It's Not So Much About the Shul Service...

...as it is about the memories.

I realized this Rosh Hashana while standing in shul that our memories of  Rosh Hashanahs and Yom Kippurs and Sukkots and Simchat Torahs are truly significant and help sustain us, embrace us and sometimes add to our praying.

As I listened to the shofar blowing, I thought of my dad in Gan Eden (I have absolutely no doubt in the world that he's way up there!) and thought of past services. I realized that it isn't so much about the praying that I was remembering, but rather what went on after shul.

I remembered families seeking each other out after services were over to gather up and head home. I'd walk down the stairs from the women's gallery and seek my father and brothers out. It was about the 25-minute walk home together, my arm enveloped under my father's arm, or in his coat pocket, and trying to walk with both my parents in one line on the narrow sidewalk. My brothers would be ahead or follow behind, chatting between themselves or other shul friends and family. The stopping off at a neighbor's to wish them a good Yom Tov and a good year. The reaching home and gathering round the table, my parents, brothers and myself, and eating the familiar and traditional foods each year. My father telling the story of standing on line for  a long period of time in the fish market to buy the chopped fish that he would make gefilte fish from. Eating the applesauce and compote or the baked apples that my parents would make a few days before the chag.

(We'd go apple picking, buy a couple bushels to store in the basement's cold cellar over the winter. And as Rosh Hashanah would near, my parents would stand at the counter and peel countless apples -- I was always amazed at my father's speed and ability to pare an apple skin in one long, extended strip. When I started helping them out in peeling apples, I would have finished peeling half an apple by the time that my father peeled three apples.)

It's that family togetherness, the minhagim and the brachot my parents bestowed upon one another and us children that I remember, that warm my heart, as I stand in shul, listen to the sounds of the shofar and pray for my voice/our voices to be heard.

We're Almost at the Finish Line...

So another year is coming to an end.

Has it been a good one for you? I sure hope so.

Was it a meaningful one for you? I sure hope so.

Did you make optimum choices that benefitted you/your family? I sure hope so.

Were simchas part of your social calendar? I sure hope so.

As we approach the new year, let me take this opportunity to wish each and every one of you who mark and celebrate Rosh Hashanah a most sweet, healthy and happy upcoming year: 5771. May you and your families bask in brachot/blessings that lift and carry you through the year. May shalom/peace surround you, Israel, and Jews the world over.

Shanah Tovah to my readers and fellow bloggers.

And as my dear father always said, "May we able to wish each other the same again next year!"