On Saturday I decided to attend services at the local synagogue. I figured that this would be a good way to get familiar with another part of the local Astoria community.
I found a conservative synagogue which was about a 15 minute walk from my home and set off late in the morning dressed in a nice shirt, pants and shoes. No sneakers and t-shirt for a house of worship.
My timing was a bit calculated. Jewish Saturday morning services usually go for 2-3 hours, starting at 9:30 am. My late morning departure resulted in me arriving considerably later than 9:30 am.
I arrived at the synagogue, opened the door and walked across an entrance hall to the door of the main sanctuary. It’s at this point in my story that I must inform you, dear reader, that it had been a while since I had been in a synagogue, so I was a bit nervous. Nevertheless, I pulled open the inner door and an unobstructed view of the entire sanctuary hit me in the face.
Whoa, I thought I’d slink in behind a pile of prayer books, but there was the rabbi up at the front staring right at me!
I found a seat in the back and sat down. Being that this was Labor Day weekend, there was not a big crowd, but the service was the same service that I had grown up with in Westchester, NY.
Sitting there I began to study the 15 or so people sitting in front of me and my mind began to wander. Suddenly I had a déjà vu, but it was not my déjà vu, it was someone else’s. It was a déjà vu of my father.
At 17 years of age my father left Nazi Germany, saying goodbye to his parents for the last time, and was taken to what was then called Palestine by the program that transported Jewish children out of Germany during World War II.
Eventually he left the moshav where he had been placed and joined up with the British Merchant Marines. He traveled all over the world, and whenever his ship landed in a port, instead of going to the bars as his fellow crewmates did, he went to the local synagogue. The others on the ship could never figure out how he was always taken in by families wherever they traveled. How many people in how many places could my father know?
Suddenly, I was my father, sitting amongst strangers in a synagogue in a foreign land, so far away from the home that my father left as a boy. For the first time I understood a part of my father, who passed away almost 10 years ago, that I never had before.
Stumble It!
Your post brought tears to my eyes. You had a very wise father.
So many times things happen that make me understand my parents, now, 30 years after they passed.
Realizing things about our parents after they have gone brings to mind the saying, "Better late then never".
Posted by: Babs | September 11, 2009 at 08:54 AM
God bless your Father; and all those who were forced out of their homelands; and all those who made them welcome in their new surroundings.
Posted by: Paul Kostro | September 11, 2009 at 07:40 AM