April 2006 - נִיסָן .. אִיָּר תשס״ו Nisan..Iyyar 5766

Just before Passover this year, my brother, Scott, and I will return to our parents' home for the last time. We sold the home last month. It sold in two days and the first day was a blizzard with two and a half feet of snow. When we go there the snow will have all melted and the grass will be growing green again in anticipation of Spring. The evergreens in front of the bay window in the living facing the street will perk up and the maple tree on the front lawn will probably have deep purple leaves. In the back yard where Scott and I used to play football and wiffle ball home run derby, an oak tree has grown too large for the tire that once protected it as a sapling. Now the new owners of the home will have to explain to their two young boys how someone slipped the tire over a thirty-foot tree. At the other end of the yard are the trees that we planted when Barbara and my children were born. It is a tradition to plant a tree at the birth of a child and then use its branches for that child's chuppah were she or he is married. We planted the trees in my parents' back yard because Barbara and I were just starting out. I was in rabbinical school when Rinat was born and when I was ordained Barbara was pregnant with Shai. Eitan was born when I was the rabbi in San Luís Obispo, but it did not seem that San Luís Obispo would be our home when Eitan was married. So now a young Jewish couple and their children will tend those trees. [Maybe I will build up the courage someday to bother them and tell them why I need the branches of their trees.]

Inside the house were the rec (short for recreation) room and the kitchen, where we spent most of our lives growing up. In the rec room we watched television together. Mostly we watched football and baseball, but I also remember watching the Lassie, Flintstones and Batman shows together as a family. [My father bought our first color television so that we could watch the bowl games on New Year's Day.] But most of all I remember sitting almost every night at the kitchen table and having dinner together. We discussed everything (and I mean everything) vigorously. It was like a nightly debating society. It did not matter which side of an argument I took, as long as I was able to think and defend my position. Perhaps the next night, we might continue the same subject but we may have changed sides. It did not really matter which side we took, it was the discussion that gave us something to do together at dinner.

I lived in that house with my parents from the time I was six years old until I left for college. Four years later I was married to Barbara and we returned to Israel as husband and wife. From then on, we would live in our own homes. I once heard it said that a person has grown up, when going to visit his parents, he does not say I am going home. But the truth is one does not grow up until his parents pass away. So I will be going home to New Jersey one more time, and then I will come home to all of you. Thank you for your love and support.

Chag pesach samayach. Happy Passover.

—Rabbi Harry A. Manhoff, Ph.D., D.D.

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