H eadlines
First Person: On Rosh Hashanah, I Didst Laugh
L OCA L
JESSE BERNSTEIN | JE STAFF
A STRANGER TELLS Sarah
that she’s going to have a baby,
and she laughs; it’s well past
the time for such things. When
God asks Abraham about
it later, Sarah is afraid, and
denies having laughed. “Nay,”
God says, in a stuffy transla-
tion of the early 20th century.

“Thou didst laugh.”
There is some disagreement
as to what her laughter signi-
fied. Onkelos believes that
Sarah was being rebuked for
laughing mirthlessly, as if she
lacked faith in God to deliver
the goods; Rashi believes it
was genuine, joyous laughter.

(Esther M. Shkop, a scholar
and teacher, has written
insightfully on this debate.)
At services this year for the
first day of Rosh Hashanah,
which I attended in an Ambler
backyard, I didst laugh. Five
families, with 25 people
between them, shuffling their
chairs around the backyard to
follow the sun that unevenly
warmed a brisk morning, trying
to maintain their distance
from the other families as they
did so. Was mine a laugh of joy,
or a mirthless bark? The Sages
are curiously silent on this.

Much of the past six
months has brought the latter.

Of course, the pandemic
worsened, the mirthless bark
says. Of course this was the
year that I had planned to do X,
This is not my mother’s round challah, but I promise, hers looked just as
enticing. 
MargoeEdwards / iStock / Getty Images Plus
Five families, with 25 people between them,
shuffling their chairs around the backyard to
follow the sun that unevenly warmed a brisk
morning, trying to maintain their distance from
the other families as they did so.

now impossible. Of course, the
rules of the virus have dictated
that our elderly relatives, most
vulnerable to the sickness,
must also remain the most
isolated. Of course.

Laughing the
joyous laughter can feel perversely
cruel. Who am I to laugh like
this, as nearly 200,000 have
died, with more to follow?
What comfort I must live in,
to throw my head back and
do that.

I didn’t laugh when my
father told me that he was
going to arrange High Holiday
services with some of our close
family friends. Not because
it wasn’t welcome news —
it was — but because it was
June, I believe. Implicit in the
proposal to make those plans
was the dark knowledge that
the pandemic, quarantine,
10 SEPTEMBER 24, 2020
JEWISH EXPONENT
COVID, however you refer to
All This, was going to continue
for some time. I said it sounded
like a good idea, and I mostly
forgot about it. We played lots
of Settlers of Catan and worked
quietly in separate rooms.

My father met semi-regu-
larly with E. and her son M.,
a supremely gifted, liturgically
fluent singer who would take
the lion’s share of the davening.

From inside, I saw them sit at a
distance on our patio, tweezing
out what they determined to be
the most vital sections of the
Mahzor Lev Shalem that we
would have used in synagogue.

Thusly, a service was built from
the columns of a color-coded
spreadsheet, noting prayers,
page numbers, allotted time
per prayer and the hardest
column to fill: “Who?”
Who, indeed. My two
JEWISHEXPONENT.COM



H eadlines
brothers and I were unilaterally
enlisted as Torah readers, which
sent me, at least, scrambling for
recordings of my pasukim that
used the High Holiday trope
(thank you to B’nai Tikvah in
Canton, Massachusetts). As the
Days of Awe drew nearer, the
spreadsheet was filled, slowly
but surely. N. volunteered to
talk about the Zichronot; R.,
her husband, the Malchuyot.

Meanwhile, a borrowed
Torah appeared in my
mother’s office, promoted from
mudroom status at the begin-
ning of the pandemic. It sat
in the “do not forget this on
the way out of the house” spot
usually reserved for wallets
and, once, homework.

On the morning of the
service, our middle brother
looked at his Torah reading for
the first time. He claims that
the total number of mistakes
he ended up making in his
leining were equal to mine
and, therefore, my practicing
had been futile. I contend
that reading straight past the
ending of the assigned portion,
unwittingly running a half a
verse into mine, was greater in
degree. We have a few days left
to forgive each other, anyway.

Beneath the unwelcome
shade of mid-morning, we
rubbed our hands together
and wriggled our toes as we
gently laid the Torah down on
a folding table and distributed
machzorim. We began late, but
we began.

We prayed and sang. M.’s
voice brought wandering
minds back to pasture, and
friends offered their thoughts
on different segments of the
service. We mourned the fact
that L., touched by God as a
shofar blower, would not wow
us this year, as the service fell
on Shabbat; we said Kaddish
for Ruth Bader Ginsburg. I
wondered what my bubbe was
doing and, while I did, my
youngest brother volunteered
me to lead “Ein Keloheinu.”
As we packed everything
back into the car, settling on
a nearby creek as our tashlich
spot, I tried to think how we
might safely get bubbe to our
Yom Kippur service, planned
for our own backyard. Maybe, I
thought, we could perch her in a
tree above the service with some
sort of ad-hoc pulley system,
and sell it to her as being like a
backyard opera box. She could
watch us chant “Vidui” through
tiny, gilded binoculars.

Wouldn’t that be a real
laugh? l
Thank You to our
Main Event Co-Chairs
Susan & Jeff Schwartz
and Lisa & Brett Studner
Best wishes for a Happy, Healthy
and Sweet New Year
to our
Greater Philly Jewish Community!
L’Shanah Tovah,
Susanna Lachs Adler and Dean Adler
Name: ME-JFRE
Width: 5.5 in
Depth: 5.5 in
Color: Black
Comment: ME-JFRE
Ad Number: 00091729
jbernstein@jewishexponent.com; 215-832-0740
changing addresses?
DON’T MISS A
SINGLE ISSUE
OF THE
Call 215.832.0700
or email subscriptions@
jewishexponent.com with your new address.

JEWISHEXPONENT.COM Name: ME-Lachs Adler
Width: 5.5 in
Depth: 5.5 in
Color: Black plus one
Comment: ME-Lachs Adler
Ad Number: 00091712
Proudly supports the
Jewish Federation of Greater Philadelphia’s Main Event
Mazel Tov to Co-Chairs
Susan & Jeff Schwartz and Lisa & Brett Studner
JFRE Executive Committee
Matthew Pestronk, Chair
David J. Adelman
Bill Glazer
Michael Markman
Jacob Reiter
JEWISH EXPONENT
Dan Berger
Bradley J. Korman
Jessica Morgan
David Waxman
Robert A. Zuritsky
Jeremy B. Fogel
Bradley A. Krouse
Jonathan Morgan
Spencer Yablon
SEPTEMBER 24, 2020
11