December 6, 2021 · 7:30 am

When I Think About Prayer

by Rachel R. Baum (Saratoga Springs, NY)

We did not belong to the synagogue my grandparents attended

On the High Holy Days I stood next to my father

Surrounded by anonymity in dark suits

He mumbled the Hebrew fussed with the slippery borrowed tallis

As I followed the dots and lines of text with my finger

My father elbowed me “Look at that” he stage whispered

A diamond ring my sister would call a third eye

Dangled from a well-dressed woman’s finger

“I’m her” he teased, knowing how the benediction he bestowed

On any female with enviable money, talent, beauty, would be

Hurtful to my sister and me, and then “Read! Read!” he insisted

Though we both knew we were there to gossip not to pray

Real prayer was the cluster of swaying bearded men

We were observers gazing from the rim of an alien civilization

Although we rose for the silent Amidah

We vied to be the first to finish and sit

My mother admonished us for our whispered disregard

She turned the pages of the Siddur

As she would an album of photographs

Reciting the Hebrew from transliterated words

We left early to avoid the rabbi’s sermon

The Bema a distant stage with its costumed Torahs

An usher collected the pledge envelope

At the tollbooth of a sanctuary door

At home, another yarmulke was added to the drawerful

That my father forgot at shul to remove and return

Evidence of our yearly pilgrimage

Marking the passage of time and of faith.

Rachel R. Baum is a professional dog trainer, former librarian, licensed private pilot, kayak angler, and Covid Long Hauler. She is the author of the blog BARK! Confessions of a Dog Trainer and the editor of Funeral and Memorial Service Readings: Poems and Tributes (McFarland, 1999) Her poems have appeared in High Shelf Press, Ariel’s Dream, Drunk Monkeys, Wingless Dreamer, New England Monthly Poetry Digest, Poetica Review, Bark magazine, and Around the World anthology. To learn more about Rachel’s work, visit: https://rachelrbaum.wixsite.com/my-site

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May 10, 2021 · 10:14 am

Missing my synagogue, my shul

by Tania Hassan (Gilbraltar)

I miss the synagogue.  Not my husband’s exquisitely vintage and stunningly intricate synagogue of his childhood but mine–my synagogue, my shul–the one that started out in a basement with doilies and shiny kippas in a basket by the entrance, and a chain across the parking lot (“lichvod Shabbat kodesh”) that forced shul goers to find parking around the corner.

How can I describe to you the ties that bind me to this most simple of communities or the profound love and connection in which the roots of my Avodat Hashem were planted and watered?

From lap to lap I shuffled as a child, gathering candies and friendships.  From wide-eyed babyhood, I grew into a sulky preteen and then a bride, a mother… all within the warm embrace of my parents’ friends and the fellow  members of Tiferet Yisrael Congregation, or “congregatation,” as the shul president sometimes called it – English not being his first or second language.

This shul was not just a place to pray.  It was our favorite playground. During shul hours, the parking lot and the coat room were begging for our imaginations to transform them into dangerous faraway lands. The choicest hiding spot was under Jack Oziel’s lush mink fur coat, which felt like melted butter against our hopelessly chapped and cracked lips. I can still feel it and smell the musty cloves that lingered in old pockets from havdalah to havdalah.

Believe it or not, in our neck of the woods, during “shalushudis” or rather, seudah shelisheet, we kids were sort of allowed to play in the main sanctuary, stomping on the hollow bimah, hiding in the velvet curtains of the Aron, and even peeking at and kissing the precious scrolls.

We were always shooed out by a red-faced, cranky Moroccan, who, with great flourish and a dismissive wave of his hand, locked us out and banished us back to the coat room.

But it was all a show because the next week, for 20 years, they would forget to lock the sanctuary and ignore the sudden disappearance of literally all the kids from the seudah shelisheet kids’ table.

I grew up pecking the men and women once on each cheek until I was bat mitzvah, at which time the men did a sort of slight Shabbat shalom bow, always amused at my adherence to religion despite my very childish appearance and antics. This familial style of greeting and interacting is very telling of the sort of community we grew up in.  One didn’t proceed to the kiddush or the exit without greeting every single shul goer.

Simchat Torah was The Best. No other synagogue with their enormous budgets and catered lunches could compare to the laughter, dancing, and, of course, fried sharmila and spicy orissa of my childhood Simchat Torah’s.

Age was irrelevant in this place. Old men were the coolest dancers and were always the first to whip those candies right back at us, usually resulting in the candy bouncing off the tinted glass that was our mechitza and hitting another horrified octogenarian. These were the days before Sunkist jelly candies. The older I got, the more sophisticated the candies became.  Rumor has it that now they throw whole packs of Twizzlers, O’ Henry’s, and the like.  Believe me when I tell you there’s nothing like a Moroccan shul.

__________

Yom Kippur. Oh, Yom Kippur, I miss you! I miss leaning on all the mollycoddling ladies. I miss the smell of lemons and Heno de Pravia cologne my grandmother would bring to keep her going. I miss the chazzan whose voice is the one I still hear in my head every time I utter a prayer. His strong, zealous service of God in a stunning clear call that still brings in my own Shabbat here across the whole world or wherever I go, whoever is up at the Bimah. In my ears, it’s always him. 

I miss the unity that I used to feel on Yom Kippur.  I don’t think everyone in that shul was Jewish, but we were One. That night and all the next day, we were shoulder to shoulder, intertwined souls, with the single mission to carry each other to the finish line, supported, cared about, and joyful.

We were happy on Yom Kippur because with all the petty politics of a shul out of the way, we focused on what we liked about each other. We laughed a lot until we elbowed each other or got stern looks from the chazzan or his wife, our eim bayit. We weren’t misbehaving, but we were so happy and united. The little things made us laugh.

We cried too. We knew each other so well—who had lost their mother that year , whose husband was ill, whose conversion was imminent. We prayed for ourselves, but hand in hand.

On this day, the Shabbat drivers put on their leather running shoes to walk home or to the house of a nearby host.  Yom Kippur was sacred to all, and we celebrated that accomplishment of theirs with great pride. To this day I can’t tell you which members were fully Shabbat observant and which weren’t, aside for the obvious ones, such as the chazzan and his family.

The tinkling Spanish of the ladies with their heavy perfumes and broaches, the croaky davening of tone deaf middle-aged men pierced by the melodious honey-like harmony of the chazzanim and their sons, or a delightful guest…the jar of chili peppers in the basement fridge that called our names every Friday night (after which we wiped our lips on Jack Oziel’s mink coat)… the diversity and the oneness… it shaped my entire being beyond the service of Hashem.

The shul shaped my perspective of the world. It helped me understand the world my parents had left behind and tried to recreate on much more frigid, colorless shores. And it embedded itself in the roots of my soul, in that space where self-esteem and formative experiences matter so much as to affect you forever.

People used to make fun of our shul. They saw it as a nebbish smattering of old school Spanish Moroccans, and Israeli and Russian ba’al teshuvas without a grand hall or grand communal accomplishments.  But there were those of us who found the secret to life along with the musty old cloves in deep pockets of simple and happy men.

And if your synagogue held gala dinners, or charged thousands of dollars in annual membership (barring the entry of a poor man longing to connect to His Maker), or catered a five-star kiddush with a VIP table, you just wouldn’t understand.

Tania Hassan is an ABA therapist who lives in Gibraltar, a 2.2 km squared British peninsula that shares a border with Spain.  Her Spanglish is superb, her British accent less so.  When she has spare time, she writes and pines for Canadian winters. 

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January 1, 2018 · 7:47 am

A Touch of Class, Grace, and Goodness 

by Suzanne Chait-Magenheim (New York, NY)

A funny thing happened on my way to temple this past Rosh Hashanah in my hometown of Manhattan.  I arrived and the synagogue was not there! As I crossed Park Avenue directly in front of what used to be a lavish edifice, I saw it was covered with construction debris and fenced off. Some New Year!  I wanted God to put me in a good place when he wrote in his Book of Life. I did not expect he would put me in the Twilight Zone.

Let me backtrack a little bit.  My husband had his knee replaced three weeks earlier, so we did not take our usual trip to our Florida home to celebrate the High Holy Days where we are members of a Reform temple that my spouse enjoys because of the sincere warmth and musicality of the staff.  Their rhythmic swaying to the music keeps him from dozing off during the service.  Usually.

I was happy to join any temple, Reform or Conservative, as a versatile human being. Although I was raised as a child in the Orthodox tradition (not to be confused with the Chasidic with their long curls, long skirts, and joyful dancing), I could be pragmatic in this case, although the playing of instruments on the Sabbath irked me a little. Being Orthodox as a child meant not being able to cut out my paper dolls on Saturdays.  Not being able to drive to temple.  Dining from “milchig” and “fleishig” dishes (dairy separate from meat}, and using colorful plates on Passover.

Last year, due to other health issues that should not surprise normal seniors, my husband and I took advantage of the reciprocal policy of exchanging holiday tickets between like-minded denominations, a nice honored custom, and we made a contribution to the host synagogue.  So I arranged for the same this year.

I should say here that I used to find the sale of tickets for the High Holy Days offensively expensive. The first time I discovered that tickets were sold for admission so Jews could absolve themselves of sin and thank God for his goodness was years ago in Manhattan. I was 25 and still normally attended my parents’ synagogue in upstate New York on most holidays.  It was 1972, and I tried to attend a neighborhood synagogue sans ticket on Rosh Hashanah, but left sobbing and sputtering, “I can’t believe you would turn away a fellow Jew on the holiest days of the year.”

They would, and could, and did.  They could care less.  I was so financially naïve then.  To learn the greedy ways of the world on Rosh Hashanah was a shock to my young system. But I see now it is how the institutions raise funds to maintain the everyday running of a school and so many other community offerings.

So, it is the morning of Rosh Hashanah in 2017, or 5778 in Jewish years, and, having overslept, I hurriedly dressed, gave my husband his painkillers, ate a quick and proper Weight Watchers 7-point breakfast, and donned a little silk dress and low heels to honor the tradition of dressing up conservatively nice for synagogue. I walked the six blocks as quickly as possible in the slightly uncomfortable but appropriate shoes after a summer of sandals.

When I saw there was no entrance, I started to walk to the next street and telephoned my husband to ask him the address, hoping I had the wrong street. What would I do if I could not begin the year admitting my few sins and asking for forgiveness so my loved ones and I could live another year!

In another block and a half, I thought I had discovered my goal when I saw a bunch of Jews–women in black heels and suits, men in black, blue, or purple yarmulkes and matching talleisim–standing in a line and being asked for tickets.  The five security guards were a definite clue.  I asked if this was the temple I was looking for but was told it was not.  I asked to speak to someone in charge to see if they knew where my missing temple was or if I could possible go to this one.

A lovely gentleman in authority came to the rescue and said the right thing:  “Why don’t you join us? No Jew should be turned away on the High Holy Days!” Bingo! Some of the world had morally evolved in the right direction since 1972.  I thanked this “savior,” so to speak, and profusely offered a contribution, which he said was up to me, and which I mailed a few days later (as my mother had taught me that I was not to handle money on the High Holy days, which I sometimes adhere to).  He handed me a prayer book and guided me to an available seat.

It turned out this was a Conservative temple, which rented extra space for a large congregation on the Jewish holidays.   The room was certainly not beautiful, but it was in an appropriate, large room with the requisite torahs, bima, rabbi, and cantor.  I had arrived just on time to hear the blowing of the shofar, the strange mournful bellow that has many meanings:  welcoming the New Year, calling us to prayer, beseeching God for peace on earth and in Jerusalem, and, of course, welcoming me to this new experience.

As it turned out, it wasn’t so new. I had attended a Conservative synagogue following the Orthodox one at the age of six after moving away from my grandparents, thereby gaining more religious freedom (like the freedom to consume Chinese food and eventually lobster). I had been bat mitzvahed following a year of special study and five years of Hebrew school.  So I was quite comfortable adding my weak soprano voice to the Hebrew melodies I knew well.

I had previously been disappointed that the Reform services had altered the traditional melodies, even “Adon olam.”  In this temple it was back to standing a whole lot when the Torah was removed from the Ark and praying in Hebrew rather than in an English responsive reading, as was prevalent in the Reform temple.  This temple reminded me of the days I couldn’t wait to join my Dad in melodious prayer at the conclusion of the Yom Kippur service as the tedious fast ended before returning home to lox and bagels, tuna fish salad, scrambled eggs, herring, and chocolate milk for me.

At this new service, people pleasantly smiled at me as we exchanged a few words.  I felt at home and quite comfortable.  As the rabbi began his sermon, he spoke of the greeting “L’Shana Tova” which means not “happy new year,” but a “good new year.”  This was his opening to discuss the importance of showing goodness and virtue to our community.  He suggested that the oldest people in the world lived in communities for good fellowship and friendship and lots of socializing.  Daily friendships are more important than large, loving families …”in another state!” Dopamine, norepinephrine, epinephrine and other chemicals in the body have been tested to prove this, he said.

My attendance was such a perfect example of what he spoke of, and I was grateful for the way that his little Jewish community had welcomed me into their ‘flock,” so to speak.  I read some prayers to myself in English that I found meaningful and touching.  I was comfortable in this little “shtetl.”  Sometimes Fate, your appointment in Samara, (or could it be Divine Intervention?) is a lovely thing blessed with goodness and kindness.

A few days later, so that I would know where I was to go on Yom Kippur, I walked back to the original temple that I had been seeking.  It had occurred to me that the entrance was in the back, not easily visible or accessible from the street.  And so, it was.  To which, I say: “Let there be light”…..or at least a visible sign!

Thankfully, I was not abandoned to roam the dusty streets of Manhattan for 40 years.

Before becoming a “snowbird” in Florida, Suzanne Chait-Magenheim, LCSW, lived most of her adult life in Manhattan. A graduate of Skidmore College, she became a psychotherapist with a private practice as a clinical social worker and with psychoanalytic certification.  Her recent poem, “56 Years” appears online at the Alzheimer’s Association website.  A few years ago, she wrote, edited, and photographed a monthly government newsletter, School Health Highlights.

 

 

 

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October 30, 2017 · 8:55 am

Rosh Hashana, 5778

by Richard Epstein (Washington, DC)

It’s Indian Summer.  My Thai wife
brought home matzah ball soup
for the evening meal.  In the morning,
I woke to the aroma of matzah brie
on the kitchen stove.

She knows, with strawberry jam,  I will
eat all she can make.  As I type this,
I hear an interview with Warren Buffett
somewhere in the background.

This year, I have ignored Rosh Hashanah.
At least, I thought I did, until now.
But like Warren Buffett, Rosh Hashana
plays somewhere in the background.

I hear a ram’s horn call out its warning:
Wake up!  Prepare! To clear my thoughts
I went for a walk in the woods along Sligo Creek.

I saw a young man dressed in black standing
in the middle of a narrow footbridge reading
from a prayer book.  As I passed, he dropped
a handful of bread crumbs into the stream.

Long ago, a holy man dressed in white
would lead a goat into the desert to freedom.
A ritual or cure?  But, like wiping chalk writing
from a blackboard, a residue remains.

For Rosh Hashana, I was taught to examine
past actions and deeds. Define the behaviors
that be best cast off and those to save.

With defiance, pye weed, goldenrod and asters
shout a last hurrah. The tall grasses bow
to the shortening of days and impending cold.

Like Indian summer, I prepare myself for change
in this grand parade.  I reflect back, then forward
to another year.

Richard Epstein lives in the Washington DC area and is active in the Warrior Poets sponsored by Walter Reed Medical Center, the Veterans Writing Project and he hosts an open mic venue for veterans and friends of veterans on the National Mall.

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October 10, 2016 · 10:43 am

High Holy Days

By Mel Glenn (Brooklyn, NY)

It is suggested in the High Holy Day Prayer Book
you should carry two scraps of paper,
putting one in each pocket.

One paper should say:
“For my sake the world was created.”
And the other one should read:
“I am ashes and dust.”

What kind of choice is that?
Are we the sovereigns of our own planet,
or nothing but little fragments,
ready to be blown away at the wind’s notice?

On this holiday we reflect:
What is our purpose in our limited time here?
If you’re expecting some kind of answer,
I’m afraid you’ve come to the wrong synagogue door.

Our purpose, it seems to me,
is not to find ultimate answers,
but to continue questioning,
with respect to our terrestrial place,
recognizing awe for what we can never fully understand.

I think I will need more than two scraps of paper.

The author of twelve books for young adults, Mel Glenn has lived nearly all his life in Brooklyn, NY, where he taught English at A. Lincoln High School for thirty-one years. Lately, he’s been writing poetry, and you can find his most recent poems in the YA anthology, This Family Is Driving Me Crazy, edited by M. Jerry Weiss.

If you’d like to learn more about his work, visit: http://www.melglenn.com/

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September 22, 2014 · 6:30 am

The Tent Connection

by Ronni Miller (Sarasota, FL)

“and it came to pass that everyone that sought the Lord went out into the tent of Meeting…” Exodus 33:7

When I first moved to rural Woodstock in the ‘80’s, I had just barely shed my role as a suburban New Jersey divorced wife and single mother. My three children had sprung the nest and were ensconced in colleges of their choices all over the country. What I discovered in the isolated, eclectic pine cabin that I had built, ringed by fields of hay and mountains, was the fledgling connection to myself and to my life as a writer. It would take many years for me to reinvent myself, and during that time, while adapting to the culture of fading hippies, I felt an intuitive connection to the Jewish services that were held nearby under a tent.

Discovering services down the road from the cabin and under the tent was, at first, daunting, even uncomfortable. I had been raised to be proper and staid, reflective and sorrowful in silence inside a proper temple of brick and mortar, and I tried to duplicate that kind of Jewish experience for my own children as I raised them. But my connection to a spiritualism beyond the words that I mouthed in English and Hebrew in that environment was watery at best. What I began to discover under the tent was an inner connection, a physicality of feeling that I had no words to express. Singing, smiling, even laughing and feeling a lightness of spirit, at first felt wrong at such a holy time, but gradually this way of celebrating became the norm that I yearned to experience. I felt connected to something ancient, and I was proud to be a part of such a bond. Yet by the following year when it was time to make plans to return, I again questioned the sincerity of my action.

When I sold my cabin of wood and glass in Woodstock, NY, packed my quilt, books and computer, and moved south for sun and warmth, I felt the need to make a pilgrimage north each fall to re-experience the interaction of a Judaism that spoke to me of ancient connections and rhythms, a living energy that mingled psychological, philosophical, literary and religious themes in a meaningful way that I had never experienced before in any other synagogue of stone walls and stained glass windows. It became an annual ritual that provided a beginning for the New Year, a ritual that helped me understand where I was in my life at the time, as well as shining a light ahead that would help illuminate my path when I had to return to my home in the south and cope with everyday realities.

That first year, as I drove north on the highway, I thought of Rabbi Jonathan who played his guitar as we sang and danced on the earthen floor. The Woodstock Jewish Congregation Kehillat Lev Shalem is, as their motto says, “the congregation of a full heart.” It is “an egalitarian congregation whose members range from cultural atheists to traditional Jews,” says Rabbi Jonathan Kliger, who was trained at the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College, served as spiritual leader under the tent for twenty-six years, and is now Senior Scholar of the Lev Shalem Institute, a center for learning, creativity, healing, and spiritual growth located at the Woodstock Jewish Congregation. Was I returning for this experience alone, and how did that connect to the religiosity of a new year?

I’ve struggled for two decades to understand the true reason for my annual pilgrimage to the tent for High Holiday services. I know I’m seeking a connection, but a connection to what? Even though I celebrate Shabbat each week by lighting the candles and saying the prayers over the bread and the wine, I feel at times like I’m going through the motions for the sake of tradition. So I drive the twenty-five hundred mile trip alone, from Sarasota, FL to Woodstock, NY, searching for something deeper. And I look forward to the experience of emotional freedom and, if only temporary, a spiritual connection while sitting on a metal folding chair on the earth, sheltered from the elements by a white canvas tent, surrounded by fifteen hundred like-minded strangers.

In my struggle to define the truth for this rite of return, questions pile on questions. Is it just nostalgia to return to a place that had once been my home at a crossroads in my life? Is it the novelty of celebrating the High Holidays under a tent with dancing and singing instead of with the austerity and solemnity encased by stained glass windows? Is it because I desire to be included in a community that welcomes all people, Jewish or not, straight, gay, single and married, a community that openly acknowledges the power of expressing feelings and emotions? Is it because I need to confirm the person I reinvented — or began to reinvent — in this mountain community of artists where individualism is recognized, not scorned?

On reflection, I can say, yes, definitely, it is nostalgic to remember every thread and every morsel of a new life that I had made for myself in a rural rather than suburban environment, and where bear, deer and pheasant were my neighbors instead of people.  It was where an eclectic cabin of pine with wide board floors and two story glass windows, surrounded by pasture and mountains, held treasured memories of a home I had built to declare both my choice of aesthetics, as well as my personal independence as a newly unmarried woman with three grown children.  Yes, it had been exciting to continue to create my fiction in this cabin, which overlooked undulating fields of hay, as well as inspiring to recall the birth of the writing program that has sustained me financially on my future path.

This quest for connection on a deep level is a pervasive theme in my life, as well as in my fiction writing, and it is the power of this quest that draws me to the tent each year.  The tent is where I feel the ancient and the modern connect.  A few children and grandchildren have joined me over the years, and for a few hours it feels like we are home again, a family under one roof. We stand before the bimah to receive a blessing before the Torah is opened. Together we hear the shofar blown, the children standing on metal folding chairs to see over the adults’ heads, or astride their father’s shoulders.

I am on a new chapter in my life now as a widow after twenty years of a second marriage. In the past I haven’t been swayed by practicality. Imagination and desire have always trumped reality. Yet I know that this rite of return helps me feel cleansed and inspired to begin a new year. The service under the tent strengthens my religiosity and my spiritualism, and, after it’s over, I know I’ll carry these feelings, along with the words from Rabbi Jonathan’s sermons, in my heart and mind as I drive south again over interstate highways from the Catskill Mountains, past the low country of the Carolina’s, and into the flat terrain beside the Gulf of Mexico.  This ritual of ebb and flow, this traveling up and back, comforts me. It provides a beginning for the year, a meaningful way for me to mark a distinction between the endings and beginnings in my life.

Ronni Miller, author of Dance With The Elephants: Free Your Creativity And Write and Cocoon To Butterfly: A Metamorphosis of Personal Growth Through Expressive Writing, among other published books, is an award winning fiction author and founder and director of Write It Out®, a motivational and expressive writing program for individuals of all ages since 1992.  She teaches and lectures in the US, facilitates writing retreats in Tuscany and Cape Cod, and writes about her Jewish roots, feelings, memories and experiences in published books, short stories, essays, poems and plays for children and adults. In her private practice as a Book Midwife, she helps people birth their books. See www.writeitout.com for more information. 

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