The Shofar’s Call

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The Air in thick with sweat and tears and humidity condensed within the crowded shul

It’s Rosh Hashanah but this is not the perspiration of pleading souls beneath stark white talleisim the sweet cries of prayer; it’s more scuffling children and their exhausted mothers crocodile tears and pokes and sniffles.

Somewhere the air conditioner must be rattling out a cool breeze but it’s lost in the throng of mothers and kids and carriages. I open my machzor to Lamnatzeiach.

“Moooommy!” My toddler tugs at my sweater with fingers full of chocolate wafer. “Want nosh.”