For the last decade, I have kept a somewhat unusual tradition in the Paterson shul — to combine Shemini Atzeret and Simchat Torah so that we wouldn’t leave a small group of seniors living independently in Paterson without the opportunity to celebrate on their own. For those who are not familiar, Paterson once had a Jewish population of close to 40,000. Today, there are less than a dozen.
I inherited the role of gabbai from former Fair Lawn resident David Berman, now living in Givat Ze’ev in Israel. His custom of combining the Shemini Atzeret service with a bit of hakafot for Simchat Torah was something I fondly documented in the “David Berman Gabbai Handbook” which is used to guide me.
However, I really must ask him next time I meet up to give me a little clearer perspective on this somewhat vague custom. The first idea I can think of is plain and simple — chances are those who sacrificed their time away from their families to make this minyan won’t be able to come back the next night or day for Simchat Torah. Especially with a tzadik like David, who had eight children to be with. Or with Shemini Atzeret including the Yizkor service, maybe you can’t end things on a bit of a downer? And then, maybe it’s to catch up with Israel, which is Simchat Torah.
While all this may not be standard practice at any other shul, I just keep up traditions, except for this year when I had organized a minyan on Oct. 7 and the weather itself wasn’t looking too good. It was 9 a.m. and the very second I arrived and took off my rain jacket, I was greeted by 77-year-old Roma Fish, an IDF veteran of the Six-Day War and Yom Kippur War, who lives in the building above the shul. He takes care of the shul, sets things up, greets people, and is a special guy.
But he was pale, staring in a way I’ve not seen before and he said, “Jerry, I have not such good news. Have you heard?” I immediately was taken aback, thinking God forbid we lost a senior living in the building. I asked him, “Who passed away?, my natural inclination and reaction because we’re down to four men. But no, he tried to talk to me but had a look of sheer trepidation I never saw before when he broke the news about hundreds of rockets being launched on Israel. All he said was it was bad and he couldn’t be here with the minyan. He threw his hands down in some kind of disgust and he walked away, not like his usual self.
A few more people started to populate the shul room and the minyan was not looking too good as it was with the rain. Roma had just given me very little detail of what happened, but enough to make me wonder what was going on was greater than just a bunch of rockets. All he said to me and the others in the room was: “I am so sorry I cannot make this minyan today.”
Just those words alone gave me pause and I looked around to some of the congregants and said we need to daven for Israel and we need to daven for whatever was going on that Roma couldn’t join us this Shabbat. Perhaps like all other shuls that morning, we had to continue with our daily tefillot and so I started Shacharit with six or seven men, a few women on the other side of the mechitza, and we were approaching time to read the Torah, but we just could not do so without a proper minyan. I looked around and thought maybe we could count the two Torahs we had, bringing us to nine. Roma would have been the tenth, but he was too distraught to join us. We proceeded with Yizkor and I apologized that it was the first time we hadn’t made an actual minyan short of the time we came short during a blizzard. We did Tefillat Geshem.
The only thing I could do was take out the gabbai handbook and flip through every page to read out loud the prayers for the state of Israel, the U.S., the IDF, the missing soldiers, the fallen soldiers, and whatever prayers I could read in Hebrew and in English. We really didn’t know what the circumstances were until later and I made an announcement that we were going to skip the hakafot originally planned.
After the chagim, everyone was glued to the news and the rest is history, but I saw a Facebook post by David Berman. I recounted the story of not having a minyan but wanted to wish him and his family only well and let them know that we are all with him and all Am Yisrael. I told him about all the brachot I pulled out of his handbook. He reacted in tears. I didn’t mean to give him more, but they were the good kind.
Fast forward a few weeks and I get a message from David asking if we will have a minyan for parshat Chayei Sarah. How could I say no, so I am gathering a minyan, will do a kiddush and he’s the guest of honor. We hope to have him lead our tefillot, hug him and I would really like to do a few hakafot with him so that we can find that “simcha” that was lost on Simchat Torah a few short weeks ago.
Jerry Schranz is the gabbai of the Paterson Shul.
