SPACES

--By Ben Eyler

My grandparents’ synagogue shut its doors this past June. The congregation had been fading for a long time, and just couldn’t sustain the cost of maintaining the dilapidated building any longer. Though I’d known for a long time this was inevitable, it felt gloomy when I heard.

It’s been twenty-five years since anyone from our family lived in that old Philadelphia neighborhood. Still, my grandfather and I would go back every year for Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur. Like a lot of the congregants who’d moved away over the years, we were really coming back to check in with old friends.

That was especially true for my grandfather who’d helped found the shul back in the late fifties. Some of the people, he’d known since he was a child. So, I’m sure he’ll feel pretty strange this year.

The strange thing for me about the synagogue being gone is not just that I won’t be there this year as I have my whole life. What’s strange is I’ll never go back. It’s the finality. The building’s been sold, and the congregation has dispersed. And so the synagogue joins the list of places I’ll only return to in my mind’s eye.

But the timing is also strange. Less than a month ago my wife and I, with our one-year-old son, moved out of New York City and into our first house. Moving to new places and losing connections with old ones has me feeling like life's in suspension.

My wife called around to some synagogues in our new area in North Jersey, and she found one that could suit us. So we’ll go there next week and the week after, and if it works out, we’ll probably join.

But I wonder: will the stature of that old synagogue now grow in my imagination as I grow older? From now on, when I sit in any other synagogue, will I be thinking of that one? When I hear melodies sung that are the same or different from the melodies I heard there, will my ear be pulled back and will my mind automatically infer the voices I’m used to hearing?

And when I sit with my own son wherever we end up going, will my thoughts always wander back to that big sanctuary where I sat next to my grandfather in the red-upholstered seats that had his name engraved on the back?

Now that I know what a place like that can mean to a person, a family, a community, can I create the same thing for my own children and grandchildren? Starting next Wednesday night...?

We’ll have to wait and see.

Ben Eyler is a childhood friend of Rabbi Schuck. He's a rock and roll animal and a lover of cats. He currently lives in the suburbs of New York City with his wife and their son Sam.