For Father's Day: I Always Walk To Shul With My Father

My All-Time Favorite Picture of Me and My Son (We Didn't Walk To Jerusalem--We Flew)

Note: This was originally written for Aish HaTorah in 2002, I thought I would republish in recognition of Father's Day, to show how it's the little things hat can make such a difference:

My face felt flushed, I tried to retain my composure “This is volunteer work. I don’t need the fights, the name calling.” The Rabbi sat across from me quietly. I was telling him why I felt it necessary to resign from the Synagogue's board of trustees.

When I ran out of reasons (and breath) there was a moment of silence as he studied me. He leaned backwards into the chair and began to speak very softly which in itself had a very calming effect on me. The Rabbi had his own checklist of reasons why I should remain in my position; the last item stopped me dead in my tracks---he said I was an observant Jew who encouraged other people to embrace Judaism.

Observant Jew? Wow! ME? That was the first time in my life anyone had called me that. I never thought of myself as “observant.”

Heck, until recently, I was a three-day-a-year Jew who practically had a booth named after him at the local McDonalds (I stopped there religiously on the way to my 7:25 golf course tee off every Saturday morning).

My Rabbi’s very generous use of those words made me suddenly realize how much has changed over such a short period of time. I didn’t grow up very observant. Sure, we would go to services two or three times a year on a Friday night, we always went on the High Holidays and had a big meal on Passover (our Seder consisted of two words, "let's eat"), we even lit an electric Chanukah Menorah every year.

Despite our low observance level, my parents worked very worked hard to instill in me strong feelings for being Jewish; they encouraged me to hang out with Jewish kids, allowed me to continue my religious studies after my Bar Mitzvah; and drove me to countless meetings of Jewish organizations. And of course, I was told if I ever brought home a “shiksa,” (a non-Jewish girl), my Mom would put her head in the oven (it was an idle threat --our oven was electric not gas).

The most vivid thing I remember about growing up is walking with my Dad, all 26 blocks between my house and the Shul on the High Holidays, both ways. It was such a special time, just my father and me. I would see most everyone else drive their cars, park two blocks away from the locked synagogue parking lot, and walk the rest of the way. It was strange that my Dad felt the need to walk. Maybe he knew that years later those walks would keep an ember burning inside me because as I aged and drifted away from the limited observance levels of my youth the memory of those walks kept that tiny ember from becoming extinguished.

For some reason I always felt comfortable hanging around people who were more observant than me. I worked at the Hebrew Academy Day Camp; many of the girls I dated in high school kept kosher and were Sabbath observant. I admired my observant friends for their willpower and wished that I could join them in their observance but felt it would too hard to join them.

I believed very strongly in God, but I felt that becoming more observant was too high a mountain to scale, especially all at once. And (I thought) if one couldn’t do it all, they were a hypocrite for observing some commandments and skipping others.

So I went in the other direction, became a kind of a “social” Jew. I wrapped myself in the blanket of Jewish causes and organizations using them to protect myself from the guilt I felt as I drifted further and further away from the few mitzvot that I used to keep. I still took off for the High Holidays and I would never drive on Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, but I stopped going to Shul.

Once I got married (she is Jewish, so my mom was spared that slow suicide via electric oven), I started driving on the High Holidays so we could attend services at my in-law’s Shul an hour's drive away but felt awful doing it. After the in-laws retired to our other ancestral homeland (Florida) I would sneak into my sister’s Reform Temple for an hour on the Holidays. I told myself that it was really for my daughter so she could have some Judaism in her life. But somewhere inside I knew I was really going for me, I wanted to be in a Synagogue.

We moved to a bigger house after our second child was born. The house met all my requirements: big backyard, cable TV in each bedroom and a reasonable walking distance to the nearest Shul which we promptly joined. I had no intention of doing anything more than sending my kids to religious school and of course walking to synagogue three days a year. Just eight months after the first High Holiday walk to my new Shul, my wife Lois’ mom, of blessed memory, succumbed to a long illness. Even though we were not active in the Shul or observant, the Rabbi and the congregation immediately embraced us with warmth. During the Shiva (the seven day mourning period), the Rabbi visited or called every day and the daily minyan came to our home.

This was a new experience for me; when I was growing up, the minyan only came to the big donors homes or to the regular Shul attendees. My new Shul they didn’t care about my level of observance, or how much I gave; they just cared to provide comfort to mourners.

Belonging to a Conservative Shul, after Shiva, my wife went twice a day to say Kaddish (its done for 11 months minus one day). I joined her when I could, which usually didn’t include Shabbat (my golf day). But the more I went, the more those old feelings began to seep out of that locked box stored in the back of my mind--that desire to do more.

Around the same time, The United Synagogue (an organization of Conservative Shuls) started a home study program on the internet. Each day we read one chapter of the Tanach (the Jewish bible) and discussed it via an e-mailing list. Being a commuter I thought it might be fun to read on my way to work so I joined. The more I read, the more I wanted to read, and within a few months I was on every Jewish study e-mail list that I could find.

I began to attend Shabbat afternoon services just to be able to be able to participate in the Torah discussion that we would have between afternoon and evening services. Those old feeling of wanting to become more observant became strong again, but this time it was different. My Rabbi encouraged the congregation to become more observant but it was O.K. to do it gradually. Judaism, he told us, isn’t all or nothing; any step toward Torah is positive.

This felt like a new religion -- “No-Guilt Judaism," actually the more I studied the more I learned that the approach is not unique. I began to do little things (still rationalizing that it was for the kids) like lighting candles Friday night. We went as a family to services every Friday night too. When golf season was over, I started going on Saturday mornings. Even built my first Sukkah (fooling myself into thinking that it was not for religions reasons-it was a good project for the children and they love eating outside anyway). But it was really for me, the kids were asleep every morning when I went into the Sukkah before going to work to say the required blessings.

Almost a year into my journey I took the most difficult step of all. I gave up my prime real estate, my 7:25 Saturday morning tee off. Even though my only Saturday observance was going to Shul, I didn’t want to give up the few hours of Shabbat that I did keep. The more often I went, the more the stronger the feeling that I was connecting with God. So I gave it up and eventually found a time on Sundays.(my golf game got a lot worse, which just goes to prove the Lord works in mysterious ways).

Over the next two years, slowly, more mitzvot began to sneak into my routine- never by design. Every once in a while I would wake up wanting to do more: first I decided to stop eating meat from non-kosher animals, and mixing dairy with meat, and began to go to shul for all the Festivals (Sukkot, Passover and Shavuot). I started to eat only dairy or fish when Lois and I went out to restaurants. Eventually my freezer at home was stocked with kosher meat even though at the time my house was not all kosher. And we began to celebrate all the festivals at home.

I have learned much about the spirit of practicing Judaism. Jewish rituals are not purely the solemn rites done in Synagogues as I had always thought they were, God is much smarter than that. Almost every Jewish holiday has an important element at home because they are a chance to have joy, to relish your time with family, friends, community and God. Heck the part of the Torah with the "ten commandments" is named after Moses' father-in-law Yitro because it starts with Yitro telling the greatest prophet that he should delegate some of his responsibilities so he could spend more time with his family.

Have you ever sat in front of a dish of peanuts at a party? You try one peanut, wait a while and soon you have another. The more you have, the faster you want them. Eventually you're jealously guarding your spot on the couch so you can keep everyone else from usurping those peanuts. That’s what adding mitzvot to your life is like. What I have learned is you don’t have to eat the whole bowl in one sitting, nor do you have to feel bad when there are leftovers.

Rabbi Louis Finkelstein a great scholar and former Chancellor of the Jewish Theological Seminary of America (and grandfather of my good friend Harvey) once defined a good Jew as someone who was trying to become a better Jew. That is the key--you don’t have to do it all at once because when you do one mitzvah regularly, something as easy as lighting candles every Friday night, eventually you will want to do another and another.

I once read that when God created the world sparks of his holiness were spread across the earth. Every time that a Jew performs one of the 613 mitzvot in the Torah one of those sparks are purified and sent back to heaven. I don’t know if sparks have anything to do with but each time I add an observance, I feel a little closer to God, and it is that bit of closeness makes me want more. The guilt that I used to feel for not observing everything at once is now replaced with joy that I am heading in the right direction.

My friend Faith, a Conservative Rabbi put it well. She said that its not that I don’t observe a particular commandment…it's that I don’t observe it…yet.

My Dad called me today; he asked me if I changed my mind about quitting the board. I told him that I had. He said, “Good because that’s where you belong.” What he doesn’t realize is that I would have never gotten there if he drove to Shul on Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, it was clinging to that one mitzvah that put me on the road to observance.

I still walk to Shul on the High Holidays. Its not 26 blocks; its a mile and a quarter over two big hills and a valley--the walk home is much easier than the walk there (The good which in the Wizard of Oz was right, there is no place like home).

Now I get to walk to Shul with my Kids. We also have the joy of observing Shabbos and Festivals as a family. Some day when they look back at these walks, I hope those two hills and a valley will be as important to them as the 26 blocks were for my Dad and me.

Thirteen years later, I still have a way to go in my quest, while I still go to the conservative Shul (it is family) at times I am more "conservadox" than conservative. I am very critical of the conservative movement because rather than following Halacha (Jewish Law) at times they simply bow down to the golden calf of progressive politics and big government.Celebrating the joy of Jewish holidays with family and friends is still my favorite thing to do. Now some family members come to my house to expose their kids to the joys of Judaism.  My Dad is now living in Florida and I only get to see him a few times a year (my mom of blessed memory passed away a few years ago).  On Father's Day we will speak on the phone, but I will spend the day remembering how one little spark of observance became a bonfire which is such a big part of my life and that fire has brought my family and me so much joy).