The Gift
I like to write, but I have never taken a creative writing class. I signed up for an online seminar at Politics and Prose, a Washington, DC institution where great minds and the wannabees assemble to learn and share. We were given an assignment to write a descriptive paragraph on some object that anchored us during our childhood.
Looking back over my life, I don’t know when I became a grown up. I am not sure when childhood ends, and if it ever does. So this was a tough assignment to figure out what to describe. But I couldn’t shake an experience I had when I was five years old. If you would trust my swearing on a Bible, I raise my hand and swear that I hadn’t thought of this place or this object in 55 years. But this memory came back to me, from where I don’t know. Try as I might, I couldn’t write about anything else. So here is my class assignment, to describe something that anchored me in my childhood. But before you read mine, I suggest that you pause here and think of an object from your own childhood that you haven’t thought of in a long time
PAUSE AND PICTURE YOUR CHILDHOOD OBJECT
and see what memories and feelings that object might evoke for you. And if you have people to share with, do it.
I have you. Here is mine:
To my five-year-old self, the old Temple Emanu-El in Wichita was the largest building that I remember. Light yellow brick lined the outside and its big square skylight was propped up by framed glass windows. The sanctuary, as seemingly ancient and musty as the Torah scrolls evoked no sense of awe or holiness to me. I didn’t choose to go to Temple, and the thought of not going never crossed my mind.
My father was the rabbi. This was his place. Every Sabbath eve at my parents’ table, I enjoyed a wonderful sip of wine, challah and brisket or chicken and whatever else accompanied the plate that I do not remember but wish I could. And then my family and I would haul out to the Temple for the eight o’clock service. The sanctuary called us in to worship. The offices and classrooms were upstairs out of sight. The covered slide from the third floor to the small parking lot below meant to serve as a fire escape. But it delighted me. All the kids knew that it was constructed for our amusement.
At night we were not allowed to climb the stairs and push ourselves through the narrow chute onto the darkened slide. At night, we had to sit and listen.
Between my father’s reading and preaching, someone sang the Hebrew prayers in a deep baritone voice from someplace in the building. I remember the man with the voice. With a voice like his, you might expect a giant with a huge belly. But he was small, bespectacled and skinny. He didn’t much like the Beatles. He complained to me that they weren’t trained musicians like him. I found that hard to understand. The Beatles were the rage throughout the world. The man with the voice sang on the pulpit of my father’s temple in Wichita.
One particular Sabbath evening as the service was about to begin, an old bald man in a grey suit summoned me across the aisle. He said that he had a present for me at the end of the service. By the time we were seated after the sh’ma, I had fallen asleep. I fell asleep at every service. My mother’s arms were not toned like most mothers today. They were soft and meant for sleeping children.
When I woke up, the sanctuary was empty. The crowd disappeared and I was alone, except for Walter, the kind custodian who was straightening up. “Jonny, I have saved some cookies for you.” He always saved cookies for me. He took me to my Mom and Dad, who were among the last to leave.
When we got home, I reached into the pocket of my suit coat and to my delight found a black and white rabbit’s foot. The man with the grey suit did not forget me. That rabbit’s foot was soft. Two pointy paws tucked under its fur. As I stroked the foot, I didn’t think about the rabbit hopping around on three legs. I took the rabbit’s foot with me every time I went to Temple and the man with the grey suit winked at me. I winked back and pulled the rabbit’s foot out of my pocket to show him when nobody else was looking. We shared a secret.
As the generations whirl by and the years vanish behind us, the lives we lived disappear slowly. Nothing changes and everything is different. Five-year-old boys grow up to be grandparents. The pictures we are inclined to forget sometimes bubble back into our consciousness. We grab at them like the sweet dreams that fade fade from sight when the morning comes.
Today, I don’t know where my rabbit’s foot might be. I suspect the man in the grey suit and the baritone pulpit singer are all gone from this world as are my dear parents. The old Temple Emanu-El closed up its creaky doors and moved to the suburbs.
If I could go back in time and visit me when I was five, how tenderly I would wake myself up in the empty sanctuary and tell myself, “Jonny, I have saved some cookies for you.” If I pretended well enough, big arms would scoop me up to transfer me to the car and a voice would lovingly say, “Oh, you are getting too big for me to carry.” And I would stroke my rabbit’s foot and know that I am the luckiest boy in the world.
Today I am blessed to be a grandfather. Nobody gives kids rabbit's feet anymore. That’s ok, too. And I am the luckiest man in the world.
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In my novel, I had the most fun describing the synagogue staff meetings and the quirky individuals employed at Temple Sim Shalom to support Rabbi Tuvya Greenblatt, and in their subtle way line up as he walked his gauntlent to nip at his heels.
The cantor in the synagogue is the equivalent of the minister of music in many churches. Cantor Adam Sinai was a big man. I had the pleasure of working with a very large Cantor, Brian Miller who has since passed away. The angels in heaven wished they could sing as beautifully as Cantor Brian Miller, who was a sweet man in real life. Besides their girth, my imagined Cantor Sinai was nothing like Cantor Miller. Cantor Sinai took himself a little too seriously.
Whoops, I meant to say a lot too seriously.
During the times he appeared in my manuscript, I laughed out loud as I was banging the keys on the keyboard. My fingers couldn’t type fast enough. My father, Rabbi Judea Miller, of blessed memory, would tell me: Every rabbi wants to be a cantor, and every cantor wants to be a rabbi. So true. And when the rabbis think of themselves as cantors and the cantors as rabbis, that’s where the misery starts and funny stuff begins.
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Whether we are going backwards or forwards, none of us is standing still. And successful people can move both forwards and backwards at the same time.
Until next time, shalom,
Jonathan