Bubby looked at the inscription. “That machzor’s a lot older than 1931,” she declared. “It actually belonged to Bubby Ethel’s mother — my grandmother”,Windows: Journey of a Machzor,Bubby looked at the inscription. “That machzor’s a lot older than 1931,” she declared. “It actually belonged to Bubby Ethel’s mother — my grandmother”
I t’s Kol Nidrei night my younger children are finally asleep and I sit in my silent apartment and take out my machzor.
It’s a thin volume brown and crusty and today is my first time using it. I carefully turn the pages. They shed slivers of cracked paper onto my skirt with the merest whisper of a touch.
I acquired it just a few weeks earlier on a trip to the US to visit my grandmother. Walking into my grandmother’s house is like passing through a portal into my childhood and every painting every photograph — of generations past and current — and every curio form the familiar backdrop of warm childhood memories.
Over the years I’ve been treated to several tours of the gallery of paintings throughout the house painted by my artist grandmother. As a child I enjoyed playing with the less delicate trinkets collected from my grandparents’ extensive travels around the world. But oddly enough one treasure trove eluded me. I never thought to look at the bookshelves.
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