Sounds of My Childhood

Perhaps it was a structural quirk or a particularly powerful motor, but when the garage door buzzed across its metal track and descended with a thump, the sound projected through every room of our house. And that could only mean one thing: Daddy was home.

Even though my father was exhausted after a day of treating desperately sick patients, dinner was just the first stop on his itinerary. Shortly thereafter, the gentle vibrations of that garage door once again resonated to the upper floor of the house; Daddy was on his way to his daf yomi shiur.

Growing up in a small town offered my father scant opportunity for Torah study; the first time he was privileged to a formal Torah education was when he enrolled in YU. Nonetheless, when presented with the prospect of joining a daf yomi shiur in the early 1980s, my father unhesitatingly joined.

Never mind that in those early years, daf yomi wasn’t yet a brand, with masechta songs and grand hundred-thousand-strong siyumim.