OTHER VIEWS
Reality Check
The Long Voyage Home
A
n old song keeps run-
ning through my head
this year: "There's
No Place Like Home for the
Holidays."
It's a song about other holi-
days, I know, and it's more than
half a century old. Since Perry
Como first recorded it in 1954,
it has become a familiar sound
during the December holiday
season.
But this is September and the
words about home seem to have
taken on a new poignancy for
this community. Detroit is no
longer home to a huge number
of our young people, and the last
Jewish census tells us that trend
is accelerating.
Since Rosh Hashanah falls on a
weekend this year, many of them
will make the trip back from
Chicago or New York or wherever.
them subscribe to
But do they still think
the Jewish News to
of this as home? And if
keep in touch, and
home is not here, then
occasionally I get
where?
e-mails from people
Home is where you
I knew in grade
feel a sense of place.
school who read my
It's not merely where
column.
you go to make a liv-
But the old song
ing or meet a mate. It's
increasingly speaks
where you belong. The
George Cantor
to the American
pull may diminish over
Columnist
condition. We have
the years but I don't
always been a nation
think it ever entirely
disappears. There is always some of people who keep looking for
the better life somewhere beyond
small part of the wanderer's soul
the horizon. Even in 1954, say
that continues to cling to the
the lyrics, "I met a man who lives
place they knew before.
in Tennessee and he was head-
I know people who moved
ing for Pennsylvania and some
away decades ago and still fol-
home-made pumpkin pie."
low Detroit's sports teams as
Those fractured family ties,
avidly as ever. My friend Jimmy
Gottfurcht even watches local TV however, were only a small por-
late news on the dish three hours tion of what we experience today.
West Bloomfield psychologist
earlier in Los Angeles. Some of
Phyllis Levitt is even starting a
support group this fall for par-
ents whose children have moved
away. You can contact her at
(248) 855-8442 if you fall into
that rapidly expanding category
and want to participate.
The High Holidays are the time
when the ties of home pull stron-
gest. Memories of childhood
awaken and, as a standard part
of being Jewish, you remember
the meals — the challah dipped
in honey and the chicken soup
and gefilte fish and the roast
chicken and brisket and the des-
serts with a calorie count that
would stagger a rhino.
You go around the table in
your memory and summon up
the faces — your grandmother's
touch, your father's wisdom, the
giggles shared with your cousins.
This is where the heart is. This
is home.
The only time I wasn't home
for the holidays I was on assign-
ment in Jerusalem, which isn't a
bad tradeoff, all things consid-
ered. Even with that, however, it
felt incomplete. Too much was
missing. While Jerusalem may be
my spiritual home, my heart was
in Michigan.
This year, my grandchild
will be at our table for her first
holiday, along with a gaggle of
various and sundry relatives.
Wherever Caryn may roam in
the future — at least, after she
gets some teeth — I hope this
Rosh Hashanah will be a part, a
beginning, of her memories of
home.
No place like it, kid. ❑
George Cantor's e-mail address is
gcantor614@aol.com.
The Call Of The Shofar
New York
T
he approach of Rosh
Hashanah always takes
me back in memory
to my bar mitzvah, which took
place on Shabbat Shuvah —
the Sabbath of Repentance that
comes between Rosh Hashanah
and Yom Kippur.
Two weighty questions pre-
occupied me that day in 1964.
One: What did it mean that
God called Jews and the world
to "repent" or "return" because
all of us had "stumbled in sin"?
The prophet Hosea, whose
words I chanted that morning,
insisted in God's name that God
cared about how we treated
one another, and that we could
all do better. He promised that
God would help us do better if
we turned to the task. I mar-
veled at this promise. It was
and remains a great mystery
to me.
The other big question on
my mind that September day in
Philadelphia was whether the
Phillies, under Manager Gene
once joyful and
Mauch, could hold on
solemn for Jews
to their position atop
because it marks a
the National League and
new beginning for
win the pennant for the
each of us. It car-
first time in my life.
ries the assurance
The optimists among
that we all do get
my friends took victory
a second chance,
as a near-certainty. The
and urges us to
Phillies were six games
seize hold of it.
ahead. Things looked
Arnold M.
The world,
really promising. The
Eisen
too,
can be bet-
pessimists warned that
Special
ter
than
it is — a
the team would blow it.
Commentary
hope desperately
It turned out that they
needed this year.
were right.
We have witnessed so much
The Phillies lost 13 of the
suffering, in the Middle East
next 20 games. This, too, was
and elsewhere. So little peace
a mystery to me. Was it bad
for Israel or Iraq, Darfur or the
pitching, bad managing, bad
Congo.
luck? Maybe it was Fate.
I can still chant by heart,
I bring up the connection
thanks to months of practice
between Rosh Hashanah and
for my bar mitzvah, Hosea's
the Phillies (or the Tigers)
promise that we can change
because it gets to the heart of
this. "The person who is wise
what the Jewish holidays mean
will consider these words. The
to me each fall. In a word: It's
person who is prudent will take
not Fate. How things go is
note of them. For the paths of
largely up to us, even if we do
the Lord are smooth. The righ-
not control the circumstances
teous can walk on them."
of our lives.
Hosea urged Jews more than
The New Year is a time at
2,500 years ago to "blow a
shofar in Zion" so as to call the
people to turn and return. Jews
still blow a ram's horn at Rosh
Hashanah for exactly the same
reason. We need to hear loud
and clear, again and again, the
message to which it summons
us.
Many interpretations have
been given to the notes struck
by the horn, but the one that
means most to me is this: The
shofar's first sound, tekiah, is
a wake-up call. It calls us to
attention. Look around, it says.
Things are not OK. Your work
is needed to set them — and
yourself — right.
The second sound made by
the shofar is called shevarini,
or "breaks." The world is bro-
ken. The horn imitates its cries,
preventing us from stopping up
our ears or our heart.
Teruah, a series of short
blasts one after another, gives
us marching orders. Change
requires small steps that
each of us has to take, mod-
estly but with determination.
Overreaching will not work.
The shofar blowing ends with
a return to the first notes, lon-
ger this time: a "great tekiah."
It lets us know what victory
sounds like. We can change our
ways. So can the world.
Honesty compels each of
us to concede that we've tried
before to turn things around
and haven't managed it.
Experiences of failure haunt all
of us, not just fans of the 1964
Phillies. That's why we need
Rosh Hashanah each year to
remind us that this beginning
can be different.
May we all heed the shofar's
call this year, and prove that
the world, which so needs fix-
ing right now, can be made
better — and that we can make
it so.
Professor Arnold M. Eisen is
chancellor-elect of the Jewish
Theological Seminary of America.
September 21 * 2006
77