Yom Kippur remembered

As I have written I grew up in this small section of Queens...not many religious people..but a filled shul on Rosh Hashanah/Yom Kippur or, as it was called back then the "High Holidays" or was it the "High Holydays"? I don't remember. Shul was packed for Kol Nidre. My father, the Rabbi, always gave a Kol Nidrei Sermon...

I remember being really small, going home early with my mother...and she tucked my sister and I into bed, Yom Kippur night folding the blanket under my feet...it was warm and cozy and I taught it to my grandchildren who beg me to cover them the "Bubby S... way." Everytime I do, I think of Yom Kippur.

I remember being 11 years old and hiding with my best friend Judy F...in the last row of shul because we were fasting, much to the dismay of our parents...and only showed our faces again after tekiyas sh0far to brag: we fasted the whole day!! I don't think it has ever been as easy a fast as the year before my bas mitzvah!!

Another Yom Kippur...We lived in a co-op...13 or 14 stories high...we lived on the 4th floor and had to walk down 4 flights of concrete steps and then walk the 2 blocks to shul..well one Yom Kippur morning I fell down a flight of those concrete steps (ouch)..it was hard sitting in shul all day that year.

We never went home for the "break"...just hung out in Aba's office...except the year, when I was in H.S. and Rhoda, a friend from out of town who was going to school in NY came for Yom Kippur...then we went home for the "break".

I'll never forget the contests we had with the boys across the mechitza for who could stand the whole neila...I don't remember much about the spiritual aspects of Yom Kippur but these are a few of my Yom Kippur memories...

After getting married...I remember being deathly sick my first Yom Kippur months after getting married...that "deathly sickness" resulted in DD#1 about 8 months later!! I remember my father in law trying to get me to break my fast on a meat meal...I almost puked at the table...

Two years later, while home with my year + daugther I remember people coming home from shul saying there was war in Israel..the Yom Kippur War had broken out...for many years DH davened for the Amud at various minyanim...

I remember so clearly Rabbi Brown A"H's crying during shmoneh esray, the years we davened in his minyan...so many memories ... and the comfort of hearing the same tunes year after year at our present shul...and the beauty of hearing the entire shul davening together k'ish echad b'lev echad...

May it truly be a good peaceful healthy happy year for us all in 5767.