Not infrequently, something simple and seemingly insignificant – a phrase, an image, a song – can trigger a memory so vivid that what in fact occurred decades ago appears as if it happened the other day. Which is precisely what I experienced last Shabbat, the first day of Rosh Hashanah.

Sitting behind me and slightly to my right was a father with his nine- or ten-year-old son. “Abba,” the youngster said to his father, “I learned in school why the shofar is not blown on Shabbat. Do you want me to tell you?” The father replied he most certainly would like to learn the reason, but suggested it might be better to wait until they got home so that Ima and the others can hear it as well. And as the youngster nodded in agreement, I found myself lost in thought and transported to a time when I was not much older than that erudite young man.

Sixty-some years ago, early the morning of the first day of Rosh Hashanah, two men walked into the synagogue on the Lower East Side of Manhattan which I attended with my father and grandfather for the High Holy Days. They found empty seats in the back, and although they wore kippot, neither had on a tallit nor did they bring with them mahzorim (holiday prayer books). The gabbai asked them – first in Yiddish and then in English – if they needed something. The older of the two smiled and shook his head.

Being in a synagogue was clearly something they were not accustomed to. Throughout the long hours of the service they stood when everybody else stood and remained seated otherwise, and both politely declined offers of honorifics that were distributed to members of the congregation throughout the morning. Needless to say, there was more than a little curiosity about who they were and what they were doing here.

The two sat in their seats without saying a word until nearly three in the afternoon, when the afternoon service ended. As everyone packed up and began to leave the shul, the two men, appearing puzzled and troubled, approached the gabbai and asked, in broken English, why the shofar was not blown. The gabbai patiently explained that when the first day of........

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