A Spectator To Life’s Seasons
By Malkie Gordon Hirsch Magence
Like a lot in life changed after Moshe’s death, so did where we would daven.
Before his loss, I was never a regular shul-goer. I couldn’t justify dragging little kids out week after week just to spend the morning ushering crying toddlers in and out of the main sanctuary. So, I stayed away for many years, only really going for the “big” Shabbosim—when there was an occasion, or for Rosh Hashanah, Yom Kippur, or Simchas Torah. On those days, a million women squeeze into a tight space with Houdini-like precision while being on call to hand off or retrieve kids from their fathers doing the endless yeshiva shuffle in circles downstairs.
For my boys, though, Moshe had his own rule: as soon as the baby of the family was toilet-trained, he’d get to walk with his father to shul on Shabbos morning. Those mornings meant candy stashes, friends, and all the “fun” shul activities that didn’t actually involve much davening.
Neighbors who were up early would catch the sight of him walking down the block with four boys hanging off him, or clinging to the double Mountain Buggy, as they made the short trek to shul on Island Avenue.
He was Moshe Hirsch—the red-headed pied piper, father of many boys who wanted nothing more than to follow him everywhere.
That was their Shabbos routine, year after year. Until, one day, it wasn’t.
For us, all that remained of the shul that raised some of my boys was a plaque on the entryway with his name on it—and my inability to ever go back. I think about why that is, when this place had been the closest thing to home outside our actual house. But for me, too much had changed. His levayah was held there. The memories of that day—the images I’ll never erase—are more powerful than any davening, event, or social gathering could ever be. I had to close those doors, literally and figuratively.
The loss of a loved one doesn’t only mean their absence. It means the life you built with them—the rhythms, routines, and rituals—gets fractured too. The ripples last a lifetime. Six years later, I still can’t reconcile how the life I once had technically belongs to the same life I’m living now.
We daven somewhere else these days, a shul I have no sentimental attachment to. I see the people there maybe twice a year, and I marvel at how you can live in a close-knit community and still not cross paths with anyone except on the High Holidays. There’s a strange comfort in being a stranger among so many acquaintances. Maybe it’s because I know what I had, and I have no interest in trying to recreate it.
But there’s also a sadness. I’m not part of a sisterhood. I don’t feel the pull to attend events like I once did. My kids choose where they want to daven on any given Shabbos. It’s unconventional, sure—but so is life after the things you never planned for happen.
The shul we attend on Rosh Hashanah doesn’t even have a weekly minyan, so for two days a year I get to watch the congregation in fast-forward. From one year to the next, I notice the changes: a woman I saw heavily pregnant the year before now carrying her baby down the aisle; someone who had been single now walking with a ring on her finger. Even without knowing their full stories, I love being a spectator to their lives, catching glimpses of growth and transformation from the sidelines.woAnd maybe that’s what this season is about—Rosh Hashanah reminding me, year after year, that life is always shifting. Seasons change, families change, I’ve changed. And while my shul journey today looks nothing like it once did, I’ve come to see that there is still beauty in watching those changes unfold, both in others and within myself.
Malkie Gordon Hirsch Magence is a native of the Five Towns community, a mom of five, a writer, and a social media influencer.
