Showing Up
Never Would Dad Be More Proud
It’s been more than four decades, and yet I remember that moment like it was yesterday. I was a young teenager in Denver, and it was a very snowy, cold Friday evening. It was Shabbat, which my family celebrated religiously (pun intended).
Noting the snow, my father turned to my two older brothers and asked them to attend synagogue services that evening. “They might have a hard time making a minyan (a quorum of ten members to pray together). They could probably use you,” he counseled.
The particular aspect of having a minyan is that it allows those in mourning to say “Kaddish,” which is a prayer to remember the dead. The mourner recites the prayer, and the congregants respond at particular points, reminding us that our community supports us in a time of need.
According to my dad, our synagogue had never missed forming a Friday night minyan, but now they were at risk. As part of our observance of the Sabbath, we didn’t drive, and so at the request of my father, my brothers trekked in the snow to help form a group of ten.
They returned from the Friday night service, all smiles. My oldest brother shared that when the Rabbi saw them enter the synagogue, he proclaimed that they were like angels, coming at a moment of need. My brothers were ninth and tenth to arrive, and then services started. This made my family proud and also served as a lesson about the ways we can support a community that may feel small, but actually aren’t.
In the many years of being under my father’s roof and then returning home as a young adult, I seldom saw my dad more proud than on that evening. He attended graduations of his children, heard us deliver speeches, walked a daughter down the aisle, and became a grandparent many times over. He was proud of us as individuals. We had followed my parents’ hard-working and family-centered ways, and we had not squandered the advantage education gave us.
But examples of when we internalized his moral compass made my dad proudest. The story of the snowy Friday night was no more complicated than recognizing the moment and showing up. Wasn’t it Woody Allen who said that 80% of life is showing up?
I recalled this memory from the archives of my childhood because I have been watching my youngest brother, who was too young to help make that minyan decades ago, lead us as a Rabbi during coronavirus times. Every morning, he shows up with his associates to lead morning prayers, which are streamed through homes in our community. His team then does a rinse/repeat every evening. In the seemingly smallest of ways, they do something great.
It is not lost on me that my brother’s first part of “showing up” is fielding a team that can share the burden. The mountains are simply too steep for one person to scale. Fortunately, at my brother’s synagogue, there is a team of five dedicated professionals — a mix of cantors, rabbis, and teachers — who strengthen us daily. They show up every morning, every evening — on our screens — so that we hear them, and they hear us.
They are our modern-day angels. In our season of sadness, anxiety, and loneliness, there is a group that brings perspective, song, story and even some routine to our day.
The moment where my brothers made the minyan some forty years ago has impacted my family in the hugest of ways. It is as if my brother and his team have upped the ante on showing up.
My dad would be so proud.