Cantor Irving Schock, Annette’s father, in the early ‘70s, during his first trip to Israel, saying Kaddish in Jerusalem for all those he lost in the Holocaust at a memorial established for the Jews of Krasnystav. 

F. Scott Fitzgerald is famously quoted for boasting that the test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold opposing ideas in the mind at the same time, and still retain the ability to function in the world.

He was grossly exaggerating. Preaching to his ego. It’s no big deal. Not only do human beings do it all the time, it is an absolute necessity.  Harmony may be the structural melody of the universe – the mathematical measure of the cosmos – but here on earth, on the noisy stage of our small lives, chaos rules. And yet we love in the face of hate, build in the face of destruction, hope in the face of fate, live as if we will not die, and cling to a loving God before whom we tremble.

Living with opposing ideas came quite naturally to me. I suppose spending the first years of my life in a German displaced persons camp among the Jewish remnant of Europe had wised me.

I can trace this awakening to a specific day and time. I was eight years old. It was in the hour just before Yom Kippur, 1952. I was with my father, a European-trained cantor, now transplanted to a farming community in southern New Jersey. 

He and I had started out so early for the Yom Kippur Eve service that Mother was left to wait for the gentile girl who would mind my baby sisters. It was too hot for autumn, even for rural South Jersey. The sun seemed too bright so late in the afternoon. The farm dogs lazed about, glassy-eyed from the heat, taking no notice of us trudging by them.

Father looked unwell. His face had lost its robust color and turned an ashen gray. His lips trembled. I raced to keep up with his long strides. Eyes downcast, he seemed to have forgotten me. It was a long walk for a little girl - nearly two miles down a narrow, unpaved country road to a tiny synagogue that he and other European refugees had built. They named it Sharit ha-Plitah, Survivors of the Holocaust.

We walked solemnly, silently and alone.

How different this was from our always happy, noisy walks to synagogue. Then the road teemed with other Jewish refugees, converging from all directions into the single way that led to our synagogue. It was the one heartening time that we - a tiny group of Jewish newcomers strewn among the larger Gentile farm population - flowed like a mighty stream.

We had come to farming as we had come to America, by default. Displaced from Europe, unable or unwilling to enter Israel, in this peaceful little place Holocaust survivors like my parents started over, and amongst ourselves because only amongst ourselves were we sure to be welcomed.

We had not yet attained heroic status among our Jewish American cousins; this would come much later. For now, they remained the willfully forgetful children of much earlier immigrations. Our presence was painful to them. I suppose our unimaginable suffering and survival made them uncomfortable. We turned to each other for acceptance, camaraderie, and joy.

But not today. Father and I walked alone and in silence. The marshy earth swallowed our footfalls and muddied our holiday shoes.

Finally, we arrived, breathless and sweaty. The little synagogue was in all ways European, a simple rectangular building with few windows, its shingles the color of the sandy ground on which it had been built. A few green tufts sprouted here and there amid the weeds and wild flowers.

Father kissed the mezuzah on the door post and we entered.  Against the left wall facing east to Jerusalem, stood the wide platform of the bimah. Above the pulpit rose wooden pews. And above the pulpit rose the only ornate item in the synagogue, a burnished mahogany cabinet housing the Aron Kodesh, the Holy Ark. Behind the flimsy curtain rested a single velvet-wrapped Torah. Itself a European refugee, it too had been rescued and brought to safety. The ark, the pulpit and the pews had been salvaged from a fire-damaged synagogue in Philadelphia. A curtain strung across the back third of the long room hid the women’s section. 

It was damp and cool in the empty synagogue. Exhausted, I slid into the first pew  and closed my eyes. When I opened them, Father was already wearing his white cantorial robe over his suit. A white satin kippah with silver embroidered threads sat like a crown on his head. Over his shoulders was draped the black-and-white tallis he’d brought with him out of Poland

He and I were alone in the synagogue, as alone as Jews can be in God’s House and in God’s world. Father mounted the bimah and faced the Holy Ark. He stood there for a long time, head lowered, body swaying, his voice muffled. Curious, I drew closer. As I approached him, I saw that he was crying softly and whispering in Yiddish. I felt my throat tighten. A sob escaped my mouth.

Father whirled around, suddenly remembering that I was with him. He hadn’t said a single word to me since we had left our farm. I cried out, “What’s wrong, Papa?”

Not ready to respond, he looked away, covering his eyes with his shaking hands. I tugged at his sleeves. “Tell me, Papa.”

He sighed deeply, looked around the empty synagogue, trying to decide, thinking fatherly things I suppose. And then he cleared his throat and breathed deeply. He’d decided.

“I apologized to my father,” he said. “A Jew must apologize to anyone he has wronged before he addresses the Almighty on Yom Kippur. I begged him to forgive me.”

Father had regaled me with many lighthearted anecdotes about his childhood in Poland and his adventures in Jewish learning. He had been a reluctant, but eventually excellent student from the early years in cheder and on to Talmud Torah and finishing in the Yeshiva. How I had laughed at his stories.

Yet, I, ever sensitive to what wasn’t said as much as to what was, could not recall a time when I had not felt his unspoken sorrow. And now I feared that the unspoken was finding its voice.

“Papa,” I whispered, “How have you sinned?”

Father hesitated.  Perhaps he was deciding whether he should share his shame with me. I ran to him, eager to lighten his heart as he always lightened mine. He looked into my eyes and began to speak.

 “It was Erev Yom Kippur, 1939. Bombs were crashing all around. The streets were clogged. The Germans were advancing. Inside the ancient synagogue my father ministered to his terrified flock. He would not leave them, but he pushed me to go. I yelled, I cried, but in the end I allowed myself to be persuaded.” His voice broke and he gave a great shudder. “Your grandfather chanted Kol Nidre and I slipped away, following the Russian soldiers east, to safety.”

Father turned back to the Holy Ark and intoned aloud what he had only murmured before.

 “Al Chait!” he began, with the traditional opening to the atonement confessional, touching his fist to his heart. “Father, I beg you to forgive me for the sin I have sinned by joining God in abandoning you.”

Something important had been passed to me. But what was it?

The color flowed back into Father’s face. His chest stopped heaving. He was calm. He smiled at me and patted my cheek, then motioned me away. People were arriving. Congregation Sharit Ha-Plitah was filling up. I retreated quickly to the women’s section and sat next to Mother. Soon Father’s clear, strong voice filled the hall. We rose for Father’s haunting rendition of the great Kol Nidre prayer that ushers in the Day of Atonement. 

I have pondered this enigmatic confession all of my life. I sensed its truth as a child and over the years it has become clear. It captures what Fitzgerald called maintaining opposing ideas, here, ideas about God’s qualities and obligations, and our own.

Each person is called to function with dignity in a fallen world, to live with unresolvable dualities. To search for God and find Him in his hiddenness, and if not there, in our own longing. To listen for God’s voice and abide with silence. To call ourselves and our God to account, not in anger but in humility, not seeking to know God, but to cling to Him.

It is as simple as it is profound.

Annette Keen is a freelance writer in upstate New York.