In Jerusalem, I Heard My Father’s Voice

For most of my life, Yom Kippur had a familiar address.

I spent it in my home in Toronto, Canada—or what I must now learn to call my old home. I spent one Yom Kippur in Morocco and another in Israel in 2007, almost 20 years ago. But otherwise, year after year, I observed this holy day in the same city, surrounded by the familiar.

Then I made Aliyah and landed in a Jerusalem neighborhood I barely knew.
This year marked my second Yom Kippur in Israel since making Aliyah.

I have now been here for a full year, yet Yom Kippur in this country still does not fail to wow me.

For me, part of preparing for the Yamim Noraim means finding the right place to daven.

For Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, a Sephardi minyan is not enough. I need the Moroccan Sephardi nusach.

The Syrian, Mizrahi and Yemenite traditions each have their own beauty, but they are not mine. On these days, I need the Moroccan melodies and rhythms that have accompanied me throughout my life.

They do not merely sound familiar. They carry memories. They connect me to my family, my childhood, my history and all the Yamim Noraim that came before.

More than anything, the Moroccan nusach reminds me of my father.
I grew up hearing him sing. Piyutim, tefillah—anything that could be sung, he sang. He loved it. Those Moroccan melodies were part of the sound of my home and part of the sound of my father.

I felt it on Rosh Hashanah this year. I davened at a different shul, but it, too, was Moroccan. As soon as I heard those familiar melodies, tears came to my eyes.

When I hear them now, I do not only hear the nusach.

I hear my father.

Perhaps that is why having my nusach matters so deeply. It is not simply the way I prefer to daven. It is part of what connects me to him.

Every familiar melody carries something of my father, and I hope I will carry that connection with me always.

Last year, newly arrived and unfamiliar with my neighborhood, I searched online for a Moroccan Sephardi minyan for Yom Kippur. I looked at the different options and calculated how far each one would be for me to walk.

One appeared to be about seven minutes away, which seemed reasonable. One of the great beauties of living in Jerusalem is that there are shuls everywhere. I was hardly lacking choices.

But on Erev Yom Kippur, I realized that there was one shul I had not checked. I decided to take a walk and find it.

From the courtyard of my building, there is a little pathway—a shortcut through the park that avoids much of the longer route. I walked through it, continued one street over and found the shul.

It was not seven minutes away.

It was not even four.

It was practically around the corner.

And it was Moroccan.

Not Sephardi only in the broad sense, but Moroccan Sephardi—with exactly the nusach and melodies I knew.

I went there last year, and I loved it.

This year, I heard about a new minyan that had opened seven or eight minutes down the road. For a moment, I considered trying it.

Then I asked myself: Why? 

Why would I change?

I had already found a place where I felt at home. I had loved it last year.

Why go searching again for something Hashem had already placed almost at my door?

So I returned.

And with me, I brought the same machzor I had used during my first Yom Kippur in Israel after making Aliyah.

When I first arrived, my lift from Canada had not yet come. My boxes—and all the sefarim inside them—were still somewhere between my old home and my new one.

A friend was buying a set of machzorim for herself, covering the Shalosh Regalim, Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, and offered to pick up a set for me at the same time. Through her, I bought my new machzorim, and they became part of my first Yamim Noraim as an olah.

Last year, I wrote down, one by one, the names of the hostages for whom I was davening.

This year, when I opened that same Yom Kippur machzor, the list was still there.

But every person whose name I had written had come home.
I looked at those names and realized that I was holding more than a list.

I was looking at a nes. 

When I davened for them last year, I had no idea that I would open the same machzor one year later and find that every person on my list had returned home.

This year, I could daven for something different: for their menuchat hanefesh and menuchat haguf—for peace in their souls and healing in their bodies. I prayed that they would feel safe and whole in their homes, that they would continue to heal and grow, and that they would be able to rebuild their lives and live in peace.

It was a full-circle moment: one machzor carrying the prayers of two Yom Kippurs and the story of everything that had happened between them.

There were other details about the shul that might appear small to someone else but felt enormous to me.

There is a ramp leading into the building alongside the stairs. The main women’s section is upstairs, but they also created a women’s section downstairs, beside the entrance to the men’s section.

There is a window through which we can see the bimah and remain connected to the davening.

It meant that I could enter the shul and daven without having to navigate a flight of stairs.

And then there was the shtender [a small prayer stand].

Yes, I know—a Moroccan Jew calling it a shtender. Apparently, all those years of Ashkenazi education left their mark.

For several special years in Toronto, my friend’s father had made prayer stands for us to use on Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur. Having a place to rest my machzor made such a difference. It was one of those seemingly small comforts that I had learned not to take for granted.

I assumed that in my new shul, I would simply manage without one, as I had for most of my life.
But there it was.

Nobody had claimed it. Nobody else was using it.

So I did.

It was there for me last year, and it was waiting for me again this year.

Perhaps someone else would see only a piece of synagogue furniture.

To me, it felt like a welcoming gift from Hashem.

You have a place here.

You have what you need.

Come and daven.

And I did.

Baruch Hashem, I felt energized throughout the fast. I was not hungry. I had no headache. In fact, Yom Kippur seemed to pass too quickly.

The davening, the familiar Moroccan melodies and the feeling of being exactly where I was meant to be carried me through the day.
It was such a good Yom Kippur.

I came to this neighborhood not knowing its streets, its pathways or its shuls. Yet waiting for me—through my courtyard, across the park and one street over—was a Moroccan Sephardi minyan filled with the melodies of home and the voice of my father.
I returned to the same shul carrying the same machzor.

But I was not the same person, and the prayers written inside it were no longer the same prayers.

Sometimes we search far and wide for the place where we belong.

And sometimes Hashem has already placed it just around the corner.

Baruch Hashem. 

May we only hear good news.

Shabbat Shalom. Chag Sameach.