A Message from Rabbi Rubinstein

January 2008

Dear Friends:

Perhaps it is the time of year when Jews, having been in synagogue for the High Holy Days, are more cognizant of prayer books and the role they may have in a family’s history. In his President’s column Howard Sharfstein writes poignantly of his mother and the prayer book he found after she died. The order of her Confirmation service was folded within the volume revealing a previously unknown portion of her life.

Without any connection to Howard’s discovery, I, too, when searching very recently through the top shelf of our bookcase at home, came across a series of Union Prayer Books with my father’s name imprinted in gold on the front covers. I don’t believe I had seen them in recent years. Kerry reminded me that, when she cleaned out my parents’ apartment, she found the books and brought them home. Obviously I had not bothered to sort through the manuscripts we collected from my parents after they died.

My father’s prayer books were from a more recent edition of the Union Prayer Book than Howard mentions. My father’s books were copyrighted in the early 1940s. “Reader” had replaced “Minister” to denote the Rabbi’s role; the Choir still had responsibility for most Hebrew; the words Kol Nidre are added in the later edition, having been absent in all former editions, but with neither the Hebrew nor English text of the prayer included.

Of greatest meaning to me were the dedications to my father, scribbled on the inside front cover by our Rabbi, Maurice Bloom, at Tremont Temple in the Bronx in the late 1950s. My father had been an active member of the Board of Trustees and then an officer. He received a prayer book for every official function he performed with a personal note of gratitude from the Rabbi.

I remember those as uncomfortable years for our rabbi at Tremont Temple and I remember my father was one of the rabbi’s stalwart supporters. That may be the root of my trust that rabbis and congregational leaders work together for the common good of the synagogue community.

What touched me most about the books that I found on our bookcase’s top shelf was knowing that my father always took those volumes to Temple to use at services, especially on the Holy Days. He liked having “his” prayer book and, when I found them, I liked running my hand on the covers that I knew he held in his hands.

Perhaps Jews have a unique relationship to books. And children probably have a unique relationship to the prayer books their parents used.

At this time of year I am specifically grateful for family tradition, memory and prayer books that tell a family’s story.

Shalom,

Rabbi Peter J. Rubinstein