Elul Project 2014
Aaron Cohen
September 4, 2014
Walking.
Walking to synagogue on the High Holidays.
Walking to synagogue on the High Holidays, with my daddy.
I must have been three and a half. My baby brother had been
born in March and would come to synagogue later with Mom, but Dad would leave
earlier and walk the three tenths of a mile to Temple Israel Center in White
Plains, NY. I was deemed “big” enough to walk with him, and sit with him in
services until babysitting started.
After breakfast Mom dressed me in my shul clothes. It had to
be after breakfast because we didn’t want to spill on new clothes. I don’t
remember much about the outfit except that the good gray wool pants seemed
terribly scratchy, and I got to wear a clip-on tie. Then we walked up to Old
Mamaroneck Road, and over to the Temple. We passed houses, and woods that would
become houses in later years.
When we got to the Temple we entered through the doors by
the chapel, and went up a half flight of stairs to a landing where Dad picked
up a small envelope from a table with hundreds of seemingly identical small
envelopes. This envelope contained two tickets on the center aisle in row HH.
Then up another half flight to the sanctuary. Dad sat on the aisle—the same
seat he would occupy on the high holidays for the next 39 years. I sat in my
Mom’s seat, and politely said hello to the people in the neighboring seats who
had held that real estate for many years. I don’t actually remember being
polite, but I know that Dad would have it no other way.
Grandma Madeline showed up shortly after we got there. She
had the next two seats in the aisle. One for her, and one that Grandpa Ben used
to sit in, but would go unoccupied for the first time this year. I’m pretty
sure Grandma Sadye sat there on the second day of Rosh Hashanah. She was a
member of the Hebrew Institute on Greenridge Avenue, but her son and
grandchildren were here.
When Mom and Larry arrived I went to babysitting. It was
comfortable and familiar; held in the room where I went to nursery school, but
different because Mrs. Marish wasn’t there.
Three times a year for the next ten years I walked to shul
with my daddy on the high holidays. We then moved too far away to walk,
something that I didn’t think about at the time.
I miss it.
Walking.
Walking to synagogue on the high holidays.
Walking to synagogue on the high holidays, holding my
daddy’s hand.
Maybe he carried me part of the way. Maybe he still does.
