Dear Rabbi and Cantor,
I want to thank each of you for your words and music last night. I was upset hearing, watching, about the Charlie Hebdo attack, but became absolutely despondent when the news came about the Hyper Kasher attack. I jumped up crying. I was instantaneously back in the 30’s and early 40’s when, though living all my life in Los Angeles, the focus and concern was always about relatives in Europe.
During those days, when anything worrisome, or anything good, happened that affected the Jewish community, our automatic response was to head to the synagogue, a small, barely glorified storefront conservative synagogue that served as a jumping off place for rabbis coming to the L.A. area looking for a position at a “real” synagogue. In those high phone cost, pre-electronic communication days we had a steady stream, most for no more than a year. We ended up knowing many of the rabbis who eventually helmed synagogues all over Los Angeles. Every now and then we were privileged to have one that also had an excellent cantorial voice and repertoire.
Our area had very few Jews before the end of WWII. Our synagogue was our community. Its members spanned from orthodox-ish to outspoken atheist communist (one even fingered by the McCarthy
brutality), and all points in between. For a Jewish group, it had amazingly few arguments. Vehement discussion, yes; divisive argument, not so much.
One of my fondest memories is of VE day in 1945. My mother, father and I were so overjoyed; too much joy within us to sit quietly. We needed to do something. At my father’s suggestion, we hopped into the car and drove to the synagogue. One by one, all of the members showed up. No previous plan to do so. No discussion with friends about doing so. Each family just getting into their car with a need to do something, and that something was the synagogue.
Yesterday, when my daughter Judy, who was visiting, saw my response to the kosher market action, she took one look at me and asked, “Would you like to go to the temple tonight?” It was so right that she, who is not normally a temple goer, immediately came up with that suggestion.
Cantor, the music … the old melody sung in the old style connecting me w/ my parents, my grandparents and their world … repaired my soul (even though, if my life depended on it I couldn’t define the word “soul”); it felt like a gift l’dor v’dor. Rabbi, your words marked a place from which to think of the events themselves. Each, and both, of you created an arc of past through present to future. Thank you so much. Thank you SO much.
Fondly,
Betty Goldwater