A man of my age – I was 94 just a few months ago – does not like changes. We like to be in familiar places, doing familiar things with familiar people. This tendency also applies to how we like to celebrate Jewish holidays.
I like to be in a familiar synagogue, hearing the voices of familiar clergy, singing familiar melodies and hearing the sound of a familiar shofar, a ram’s horn.
Back in the 1930s, when Yom Kippur rolled around, my father would take me to the New Temple of Brno in Czechoslovakia, where we sat in a pew that was nearly completely occupied by family members – male family members, of course. Mother, aunts and sundry female cousins were all relegated to the balcony. My father was one of 13 siblings so there was no shortage of uncles, aunts, cousins and in-laws to occupy a considerable portion of the temple.
For a young boy the services were pure agony. I was handed a heavy prayer book and was invited to follow along during the ceremony. Because I was going to the grammar school run by the Jewish Community of Brno, I started learning Hebrew in kindergarten. But, even when I was eight years old and in the 3rd grade, I could not read fast enough to keep up. Also, the prayer book was designed to be used for many different occasions and holidays, so there were constant instructions to “add this for Sukkot” or “delete this on Shabbat” or “proceed to a particular prayer at this point.” And to make these instructions more challenging, they were not in German or Czech, languages I knew – they were printed using Hebrew letters but were actually in Yiddish.
Each member of the congregation was obliged to bring his own siddur, prayer book. So, once I was lost in the Hebrew text, I had to confess that fact to my father who would guide me to the right place in my book. I always felt terribly guilty when I had to do this as if I had offended God by not paying attention.
By the time I was 10-years-old, perhaps in order to make my visits to the temple pleasanter, I volunteered to sing in the temple choir and was happily accepted. Now, I sat, along with my fellow choir members, on a bench behind the cantor and only had to read the music pages. Now, I always knew where we were during the service. Alas, that lasted only about three years – until right after the High Holy Day services in 1940 when the Nazis closed our beautiful and familiar shul – never, ever again to be opened for Jewish services.
At this point followed some 15 years of chaos, turmoil and instability as our family engineered its escape from Europe and the Holocaust, arrived in the US and moved several times while trying to establish a foothold in a strange new country. During these years, I served in the US Navy, went to college and started a career. Not surprisingly I found myself each year in a different synagogue, marking the High Holy Days in new surroundings, led by a great variety of rabbis and cantors. It wasn’t until I was married and settled in New Jersey that I, once again, began to enjoy the warm familiar environment of the same congregation year after year.
Temple Emanuel of the Pascack Valley, located in Woodcliff Lake, Bergen County, New Jersey, was formally incorporated in 1929 and grew to become one of the largest congregations in New Jersey. By 1966, when we joined this assembly, it was already under the leadership of a rabbi, cantor and school principal triumvirate that guided it for nearly the whole next half century. Now, once again, on each Yom Kippur, I was surrounded by familiar circumstances. The whole congregation used the same prayer book and, should you lose your place or allow your mind to wander, the rabbi would gently guide you back to the right page. The book had English text alongside the Hebrew so you knew not just that you were praying but what you were praying. For the next 50 years Temple Emanuel was my home on Yom Kippur – until 2016.
That year, my Sabra wife convinced me that we should travel to Israel a day or two after Rosh Hashanah and spend the Day of Atonement in Israel. I asked Israeli friends and relatives “What does a practicing but non-Orthodox Jew do on Yom Kippur in Israel?” The first thing they asked: “Will you fast?” “Of course I will fast! I have done so since I was 12 years old – every year even while I was in the navy.” “Well, there must be a temple near you in Rishon [Lezion] – although it is most likely Orthodox.”
Suddenly I had this sinking feeling that, in an Orthodox congregation, I will, once again have to revert to the conditions of the Brno temple with my wife hidden away somewhere, everyone reading from a different book and a cantor storming through the Hebrew service under the assumption that everyone knows Hebrew and can follow the text. “No, I don’t think we want to do that,” I responded. “Well, then,” I was told, all you can do is stay at home, read, study, rest, go for a walk or visit neighbors.” I was deeply disappointed by this choice. What kind of a way was this to spend Yom Kippur?
But I shouldn’t have worried. The day turned out to be rather unique and quite appropriate for the occasion. First, there was the absolute quiet that descended on the country – the streets and highways were virtually empty of all traffic, the television and radio stations were muted, the phones stopped ringing and I faced the prospect of spending the day without touching food, drink and the computer. With this uncommon silence came a chance to converse with your dear wife, to think, to meditate, to reflect and to exercise some much-needed self-examination. In many ways, the day became an unexpected pseudo-religious experience. This had in fact, and to my surprise, become a quite meaningful Day of Atonement.
When the day of fasting ended and things returned to their “normal” state, I realized that I had not pined for the usual synagogue service, or missed the camaraderie of a familiar congregation, or searched for the voices of a familiar cantor or a rabbi.
The only thing I truly missed was the sound of the shofar.