I haven’t spent a lot of time at home since I went away to college. One week here, a few days there; I never stay for too long. I don’t have any high school friends left here, and so being home is always a relaxed affair. The one organizing event for my stays is synagogue. Although I never go to Saturday morning services at school, and I love sleeping in, every Sabbath that I am home I wake up early and walk to synagogue.

When I get there, I see my former fellow youth group members, also home from college for winter break; the children of congregants now running around and talking whom I remember as babies; my parent’s friends, eager to know what I’ve been up to; the Rabbis, welcoming me home and asking if I’m planning on taking any Jewish studies classes; the older gentleman who likes to show off his metals from the Israeli War of Independence, coming over to ask me how I’m doing in Hebrew. Yeah, praying happens, but there is also a heavy dose of schmoozing.

For the most part, things haven’t changed that much since I lived here. There is still a mass exodus to the bathroom during the bar mitzvah boy’s speech; the lunch afterward features the same bagels, tuna salad and black and white cookies; the synagogue president is still a bit long-winded during weekly announcements. It is comfortably and wonderfully constant.

In the vast Starbucks-sprinkled, strip-malled expanse of suburbia, synagogue is where I go to see familiar faces and catch up with old friends. It is like a little village conveniently housed in one building. Yes, we are there as a common group of Jews who gather to pray, but we are more than that. We are people who have seen each other every week for years and have become a true community.