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