Roni Robbins shares her thoughts and inspiration for the Jewish New Year.
From Family Gatherings to Prayers for Empty Seats
Rosh Hashanah, and really most of the Jewish holidays, once brought our New York family together. We all lived either in New York or adjoining states and gathered in my grandparents’ modest Rego Park living room where a series of long tables, a smaller one for the kinderlach, was set with fine dishware.
In the kitchen, my grandmother with the help of a daughter or two, would prepare the multi-course meal, the smells of lukshen kugel, brisket, chicken, and matzah ball soup imbuing the home with the warmth of Yiddishkeit. When it was time to eat, my grandfather or an Israeli uncle led prayers and we chimed in with familiar melodies.
After my family moved to the North Carolina mountains, my mother continued to create a similar environment there. But when I moved away, I longed for the holiday to fall on the weekend so I could return to that peaceful cocoon of youth with all the traditional foods and songs. If we couldn’t return to N.C., we either spent holidays with friends or I tried to recreate the experience for my family. I don’t believe I ever fully captured the essence of Judaism from my youth.
Perhaps in the future, when my children return with their own kinderlach, I will be more successful recapturing that sense of pervasive love, tranquility, and safety, if not for myself, then for them. In the meantime, I enjoy serving as my synagogue’s main usher despite the turmoil in the world that adds security concerns to my role. I’ll take pride on the bimah as a bat kohen and praying for the congregation in the duchening ceremony I wrote about once in the AJT.
This year brings a new experience I won’t relish. I’ll participate in yizkor for the first time since losing my Dad. When I was young, my parents took me outside the shul until the mourning prayers were over. As a young adult I said the prayers for Holocaust victims. In recent years as the usher, I stood outside the sanctuary so others can pray inside respectfully. Unfortunately, I feel compelled to join them this year, and not just for my father, but for the Six Million and the victims of Oct. 7 and the war in Israel. If only to return to an idyllic time a once-naïve youth believed would never end.
Roni Robbins is a journalist and author of Hands of Gold: One Man’s Quest to Find the Silver Lining in Misfortune.