By Susan J. Gordon, Special to JTNews
“This is not where I ever imagined I’d be on Rosh Hashanah,” I remember thinking last fall, as I walked into Sarah Neuman Nursing Home in a New York suburb. But my elderly mother had moved there, and since she was too frail to attend services at a nearby synagogue, my husband and I came here.
Welcoming the New Year in a nursing home, however, where meditations about who shall live and who shall die in the coming seasons are blatantly in your face, was more intense and gratifying than I would have believed.
We arrived early, to assist my mother and other residents on their way to the sunny auditorium, which was now a sanctuary. Beneath a row of high windows was a wooden ark containing two Torah scrolls, and a large table covered by a white cloth. On it stood a lectern, large-print prayer books, candles, and fresh flowers in a vase. The service would begin about two hours before sundown, to accommodate the residents’ dinner time at 5 p.m.
The only people walking independently were guests and staff personnel, including Rabbi Sandy Bogin, and a volunteer who would lead the singing. Virtually everyone else used a walker or a wheelchair. Here, no one was expected to rise, even when the ark was opened, and especially if it was difficult to stand up.
“It’s all right to remain seated,” Rabbi Bogin told us. “If you do stand, do so at the back of the room, so you don’t block the view of those who are sitting behind you.”
We helped out by distributing the prayer books, and offering yarmulkes to the men.
“Which one would you like?” I asked a sweet-looking man sitting by himself. He smiled, scanned my collection — a colorful assortment of donated kippot — and selected a sky blue velvet one from a Bar Mitzvah in Fresno, Calif.
“There is no place in the heavens or the earth that is not holy,” said Rabbi Bogin, reading from the text. “There is holiness when we are kind to someone who cannot possibly be of service to us.”
She guided us along as we read together, reminding us when to turn from one page to the next, and pausing until we all were on the same page again.
The volunteer chanted old, familiar melodies, which were comforting as well as inspirational. Only a few congregants sang with him, but almost everyone listened — though a few had slumped in their chairs and appeared to have dozed off. Most of the residents were attentive and alert. A few wore religious crosses, but seemed to enjoy the music, singing and religious discussion.
“There are no heroes of the Torah on Rosh Hashanah,” Rabbi Bogin said. “There is no Moses, Miriam, Esther…. We are the heroes, and the stories are our ordinary ones. Blowing the shofar is not the most important thing we do. The most important thing is listening to it. We must hear it and wake up to who we are.”
When she blew the shofar, I closed my eyes and transported myself, for a moment, back to long-ago High Holy Day services with my children when they were young, and my husband, mother and step-father sat beside me. I remembered eating a celebratory lunch at my parents’ apartment or a nearby restaurant. I remembered earlier times, when I was a child, and was grateful for the remarkable powers of music and ritual prayer to help us transcend where we are now, no matter how old we have become.
On Yom Kippur, Rabbi Bogin gave me the honor of holding a Torah during the singing of Kol Nidre. As I stood before the gathering of residents and visitors, my mother and I exchanged tender glances, and she silently confirmed with her eyes that now, this was the best place to be.
My mother attended services regularly until she died the following March. She hated being in a home because it represented the “last stop,” but she always enjoyed sitting with me, and listening to Rabbi Bogin’s heartfelt words: “We see life as windows that open on eternity. And we can see that love abides, and the soul abides, as you, God, abide forever.”
Susan J. Gordon’s work-in-progress is a memoir which combines World War II and Holocaust history with family tree research and the breakdown of family ties.