My mother's yahrtzeit approaches. A notice came from my current congregation, as it always has. When synagogue software first became available in the 1980s, automating special day notifications took priority. People want a reminder of when they need to recite Kaddish. Flag the date, assemble a packet for the office to mail, including a donation request with a return envelope, and both congregant and congregational treasury benefits. Mass mailings were one of the first procedures to get successfully automated before personal internet access became the norm. Snafus and uncertainties abound. My synagogue keeps the deceased on its memorial list forever, irrespective of whether any survivors maintain their formal affiliation. I do not know if they mail reminder notices to people who have moved away or otherwise left the congregation. My former local synagogue stopped sending me an annual notice shortly after I stopped paying dues.
My childhood congregation took a very different path. A quick chronology:
- 1964: Bar Mitzvah
- 1966: Breakaway group with Sugar Daddy forms a competing congregation.
- 1969: College in another city
- 1971: My mother's passing
- 1973: Relocation for medical school
- 1977: Marriage and relocation for residency
- 1980: Permanent settling in new city
- 2006: Closure of my childhood synagogue
Notices of my mother's yahrtzeit began to appear in my mail each winter starting in 1974. I do not recall if I responded with a check before I started earning my own paycheck, but once established, they could count on a small gift in the return envelope each year. As I moved to different apartments in the same city, or to different towns, the US Postal Service forwarded the requests. As I responded with a check, the recipient in the congregational office had the presence of mind to record the new address, sending subsequent reminders there.
Closure of the congregation created a branch point. My congregation closed, it did not merge. Assets were distributed under state laws regulating places of worship that ceased functioning. Despite no formal merger, my congregation still had longstanding members, by then largely aging but still observant. Nearly all defaulted to that breakaway shul, given no chance of long-term longevity at its inception, disadvantaged, or so people thought, by lack of our umbrella organization affiliation. Whether by a preferable location or that Sugar Daddy, they not only endured, but now inherited pillars of my dying congregation. They took the high road. Memorial plaques relocated from the sold building to the active building. The yahrtzeit list, including my name and address, merged with their database. My notices kept coming.
I had occasion to worship at the new place one time following my congregation's closure. Familiar building sitting on prime real estate between my old elementary school and what was once modern luxury garden apartments that made that Sugar Daddy rich
While I transitioned from place to place in my younger adulthood followed by extended stability, the institutions transitioned later in their life cycles. The building where my Bar Mitzvah occurred lost its value as a suitable place for a United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism congregation but served as a desirable location for Hasidic institutions that had become dominant in that neighborhood. At the successor congregation, nominally unaffiliated but with the form of worship characteristic of 1960s Conservative Jews, the neighborhood also changed. My old elementary school had become an Orthodox Day School. The houses where the people who attended that school, and that synagogue, once lived, now had Orthodox owners. While both my synagogue and the breakaway had always functioned as commuter congregations where carpools brought kids to Hebrew School and people drove to worship, that drive had become too long. The building stood on valuable real estate. Their leadership sold it, directing the proceeds to construct an opulent structure closer to where secular Jews now lived. I worshiped there a single Shabbos morning, tied to a high school reunion later that night.
Heavy entrance doors. Posh sanctuary. Those clunky bronze memorial plaques had given way to smaller uniform brass ones, my mother's name still among them, despite having never had a formal membership stature with them. As secular congregations struggled, so did others in the region. Two additional ones merged, pooling resources to maintain an elegant building and populate the sanctuary. On my visit, a remnant of people from my Bar Mitzvah congregation, nearly all men, appeared for worship. I greeted them but sat at a kiddush table with local contemporaries.
My final time there, likely 2009. Still, each year that notice of my mother's yahrtzeit would continue to arrive each winter. I returned a check promptly. Later I learned that a high school friend, a fellow violinist in the orchestra, had remained with that congregation. Her parents had become charter members of the breakaway. She ran a special project for the needy. I wrote a second check for her to use, along with a brief note of admiration for her effort. She sent a brief note of thanks to me. And I added a third contribution to a semi-affiliated agency that dedicated a project in memory of one of my mother's close friends from my Bar Mitzvah shul, that one by credit card.
This year, that chain of fifty annual notifications stopped. They had survived my relocations and their relocations. People at one time devoted effort to keeping me, a minor donor, in the loop. I do not know the fate of that congregation, though modern electronics offers a few hints. They have a Facebook page to which I subscribe. Every Shabbos, they post a greeting, at least until recently. They have not had a Rabbi, but engage a Cantor, one with adult children. Within the last year, they posted that rather than maintaining their tradition of mixed seating/ male honors, their format since founding, they would try to make themselves more acceptable to the nearby residents by adding a mechitza. This may also facilitate recruiting a Rabbi.
The congregation offers a website, though a neglected one by modern standards. It has not been maintained, with their newsletter postings ceasing in 2021 as Covid became less threatening.
Why hasn't my reminder come? In the pre-insulin era, Dr. Elliot Joslin, the recognized master of diabetes, used to ask his patients who descended to his Boston Clinic from far and wide, to send him a greeting card each Christmas. When the cards stopped, he would have his staff try to contact that diabetic or family to confirm the expected mortality. In our modern age, I could call the congregation or send a note to the office through their website. I think I will send my usual checks, then inquire if they are returned.
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