There are many sayings to the effect of “you can’t go back.”
What do they mean?
The usual explanation is that once you’ve left something behind, you can’t recapture it. You can’t go back to your childhood, you can’t go back to the way things were, you can’t relive your first love, and so on.
It has also come to mean that once you’ve left a place of employment, you can’t return to it at any point in the future.
This past weekend, though I had such an experience. I returned to one of my previous synagogues, Congregation Beth Israel in Worcester, MA, as its Scholar-in-Residence. I served “the B.I.,” as it is affectionately referred to by its members, for over eleven years, from 1989-2000.
I have returned to Worcester many times over the years to visit friends with whom I have maintained close relationships, but I had never before returned in any “official” capacity.
Doing so this past Shabbat was a revelation for me. I encountered many people whom I had not seen for nineteen years. Seeing them reminded me of why my years in Worcester were such an important and meaningful part of my professional career.
It wasn’t just that we were glad to see each other - we were! It was also that we got to relive significant moments of our respective lives during those years. Person after person approached me to share their memories of how I had impacted them and their families.
I heard stories of children I had prepared for their B’nai Mitzvah, families for whom I had been present during times of sickness and loss. I encountered couples at whose weddings I officiated who proudly showed off their children to me. A past president thanked me for helping him to become comfortable on the bimah during his presidency. One friend told me that hearing me chant Kol Nidre one year inspired her to write a book. Another gave me two c.d.’s recorded by her daughter, now a respected professor of music and an accomplished harpsichordist. She and I sang duets on the High Holidays when she was a teen.
At Shabbat morning services and at the coffeehouse I presented Saturday night, several former students, now in their thirties, came to hear me davven and perform.
It was at once gratifying and overwhelming. Could I possibly have touched so many lives in so many ways? Apparently the answer is “yes.”
Sometimes it takes the perspective of years to realize one’s accomplishments. And sometimes one has “to go back” in order to do so.
My return to “the B.I.” was an experience that I will not soon forget and a reminder to me of why I became a cantor. I’m so glad I did!