As the Jewish New Year nears, it’s time for reflection

BY SALLY FRIEDMAN

NEWJERSEYNEWSROOM.COM

LIFESOUNDS

I've always loved the Jewish New Year, maybe because so much of pleasure is entwined with memory. Like so many Jews around the world, I find myself awash in images of Rosh Hashanas past, times when the world was simpler — and safer.

Way back then, our custom was to walk to the synagogue in our Philadelphia neighborhood along streets teeming with other families. In memory, the sun was always shining, and my father's hand held mine as we walked as a unit: two parents, two children.

My father is gone now. So is my mother. And I miss them most as summer shifts into fall and their faces haunt my dreams.

This Rosh Hashanah, there will be no walk to synagogue because the one we go to, miles from home, requires a car. There is no smell of old books in this modern building where the seats are plush and there is air conditioning to cool those who have chosen to wear wool.

In the synagogue of my childhood, the air was warm, the seats were hard, but the feeling of familiarity and belonging was palpable. Walking into that building was like coming home.

I hold fast to those images because they comfort me in a world grown far less predictable.

Even as we celebrate the glorious freedoms of being Jewish in America — even as we teach our grandchildren how blessed they are to live here — there is a new awareness of something else. Especially in September, the single word "terrorism" has taught us that we are all possibly pawns of destiny. Will we ever get used to that notion?

At our synagogue, a guard will be at the door, checking what people might be carrying inside. We will need tickets to enter. No exceptions. And there will be a police presence, as there has been every year since 9/11.

I know it's right and important and even necessary in an age of terrorism and neo-anti-Semitism. But how I wish it weren't.

Our own children, in lives of their own now, will not be with us in synagogue. Like so many other modern families, we need to traverse turnpikes and jammed highways, bridges and inevitable bottlenecks to gather.

This New Year, somebody we love, a casualty of the divorce statistics, will face her first Rosh Hashanah alone. That will be tough.

This New Year, our little grandson Danny, the six-year-old red-headed mischief-maker, is coping with his diagnosis of Juvenile Diabetes...and so are we. But we are so grateful that we live in an age of great medical breakthroughs.

No, nothing stays the same. But there are still constants.

This is still a time of awe and reflection. We wonder aloud in prayer what the New Year will bring. We ask the ultimate question: Who will live and who will die? And we pray for ourselves, those we love, and the world.

It's powerful stuff. Whether we say those prayers in glitzy modern synagogues or weary and weathered old ones, we know that our destiny is being sealed.

And as we wish one another "L'shanah tovah" — for a good year — we devoutly hope it will be.

Sally Friedman is a graduate of the University of Pennsylvania, resident of Moorestown, and longtime contributor to local, regional and national publications. The mother of three has seven grandchildren and is the wife of retired New Jersey Superior Court judge Victor Friedman. She can be reached at This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it .