Congregation

The car moved slowly down the narrow two-lane road that snaked from the suburbs toward the central city. On the wide plain below, decaying factories and abandoned warehouses stretched toward a downtown skyline barely discernible in the evening haze. A blanket of hot moist air had pushed in the day before and hung over Cleveland like a shroud. Eli Stone could barely make out the synagogue, its dome burnished to a dull gold, dominating a square block of aging tenements whose occupants sweltered in the unexpected heat. Inside the sanctuary, behind thick limestone walls, it would still be cool but by tomorrow, unless the heat wave broke, services would be miserable for everyone.

He steadied the pages of his sermon against the motion of the car and jotted down a few notes in the margins in an almost indecipherable hand. Eli still committed his sermons to memory. It was a lifelong habit and even though he took the pages with him to the pulpit, he seldom referred to them. He looked forward to this evening’s service. There was something immensely gratifying about being in the pulpit on the High Holidays. Religion no longer held a central place in the lives of most of his congregants, but no matter how far they strayed during the year they still flocked back to the synagogue on Rosh Hashanah, like birds following some ancient migratory path, seeking to reaffirm a commitment to their faith.