Push Reset Button

As I did last year, I afforded myself a solo few days away, withing a few hours, for some visiting to an unfamiliar place.  Last year I went to Penn State University during a deep freeze that kept school activities largely cancelled.  It was a pleasant town, though.

This winter I stayed in the Poconos for some snow tubing and some Aquatopia indoor water park, both affiliated with the Camelback Ski Resort.  To my surprise, both attracted a large contingent of the Orthodox community, about 2-3 hours away.  All had velvet kippot.  Most men had visible tzitzit peering over their belts.  Few full beards however.  They had large families but fewer visibly pregnant women than at most similar gatherings.  Learned a little about tzniyut at the waterpark.  Barefoot was fine.  Boys wore t-shirts.  Girls wore either knee length leggings and long t-shirt or shirtdresses, though they had usual teenage swimwear beneath.  And when I tried to introduce myself as a Monsey native, lantzman with a crotcheted kippah, they were not particularly friendly. 

Snow tubing did not result in safety problems but it took just under a half-hour on the conveyor belt and waiting on the lane queue for a one minute thrill downwards.  At Aquatopia, I was by far the oldest patron.  Lovely hot tub that had an indoor and outdoor component where steam rose at the outdoor water-air interface.  I capsized my Lazy River tube repeatedly but once stable I let the current take me around a few times.  Wave pool disappointing.  Did not measure up to the one at Dorney Park let alone the waves at Fenwick Island State Park.  And one run down the smallest of the circular indoor thrill rides which left me just thrilled enough.





Supper at decent brew pubs each evening.

Did not sleep well.  Sacked out as soon as I got back to the hotel, only to wake at midnight and keep myself up inappropriately by the great transgression of looking at my cell phone's blue emitting hue.

Drove home uneventfully but clearly out of sorts.  Try some formal set sleep times the rest of the week.  Hit Reset Button tomorrow.

Defunct Synagogues

Somebody forwarded a request for information on Bronx synagogues, of which I was familiar with one and had a vague memory of a Megillah reading at another.  My father's parents lived in a section known as Highbridge, which had its orthodox shul across the street from their apartment.  I do not know if my father's Bar Mitzvah, circa 1935 in the midst of the Great Depression, took place there or not.  His sister's children all had theirs in this building.  I was last there probably fifty or so years ago.  I remember it as being bigger and more imposing than the photograph suggests.  It had a balcony where the women either worshipped or chatted while the men engaged in shabbos sanctuary proceedings from the main floor.  My grandfather remained modern orthodox, his children went secular but even his grandchildren belonged to a synagogue and arranged for bnai mitzvah of his great grandchildren, so the place across from his apartment probably accomplished its long-term mission.

It is now a church, as are most of the other synagogues in the South Bronx, which I suppose beats being abandoned, the second most common fate.  Sanctity of space is probably transferable.  I lack a good sense of how that congregation depleted, whether similar to the depletion of AKSE slowly over a generation, or more precipitous.  Jews of the South Bronx scattered elsewhere in Metropolitan New York where other congregations grew.  Jews of AKSE migrated from the vicinity of the shul without really scattering but lacked any place else to go in their own neighborhood.  As we begin to observe AKSE's 125th year, predating the establishment of the Bronx shul by more than forty years, there is the looming prospect that its tenure is also finite though for much different reasons than what caused closure of the Bronx congregations.  Whether it fulfilled its mission of perpetuating Judaism elsewhere is also far less certain.