The Same dates as this year

This was my late mother Pearl Sapoznik's 1950 High Holiday ticket to the women's section of synagogue Talmud Torah Zikhru Toyres Moishe, on Vermont Avenue in Brownsville, Brooklyn the first job my late father Zindel Sapoznik got as a cantor upon coming to America the year before. He was still conducting services there when I have my earliest High Holiday memory (at maybe five or so years old ) of sitting next to my mother in the upstairs women's section.

At some point on Yom Kippur, as I was getting agitated and antsy, my mother quietly pulled out of her bag, a cold chicken sandwich with mayo and ketchup which I recall happily munching while sitting back, looking up at the synagogue's ceiling mural which depicted a night sky with broken clouds and the stars and moon peeking out from behind them.and thinking that I was flying through the air while listening to my father's magnificent voice radiating upwards to God and illuminating the entire space. In a few short years I would also be on the bimah singing in Vidlitz's choir to accompany him.

I will be observing Yom Kippur this weekend but without my parents (and without the chicken sandwich) but with the same sensation of being elevated to the Highest High in hopes for a sweet, healthy and peaceful New Year for all.