The High Holy Days are nearly here again – a time for apple and honey, for big meals and babka, family and friends, new clothes and resolutions, catch-ups and contemplation. And shul. It’s the season for long, long hours of prayer.
For some of us, synagogue is a second home, a familiar place. My father was like that, the rituals of Judaism gave him comfort and strength and the reassurance that he was doing his duty, as the descendant of Levites, by washing the hands of the priests among us.
But for others, shul doesn’t come naturally at all. It was never a regular week-by-week thing for my husband. He’s all about family and tradition, he’s very proudly Jewish. But synagogue-wise, he’s a definite three-times-a-year man.
In the first years of marriage, we split High Holy Days between our family homes in Manchester and Hertfordshire. It was a strange thing for me to get used to my husband’s family traditions, like breaking the fast on hot coffee, olives and gherkins instead of honey cake and honeydew melon.
Later, when we moved to Amsterdam we sampled shuls like tourists – confused by a service that switched from Hebrew to Dutch at the Liberal shul; baffled by the impossible-to-follow Sephardi service at the beautiful Portuguese synagogue.
My beloved mother-in-law died days before Rosh Hashanah in 2005. We had our last Manchester Yom Tov in a synagogue that was large and empty, smelling of dust and damp. And when we returned to live in London two years later, we joined the most local shul, but at Yom Tov we gravitated back to my parents’ shul, a lovely link to childhood for me. The one time we tried the shul we belong to my husband found an old man sitting in his seat – the synagogue operates a double booking system, it transpired.
As my mother’s health deteriorated, I started making the food for Rosh Hashanah lunches – just as she always did, fried fish and potato salad.
And then she died, and nothing would ever be the same again.
Last year we went to services at Dad’s care home, which were short and sweet, tailored to an audience who were mostly shaky on their feet and liable to fall asleep and who hardly needed reminding that death is near and can come unannounced.
The rabbi kept everything upbeat and tactfully skipped the scarier reminders of imminent mortality. We all loved it – so speedy, no standing up – and we found it profoundly moving to be part of a congregation where if you were under 90, you were young.
Most of all we were happy to share the experience with Dad. He was frail, and in a wheelchair, and all too aware that this service was not the full-length Orthodox one he expected (“I can’t work it out – is it Reform?”) but he was there, and it was a link back to the years and years and years he’d spent in shul, from his early years in Pontypridd, through married life building a community in Welwyn Garden City, laying a foundation for a part of him so essential that he described his Jewishness as being like a limb.
Death came for him in March, so this our first Yom Tov without him, without any of our parents.
Where should we go? Do we look to the past, or think more about the future? At first I assumed we’d go to a conventional shul, perhaps the one where we are members. But my family felt differently. We have our own community, they pointed out. It just doesn’t have a synagogue.
And it’s true, we are blessed locally with a young couple from Chabad who have have created a community that reminds me very much of the one I grew up in. It’s held together by friendship and care, by welcoming people in and offering them a gentle Judaism, which won’t scare them away.
They are just about to move into new premises, an exciting big step. There they will hold an explanatory service, which is the one I’ll go to, and a “power hour”, which will suit the rest of my family. We might even make it to tashlich in the park.
For lunch I’ll make Mum’s potato salad, and cold fried fish. I’ll buy chrain because the fiery horseradish will remind me of how much Dad loved it. I’ll make Mum’s apple cake and jam strudel.
I know that at some point of the day I’ll close my eyes, and I’ll feel my mother’s presence at my side, and my dad, just a few rows in front of us.
And I realise now how much they must have also felt the losses of their parents – and prayed for their children’s futures, just as I will this year.