By Chaya Rochel Zimmerman
My family was the only thing left behind.
When the last truckload, crammed with boxes of prayer books, stacks of chairs, and the four-foot-tall wooden dais, drove away, my father locked the doors of the synagogue as he had done for the past nine years.
Our beloved synagogue had opened its doors in 1913 on Staten Island, New York and now, in 1972, stood empty, except for a faint flickering on the wall of muted colors streaming through the stained-glass window. The Polish, Italian and Jewish immigrant families, who had inhabited my once thriving childhood neighborhood, had moved away when the streets gave rise to rough and rowdy teenagers playing loud music late into the night.
My elderly father worked hard to own his home and never thought about moving, nor of giving up his job as the physical and spiritual caretaker of the synagogue, a position he inherited upon the passing of my grandfather.
At the Age of 68 My Father Began Walking Two Plus Miles Through a Now Dangerous Neighborhood
The synagogue purchased another building much further away to continue servicing its aging congregants. So, at the age of sixty-eight without any complaints, my ever-conscientious father, began walking the two plus miles back and forth on Shabbos and the holy festivals through the now dangerous neighborhood.
Although my father’s sweet smile and sincerity could melt anyone’s heart, my mother and I feared for his life. Within a few months, my small father was mugged twice, each time explaining to some tall dark man that it was the Jewish Sabbath and he didn’t have any money or cigarettes on him. Mercifully they let him go.
I decided it was time to move. I was twenty-one, in college, and the only child living at home; my brother had made Aliyah the year before and my married sister was busy with her two preschoolers.
Began Packing for a Move to Another Home as Yet Not Determined
I started packing, not sure yet where we would move to. “What are you doing?” said my father alarmed. My mother stood nearby in silent agreement, but helpless to verbalize it.
“It’s time to move,” I said. “This is my home.”
“I know. I’ll find you another home. It’s too dangerous for you to walk home on Shabbos.” “I’m not moving.”
We had both walked these streets for years in safety, but now it was time to admit, it had changed. Torah commands us not to not put our bodies in danger, lest our souls leave this world. I continued working.
Do Piles of Yellowed Yiddish Newspapers Count as Being Valuable?
I gathered, sorted, packed and discarded. This last category ended in deadlock. My attempts to throw out what I considered worthless and what my father considered priceless, threatened the whole move. Do piles of yellowed Yiddish newspapers from the last twenty years count as valuable? Or extras of old weekly synagogue bulletins, or unread catalogues that came through the mail?
It would be impossible to fit everything they owned into a small rented apartment, so I continued working against the rising resistance of my father who refused to allow me to dispose of the growing bags of garbage before he sorted through each one. This wasn’t just a matter of elderly clutter or hoarding. I was disregarding his core beliefs that ran generations deep.
My father was a European product, born in Lomazy Poland, and had lived in Biala Podlaska, Berditchev, the Bronx, the Lower East Side and Staten Island. Moving was not new to him. He had lived through WWI in Europe and the Great Depression in America and it pained him to see anything usable destroyed or disposed of. The wrinkles on his balding forehead deepened as he paced the floor, watching me continue to sift through the layers of his life. His agitation increased as the pile of moving boxes grew. It was a matter of trust.
The Goal was to Lengthen the Days of Her Parents
My true intentions were to uphold the fourth commandment, “To Honor and Fear Your Mother and Your Father So You May Lengthen the Days of Your Life”. I wasn’t sweating this backbreaking task to lengthen the days of my years, but to lengthen their days.
It also pained me to leave behind the place that held my childhood memories: reading a good book leaning against the tree heavy with peaches surrounded by the tall uncut grass we hid in when we played hide go seek, sitting on the steps of the wooden front porch sharing childish secrets with my friends, playing kick ball with my brother inside the house where the Angel of balls ensured that nothing ever broke, celebrating my good marks after studying with my mother at the kitchen table, smelling my mother’s eggplant roasting atop the gas fire.
The Torah equates the honor and fear of one’s parents with the honor and fear of G-d himself. Rambam explains that to fear your father means not to contradict his word nor offer an opinion that outweighs his. I felt I paid a high price for not respecting my father’s wishes, but surely moving was his inner wish.
Finding a House Just Two Blocks from the New Synagogue
My mother and I searched for an apartment in vain, until my aunt came to town at the last hour. She was my father’s only sister, twenty-one years his junior, born in America, and he loved her dearly. My aunt, with my sister’s help, found a house for rent two blocks from the new synagogue location and ordered a moving van.
Eventually, my father blessed me for moving him, forever grateful to be close to the synagogue. However, he remained troubled over the things I had disposed of in the moving process, that he felt still had value.
Although I had the noblest of reasons for moving my aging parents, it’s not a decision to be taken lightly.
Reprinted from the Parshas Haazinu 5784 edition of L’Chaim. Chaya Rochel Zimmerman, is the author of: Lemons in the Fog, The Next Pair of Shoes and Seattle to Strawberries / You can contact her through: zimnovels.com
