When Rabbi Greene asked me to reflect on the significance to me of the Shofar Service, two somewhat irreverent thoughts from my childhood immediately came to mind: the first recalled our experience following the Yom Kippur children’s services. The alderman of the fifth ward rented The Harper Theatre and all the Jewish children in Hyde Park, of which there was a great number in those days, were treated to a double feature and many cartoons to occupy us while our parents observed the holiday. we were also each given a sack of candy including Milk Duds. This obviously left an impression on me.
The second memory was more specific to Sinai. Although I had started Religious School in the last Kindergarten class to start in the Grand Boulevard (now Kind Drive) building and continued through Confirmation, I never heard a Shofar blown at Sinai until long after I was married. The only Shofar I heard blown was from my maternal grandfather, who was the official shofar blower in his conservative synagogue. He would blow it for us when he returned home from his services. the reason for this was because at Sinai during Dr. Mann’s tenure, and because Sinai never did anything halfway, as he often told us, a professional musician from the Chicago Symphony Orchestra played a trumpet!
It was only when the Symphony was on a European tour and the Trumpter was unavailable that Rabbi Karff enlisted Hart Billings, who had also played the trumpet in the lab school band, but who had been blowing the Shofar for the children’s services, to blow the shofar for the adults, too, and along with our co-president, Carol Miller.
As you are no doubt aware he does to this day. I might add that the absence of a shofar didn’t prevent the throngs from coming to hear Dr. Mann’s sermons or make their worship any less authentic. Which proves to me that symbolic modifications are not necessarily bad and can even be enriching.
I grew up in a tribe. My mother was second youngest of eight sisters and two brothers. My mother’s mother died when my brother was only 14 and her youngest sister was 12, so the older sisters who we always called “the aunties,” became surrogate parents for them and consequently grandparents for us. The four eldest sisters never married and lived together their entire lives, keeping house for my grandfather. We all lived within walking distance of each other. When one sister moved to Lakeview, she cried every day to be so far from her family. Within a year, we were all once again living walking distance to each other. When my husband and I married and moved to Hyde Park, I called myself the last living relative in Hyde park! As you might expect, all the major holidays were shared in the aunties home, with a children’s table for the cousins. The holidays now remind me of those noisy celebrations and the security of having a tribe to always have your back.