Because this year is Alex's bar mitzvah year, Temple Micah has become a home. Not a dwelling of God or gods, not a metaphor or a heaven or a redemption, but home in the sense of mystery. A place of welcome that discomfits.
Can a doorway resist analogy?
Can I be so proud of secular, if I choose to stand before that door? Can an atheist linger at a portal, and resist the poetry of belief?
Yesterday at the threshold. The doors to the synagogue were locked, as they are when congregants and children do not crowd, when police are not at guard. Three times I pressed the buzzer. Three times the elderly man at camera's end sent a pulse to open the bolt. Three times I pushed at refusal. I knew the reason. I had seen the wood restained last week. Swelling and poor rehanging were my bar, not some act or mystery.
And yet. When after three tries the doors would not open to me, the old man I did not recognize rose from his seat. He led me to accustomed and unsettling welcome deep within.
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