B’Rosh Hashanah (or, Chicken Soup for the Soul)

Last night after Lexie went to bed, Shelly and I made a couple of gallons of chicken soup (yup, overdid it again) for the pre-Yom Kippur dinner this weekend. Tonight, as I scrubbed one of the stockpots, the scent of the soup wafted up to my nose and for a second, I was back in my grandmother’s kitchen.

I don’t know why it didn’t happen yesterday, when the air in the kitchen (and most of the house) was thick with the aroma of soup, but whatever the reason, the memory struck me hard tonight, and it was bittersweet. It’s been several years since both my grandmother and grandfather – my mom’s parents, who we always celebrated the Jewish holidays with – passed away, and it feels like so long ago that I stood in their white-tiled kitchen, inhaling that same comforting scent.

It’s not just that I always miss them around the holidays, as people always tend to do with loved ones who’ve passed away. It’s that the holidays just aren’t what they used to be in our family, and I know that I – and Shelly, and probably everyone else – miss all the old rituals, the traditions that were so ingrained  in me growing up that I can still picture the scenes in my mind like it was yesterday.

It always started with the walk to temple, on mornings I always remember as cool, gray and damp. We’d meet at my grandparents’ house, the same one where my mom grew up, and parade the few blocks over in small groups. Some of us carried the well-worn, maroon prayer books with our families’ last names penned across the edges of the pages; others brought the blue velvet bags embossed with silver Hebrew writing and decorations that held the tallis (prayer shawls) that belonged to my dad, uncles and grandfather.

Once we arrived – always entering through the unadorned back doorway instead of the grander main entrance – we’d wait in the hallway for the right time to go inside. The services there seemed perpetual; I don’t remember ever actually seeing one end or begin, though often we were there for more than two hours. While we waited, Shelly, Jen, Laurie and I would search the old, black-and-white class photos on the walls for our moms, who’d attended Hebrew school there, or walk up and down the long hallway, dimly lit and faintly buzzing with the hundreds of tiny bulbs decorating the small, rectangular memorial plaques that lined the walls.

Soon enough, we’d file into the hushed sanctuary and find my grandfather sitting in his customary spot in one of the front few rows on the left-hand side. His family had been among the temple’s founders, so these prime seats belonged to our family (a fact I later felt slightly guilty about, given that we only came on the High Holidays).

Even though we never stayed for the whole morning service, our time there always seemed interminably long at our young ages, and we had various tricks for keeping ourselves amused. When we were really little, we’d make our way over to the steps that led up either side of the blue-carpeted, dark-wood-paneled bimah (the elevated platform where the rabbi, cantor and choir stood), climbing and playing there until a parent came to herd us back. Sometimes we’d whisper requests for TicTacs to Grandma, who unfailingly had them in her purse (the pale green, wintergreen kind was her favorite). Often, we’d sit on our dads’ laps, twirling the fringes of their tallis through our fingers.

When I was older, I’d stare in wonder at the soaring stained-glass windows lining the walls on either side. Each bore the name of a Hebrew month and one of the 12 tribes of Israel and were decorated with related scenes, beautifully depicted. I was proud of the fact that my grandfather’s family had donated one of those impressive windows, with their names on the bottom and all.

But no matter how old we were, there was one game that never got old, and that was counting the pages that were left until we reached one particular prayer. We’ve always called it B’Rosh Hashanah – those are the first words – but it’s known more often in the temples we attend these days as the Unetaneh Tokef. It’s a beautiful, solemn piece, a centerpiece of the service, but for us growing up, it had extra sigificance  - it was the signal that it was almost time to leave, for we always crept out once it was over.

It was on page 361.

I can see it now, displayed in big, block numbers on the white placards they kept perched on a stand on the bimah to help the congregation follow along. We’d fidget in anticipation as pages rustled and the cantor began to chant.

We weren’t just excited to leave; we looked forward to joining in for the refrain, too. It was one of the first songs most of us could follow along with, and we sang with gusto, Papa beaming proudly at our sides. After it was done, we’d read the English translation along with the rest of the congregation. It was one of the few non-Hebrew elements of the service, but it’s a mainstay because the words so perfectly encapsulate the significance of Rosh Hashanah, Yom Kippur and the time in between. As we sing in the refrain, “On Rosh Hashanah our destiny is inscribed, and on Yom Kippur it is sealed.”

B’Rosh Hashanah yika-teyvun; uv-yom tzom kippur yeychateymun.

After my grandfather passed away several years ago, we stopped going to our old temple. It wasn’t just that it was relatively far from where any of us lived and that we didn’t have a place to congregate nearby after my grandparents’ house was sold; the once-conservative congregation had become orthodox over our last few years there, and it just wasn’t home for us anymore.

Since then, we’ve tried multiple temples but just can’t recapture the magic of the holidays of old. There’s no meeting early to walk over together; no designated seats where we’ve sat our whole lives; no cantor marching slowly up the aisle, chanting the Hineni to begin the morning service; no stained glass windows bearing our family’s name. And there’s no gathering in Grandma’s warm kitchen afterward, slicing shiny brown loaves of challah and breathing in the scent of soup as it heated, then gathering around the dining room table to eat. Nowadays, we meet at temple and have lunch afterward at a restaurant nearby. It’s a nice but somehow too casual, too unceremonious, gathering.

The first few years were the toughest, especially since the congregations we visited didn’t do a lot of the same tunes we were used to for the standard prayers, most notably the B’Rosh Hashanah. I remember vividly the first time we heard the old tune at one of the new temples – the nostalgia was so overwhelming that I started to cry.

I still fight back tears every year, remembering. I’m fighting back tears now.

But I need to get back to the business of this blog. Where’s Lexie in this long-winded memoriam of holidays past?

Lexie is the wake-up call. Lexie – and her cousins, and any siblings and cousins to be, as well as me and my sister and my cousins now – are the reason why we need to do better. We’ve had plenty of excuses for keeping the holidays simple in recent years, but we need to do better. We need to create new traditions and rituals of our own that we – and Lexie and the next generation- can embrace and pass on.

And it can all start with the soup. Next year, instead of Shelly and me crowding it into the weeknight, post-work hours like an unpleasant chore, I’m going to suggest we celebrate it. I’m going to set aside a Saturday or Sunday before the holidays and invite my sister and my cousins and their families over to make soup. Everyone can pitch in, and we can spend time together and teach the little ones what Judaism has always really been about for all of us: family, and tradition.

L’shanah tovah!