Our Voices

Lately, perhaps because of the beginning of the year, and perhaps because of this new chapter in my life, I’ve been thinking a lot about beginnings. How abrupt they feel, and yet, before you know it, they seem like a smooth dot in the metronome of life—an inevitability in a stream that carries you from one chapter to the next. A flip of a page that seems to tear as you turn it, but when you look back, the ink has smudged over—the stream of your life washing away the details of the moment.

I had this sensation when I came to this country and was learning English, going from being a fluent, capable human in Israel to a non-speaking, unknowing person here—and before I knew it, back to fluent. When did it happen? When was that moment of transition from new to fluent? How was it that, all of a sudden, I was able to speak words I didn’t even know I knew?

The second day we got here, we went to a park in Fair Lawn, NJ—that’s where I lived—and my sister, who was seven at the time, got on the swing and started to cry. When we asked her what was going on, she said, “Everyone told me that when we move I’ll know English in no time, and I don’t know English yet.” Today, she doesn’t remember the day on the swing—or the moment she could tell you all about it in English.

A few months ago, I had that abrupt beginning right here, with you. I sat in front of this very screen and couldn’t imagine the humans I was writing to—it was still just a cloud of the word community—a bunch of people, a few of whom I had met in my interview process. Almost like extracting an echo from the future before it becomes the music of your life.

At the end of the Sholom Women event in the sukkah, I had one of those moments that are both orienting and disorienting at the same time—a moment when you catch yourself thinking, Wow, how did I get here? and at the same time say, Here I am. It was a wonderful evening—an ageless crowd of women chatting and enjoying the night under the sukkah.

At the end of the evening, I went to the kitchen, where I found Lottie and Roberta—my friends from the first Welcome Shabbat—at the final stages of cleaning up a storm. They told me how it used to be, when they would run that kitchen and cook for the community in the good old days. As I was saying goodnight, Lottie held my hand a second before our embrace and said, “You are one of us now.” It took everything I had not to burst into tears, because I didn’t know it until that moment—that I felt at home.

Home is a place that moves toward you in tiny steps.
One moment, at the teen-parent conversation, a reluctant mother said to me, “My son would come to temple probably if we said we’ll play Magic: The Gathering.” Meaning—when the earth stops spinning on its axis. And I lit up, because what do you know—I used to work at Wizards of the Coast—and said to her, “I bet there are more people who would say that exact thing right here in this community.”

Then there was my conversation at oneg right after Rosh Hashanah with a mother who told me, “You know what I’d love? To go camping with a few families from PTS.” Yes! I came a step closer.

Or the moment just a few seconds before the Yom Kippur afternoon service was about to start, when I was introduced to the spouse of a member I already knew. They were telling me about their love for Jeopardy, and we thought, how wonderful would it be to have a trivia night?

Bursts of light and connection—like the moment recently when I sat in a meeting with Cantor Kliger, and he said something so funny I forgot myself in laughter. Or when Johanna shared a beautiful d’var Torah at the board meeting, bringing us into her goal for the year—to study the parashah of the week—at which point I almost jumped and screamed in the boardroom (but didn’t, because I know how to behave): Me too! Let’s do it together!

Tiny and big—each lighting the way home, like bread crumbs along the road to a place that lands like butter in your heart.

So, as I now sit here—and your faces and names and stories are a bit more in focus, and my voice too is a bit more familiar to you, as I hope is my face—where do we go from here? What is the next word in the ongoing chapter of life at PTS—the stream that I joined, that magical flow of connection we step into when we are together, in the moment, with one another?

Not the grand cloud of “community,” but the intimate one of: What is it that brings you to life? What lights you up?
Is it that magic—the gathering game? Is it coming together with other faiths on MLK Day and working hand in hand to make this world a better place? Is it studying together? Competing on trivia? Getting together with Lottie and Roberta in the kitchen and cooking for the community like the good old days?

Not what is it for me. What is it for you?
Here’s the truth: what excites me might not light you up. But what excites you—though it might sound nerdy or odd to say out loud—might make others light up (and probably me too).

So I invite you, as we step into the darker part of the year, when evening seeps in a bit earlier each day and morning arrives a little slower, to light up each other in the warmth of those moments