Mussaf starts, the table is full, yet I feel so alone. The room has been cleansed of a whole decade of women, the twenty-pluses.
S hul places time-honed set in memory and tradition if not quite in stone.
There’s a seat sale but it’s more perfunctory than practical. Everyone knows their place: the rebbetzin at the mizrach vant flanked by the families of the older congregants. Then a mix of younger ones the chazzan’s family neighbors of the shul. And some places near the doors for random appearances.
Our family is a younger one. For years we sit at a table near the mechitzah with three other growing families.
The kids at my table are all in my school. It’s fun to meet in shul wearing Yom Tov dresses and jewelry. In my earliest memories we’re running around “babysitting” younger siblings in the foyer squeezing past shuckeling women to our mothers The baby’s crying….
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