I could hear Mommie Soph outside my bedroom door. It was well into my bedtime… maybe I was having trouble falling off to sleep. She was murmuring her prayers through the quiet of the darkened hall.
The summer when I turned 7 I moved across our upstairs’ center hall from the bedroom we shared, to share the bedroom with Paul. That Fall Paul would enter Union College and I would have that room with its large tropical fish tank & wonderful club chair (which I still have) to myself.
Two years later Lynn would enter Western College for Women (now a part of Miami of Ohio), and our upstairs would be quieter still.
And on a given weeknight in the Fall when my Mother would go into New York to stay with my Father at our pied a terre In Tudor City… our 2nd floor census would decline to Mommie Soph, our two Bedlington Terriers and me (Bessie’s room being on the 3rd floor).
That did not deter Mommie Soph from saying her blessings at the door of each of the bedrooms… even the ones that were vacant.
The central prayer for the Jewish Faith is called the Shema. It’s quite simple really. It professes the radical concept (in the days of its inception) of monotheism. Our lengthy worship services are nothing more than an adornment to this very eloquent and brief prayer… “Hear O Israel (in this context “Israel” refers to a “people” and not the Nation State): the Lord our God; the Lord is One.”
This prayer is immediately followed by a passage from Deuteronomy called the V’Yahaftah which translates: And you shall love the Lord, your God, with all your heart and with all your Soul, and with all your means. And these words, which I command you this day, shall be upon your heart. And you shall teach them diligently to your children and speak of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk on the way, and when you lie down and when you rise up. And you shall bind them for a sign upon your hand, and they shall be for frontlets between your eyes. And you shall inscribe them upon the door posts of your house and upon your gates.”
This concluding injunction “upon the door posts of your house”, is the reason Jews place a mezuzah on the door frames of their homes… a mezuzah being a small casement containing a tiny scroll with the prayers noted above (and others).
In our home a mezuzah was not only placed at our front door; but at each of our bedrooms. The custom is to touch the mezuzah, and then kiss your fingers, and possibly say a prayer.
It is this custom that brought Mommie Soph to my bedroom door each evening on her round of bringing a blessing to each of our rooms.
I know not her specific prayers, nor her words… just the surrounding soft, barely audible chant that cushioned the strength of the sentiment. There was a sense that our home had just been infused with a helping of emotional chicken soup. There was a protective calm, and it felt as if I had just been tucked in… I could close my eyes, listen to the bubble of the tropical fish tank in my room, and drift into sleep.
I didn’t fully appreciate the force of her feelings then. I have a better understanding now. And there are nights when I lie down in the evening I can hear her whispered cadence and tones of reassurance… It’s like I have released some precious time from an even more precious bottle. And it is a bottle as fine as any wine I have ever experienced.