Community

The daffodils are almost all gone.  Now it seems that there are lilacs everywhere – although none planted yet on Sunnyhill. The leaves on the trees are full sized now, and no longer have that brand new sheen.  Trees reach across the roads to each other, often making a green canyon, and sometimes a tunnel.  In winter it wasn’t obvious that the trees would nearly meet overhead in some places along our ride to Cooperstown, but now, thick with leaves, they do. Some of the houses that were prominent along the drive have nearly disappeared behind curtains of bushes and trees. We have to drive a little more defensively, watching for deer. It was easier to see them in the woods heading toward the road when the trees were bare.  Now they seem to turn up on the road out of nowhere.

At the bottom of our driveway, just across Gulf Road, there’s a little open flat space with only low plants.  I noticed a couple of days ago that it is full of wild strawberry blossoms.  In early summer it should be full of tiny, sweet red berries. Wild strawberries bring a powerful Amenia memory – the smell of them ripening in the sun, the sweet, sweet taste of them. A walk through the Amenia woods along the west shore of the lake would take us to an open field just the other side of the barbed wire fence at our property line.  That field was full of strawberries.  I can remember lying in the sun warmed grass looking up at the summer sky and inhaling the fragrance of berries. That smell held all the laziness of the long summer days to come. I walked to that field on one of my last stays in Amenia, before we sold it, before the old houses disappeared. The walk, like so much remembered from childhood, was surprisingly short. The field was a surprise too.  In the years since I’d been there the trees had grown up, so that it was woods – not a field at all except in my memory. I’m stunned to realize that my memories of the field are more than 60 years old.  Trees can grow quite a bit in 60 years.

Last Friday night we finally made it to services at Temple Beth El in Oneonta, the only synagogue a reasonable drive away. We had passed the Synagogue many times, as it’s on the main route into Oneonta coming from Hartwick. From the street it looks like a pleasant, ordinary house on a block of similar houses.  It has a welcoming front porch where we met congregants waiting for the Rabbi to come and unlock the front door.  (More on that meeting in a minute.) Inside, there’s a pleasant entry room, probably the original parlor.  A hallway leads back with a kitchen on the left and a lovely little library on the right.  There are double doors at the end of the hallway, at what was certainly the back wall of the original house. The doors open onto a jewel of a sanctuary – wide, high, filled with light, with graceful curved beams lifting your eye up into the high ceiling. You would never have guessed that such a place existed from the modest street front. It’s a room built for holiness, and I learned later that it was designed by an architect in the congregation.

But back to the front porch.  Jay and I arrived to find Marny already waiting there.  She’s a woman in her 40s or perhaps 50s, small, with thick glasses and hearing aids and slightly deformed hands.  Even before she speaks, it’s clear that she has some disability – multiple sclerosis perhaps? Some intellectual limitation? But she is super friendly, learning our names carefully, introducing herself, asking all about us and volunteering that she and her husband are about to celebrate their 25th anniversary and that she works in an art gallery and is an artist.  She also tells us that her television broke that day, and that they hadn’t yet bought a new one. As other congregants arrive she introduces us carefully to each of them by name.  Everyone greets us warmly.  New arrivals are probably something of a rarity. Rabbi Molly Karp arrives, greets us similarly, with a big smile, and lets us all into the building.

Once we are settled in the sanctuary, Rabbi asks us to introduce ourselves and to tell the 20 or so people who have arrived for services where we are from and where we’re living now. (Rabbi Karp asked us earlier what congregation we had belonged to and who was our Rabbi there.  When she heard it was Rabbi Marder, she said, “Phew, that’s a hard act to follow.”) Everyone is curious and very welcoming.

It has been a bad week in Israel, and before Rabbi begins the service she wants to take a little time to talk about the news and to hear congregants’ opinions. She is dismayed by the loss of life and limb in Gaza and disheartened by the opening of the embassy in Jerusalem, which she takes to be a step away from peace rather than towards it.  The first couple of congregants to speak share her position, but the next two just blame Hamas for the violence and assert that it’s about time the embassy was moved and hooray for Trump for having the courage to do what previous presidents would not. It’s a purple congregation, in a purple congressional district. Rabbi lets everyone who wants to have a say.  She disputes mildly some of the statements she disagrees with, but it’s civilized and she controls the conversation carefully and thoughtfully. She ends it without a resolution – clearly none was intended or expected.  Then she calls for a moment of silent havdallah, separating ourselves from the news of the world and entering into shabbath.  It’s a pleasant, short service, sadly using the Conservative sidur which, among other things, has very little transliteration.  There’s some singing, and Rabbi has a lovely voice. Most of the tunes are vaguely familiar. In lieu of a sermon Rabbi asks people what they’re grateful for, taking volunteers and calling on a few people who she knows have something they are especially grateful about.

At kaddish I have a heartbreaking name to add. The husband of Joe’s niece Stephanie, Yony Mazal, a lovely young man, a wonderful husband and a loving father to their four and a half year old son, has died after a long, hard journey through cancer.  Like Joe, Yony wrote about his illness, his treatment, and facing death – sharing and teaching to the end. He was brave and wise and funny, and it’s a terrible loss. Yony and Stephanie’s wedding was one of the first simchas I went to after Joe died.  It was clear that Yony and Stephanie had only fallen more deeply in love in the decade since their joyous wedding.

At Beth El, they do kiddush after services in the front room, followed by a motzi.  For Shavout there is cheese cake. Folks stand around and shmooze and we are warmly included.  We were invited to return Saturday morning for a discussion about caregiving and caregivers in place of the customary Torah Study.  We went, and enjoyed the speaker, the discussion and the chance to get to know people. We have found a Jewish home here, as different from our beloved Beth Am as Hartwick is from Palo Alto. But just as we don’t measure Hartwick against Palo Alto, we don’t measure the congregations against each other.  It’s a different experience, and we are glad to have a place to celebrate Shabbath, a place to say kaddish, a place to connect with a Jewish community.