My Yom Kippur Memory -- Dad, His Family, and Shul

This Yom Kippur Memory goes back a long time. It was a different America. I was a little kid, my Dad was still a young man, an Orthodox Jew with three little boys, his wife, his mother, and two in-laws that lived with us, my Uncle and my Grandpa (who went to a different Shul).

My memory of Yom Kippur goes back to about 1951 or 2 when we lived about two miles from my father's mother - our Bobah.

It was a warm day in the fall and I think was just really beginning to walk walk steadily so I got to walk. My younger brother, still more than a little shaky on his toddler's feet, naturally got the carriage ride. The two "Big Brothers" got to talk alongside Dad and Ma.

I really was still just a little guy and the walk to Bobah's took forever and I was always playing catchup to stay up with my Big Brother - he's four years old than I am - and my Dad and Ma.

That day, though, Yom Kippur was special, for some reason. There Dad was pushing the carriage, my Ma on his arm and his two young sons trailing after him and the look of joy and pride on his face was something I can never forget (like the times he picked us up at the beach and let us "dive" off him). Compared to me, my Dad was a giant of about 6-feet. I was, what, about three feet tall.

It's the look of joy in his face that I'll never forget. And, even though this memory goes back about six decades, it's still etched like a photo in my memory.

The thing that makes this memory of Yom Kippur live on is his face when his little sons came to the "men's" area to sit with him (the Shul Dad attended had the traditional male/female segregation with women and children upstairs behind a small casement where we could see Dad decked out in his Tallis and Yarmulkah, praying.). We couldn't stay there long because we were children and "noisy" and the elders shooed us outside where the "big kids" played knuckles and the little kids just watched.

The other part of this picture is the look of joy on my Bobah's face seeing her only surviving son - I'm told I had another uncle who did not survive childhood - and my Ma watch Dad "doven" the Yom Kippurot. It was a look that I glimpsed when we went back upstairs to sit with Ma and Bobah.

This is something I've shared with no one - not even my brothers or my wife of nearly 36 years. This is a memory of Yom Kippur that's mine and tucked neatly away where I can reach it when I want it.