MAY 13 • 2021 | 7

DETROIT JEWISH NEWS
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essay

What Would It Take 
for Me to Go Back 
to Synagogue?
W

hen I was very 
young, what moti-
vated me to go 
to shul on Shabbat morning 
was the fire station two houses 
away from the synagogue.
My dad was 
the rabbi of 
the only con-
gregation in 
Annapolis, Md., 
and shul atten-
dance was a 
family affair. If I 
behaved during 
services, my big brother would 
take me to the fire station 
afterward, and sometimes the 
firemen let me sit at the wheel 
of the hook-and-ladder truck. 
That made my week.
In recent days, I’ve been 
thinking a lot about my various 
experiences with shul atten-
dance over the years. The sad 
truth is that though I am for-
tunate enough to have received 
my second COVID vaccine 
more than a month ago, I hav-
en’t been back to shul, and I’m 
not sure why. But the weather 
is getting warmer, and I’m run-
ning out of excuses.
It’s ironic because these last 
few years I’ve really enjoyed 
shul — the services, the rabbis, 
the people, the singing. In my 
early years, not so much.
As kids, learning to read 
Hebrew and becoming familiar 
with the prayers, the goal at 
services was to be the fastest.
When I was about 10, I 

attended a family wedding in 
New York and stood in awe 
as I took in the sight of what 
seemed like hundreds of men 
in black hats and dark suits 
swaying fervently as they 
recited the afternoon Minchah 
prayer. I zipped through the 
silent Amidah and was waiting 
for the service to continue. A 
few minutes went by and then 
a few more minutes until it 
seemed everyone had finished.
I asked my brother what the 
holdup was, and he pointed to 
a very short older man, eyes 
closed, still in fervent prayer.
“That’s Rav Aharon Kotler, 
the head of one of the biggest 
yeshivahs in the world,
” he told 
me.
“What’s taking him so 
long?” I asked. “Can’t he read 
Hebrew?”
As I got older, I learned 
about the importance of kava-
nah, or intention, putting one’s 
heart and mind into the words 
we were saying as we prayed. 
But during my teenage years, 
prayer for me was associated 
more with obligation than 
choice.

MORNING MINYANS
Starting when I was 11, 
I attended a yeshivah in 
Baltimore through high school 
and lived during the week 
at the home of my maternal 
grandparents. My grandfather, 
a European-born, Yiddish-
speaking Talmudic scholar, 

had his own shul on the first 
floor of the large cottage house. 
I lived in the attic, and once I 
became a bar mitzvah, I was 
needed most mornings to help 
ensure a minyan of 10 men.
I’
d know my presence was 
required because one of the 
shul-goers would ring a loud 
buzzer and hold it down for 
what seemed like minutes 
while I got up, less than enthu-
siastically, and dressed in a 
hurry. I attended out of a sense 
of duty, and I admit that if an 
11th person showed up, I was 
tempted to go upstairs and 
back to bed.
The association of annoy-
ing alarms and shul atten-
dance continued when I got 
to Yeshiva University. I soon 
learned that loud “minyan 
bells” were rung every weekday 
morning in the dorm to wake 
us up for services; attendance 
was mandatory. The first cou-
ple of weeks we would wake up 
with a jolt from those bells. But 
somehow, after that we didn’t 
seem to hear them anymore.
One teenage bit of mischief 
came about in Annapolis on 
Rosh Hashanah when I was 
about 15. The shul was packed, 
and my friend Michael (whose 
father was the cantor) and I 
chose an arbitrary spot in the 
service and stood up from our 
front-row seats. There was a 
rustling and stirring behind us 
as, gradually, the entire congre-
gation of several hundred rose, 

following our lead. As soon as 
everyone was up, we sat down, 
and they did the same. We did 
this a few times before my dad, 
seated facing us in his white 
robe on the bimah, subtly sig-
naled his displeasure
Over the years as an adult, 
with shul attendance no longer 
coercive, I have been blessed 
to have belonged to three syn-
agogues (in the three states 
where we lived) that were true 
houses of prayer. Each in its 
own way was special, but they 
all had active and devoted 
members committed to Torah 
and led by learned, exempla-
ry rabbis. And in each of the 
shuls, what I have enjoyed 
most in the service is when our 
joined voices blend in song, 
stirring a kind of transcendent 
feeling of collective prayer and 
community.
Those peak moments make 
the shul-going experience 
something to cherish.

PANDEMIC WORSHIP
Then came COVID. Houses of 
worship were closed, the virus 
was all around us, and we had 
no choice but to stay home. I 
missed the rhythm of walking 
to and from shul on Friday 
evening and Shabbat morning, 
feeling part of the spirit of the 
kehillah (congregation), and 
often lingering after services to 
catch up with friends.
But I became accustomed to 
staying home, and that had its 

JTA

continued on page 8

Gary 
Rosenblatt
JTA

