Honeycake and Tea
Feb 27 2026
I sat discreetly in the back,
looking at the backs of heads
skullcaps
and men in black felt hats.
Mumbled along
as they recited passages
in a foreign tongue
that would hurt my throat to say.
And hummed under my breath
as the faithful joined in hymns
that were a dissonant mix
of the tone-deaf
— not blessed by God, but enthusiasts nevertheless —
and a few gifted singers
whose voices carried the rest.
I was unsure
when to rise and sit,
feeling spotlit
as I followed the backs of their heads
bob up-and-down
a beat behind.
Men with bald spots
fringed in grey,
and women
with fashionably coiffed hair
that strained the bounds of modesty,
in and out of their seats
with the knowing ease
of people born to it.
The davening fascinated me,
pious old men
with long beards
reciting quietly
as they rocked back and forth;
communing with God
one-on-one
as the spirit moved them.
I felt presumptuous being there,
uninitiated
in the customs and rituals
they learned as boys and girls
without even knowing it,
imbibed with mother’s milk
like thick absorbent paper.
My tribe, my people;
but I didn’t feel of them.
Perhaps more like an anthropologist
crouching behind a hedge
taking notes,
a documentarian
behind his camera lens.
Or even a voyeur
bound to be outed
like some peeping tom.
Where we all not only want to belong
but need to
I felt apart;
an intruder
from the secular world,
as out of place
as a curse word in a sermon.
I’m not a man of faith
a ritualist
a joiner.
But a coreligionist, nevertheless;
by birth, that is
if not conviction.
But belonging is powerful
and identity hard to escape,
especially
since the powers that be
won’t let you.
So I rose and sat
mumbled and hummed
held the prayer book in my hand,
trying to make sense
of the boxy-looking letters
that run from right to left
I remembered just enough of
to pick up here and there.
The service seemed endless,
and in the over-heated sanctuary
I could feel a trickle of sweat
beneath the new black suit
I’d only planned to use
at weddings and funerals.
Afterward, there was honeycake and tea
and sweet kosher wine,
the timeless refreshments
even I could remember
from my unobservant youth.
Where I shook hands with strangers, nodding politely.
Listened to small talk
about sports and politics
I could have heard anywhere,
the same celebrity gossip
as if among friends.
And watched the kids
with loosened ties and modest skirts,
tearing around
like captive animals
released into the wild.
But still felt I didn’t belong,
unsure
if I’d ever be back.
I wrote this after reading Nicholas Lemann’s New Yorker piece about growing up a highly assimilated Jew in New Orleans in the 60s and 70s. I grew up a highly assimilated Jew in Toronto around the same time. https://www.newyorker.com/culture/the-weekend-essay/a-childhood-in-jewish-new-orleans
He talks about the tension between the established (and mostly German) Jews who desperately wanted to keep their heads below the parapet and fit in, and the more recently arrived Eastern European Jews who were less well-off, less self-conscious about their cultural differences, and more unapologetically tribal in their urban ghettos. To the established community, America represented security while Zionism seemed at best unnecessary, and at worst an unpatriotic and attention-getting expression of tribalism. During WW 2, their belief in Western enlightenment even made these highly assimilated Jews slow to accept the truth about the Holocaust.
Later in life, Lemann returned to his roots. One of my older brothers did as well. I, on the other hand, am a diehard atheist; one of that surprisingly large but very heterogeneous and loosely affiliated group known as “Jewish Atheists”: yes, somehow that tribal qualifier still sticks with us. And I also know that if another Hitler appeared, the “Jewish” part of that label is the only part that would count. When I say in the poem since the powers that be/won’t let you, this is what I meant: as much as we think we can self-determine, our identity is often defined by society at large. There is no escaping it. …Nevertheless, I still count on liberalism and the intellectual legacy of the Enlightenment to prevail over time.
When Lemann refers to the first baffled dip of his toe into a Jewish religious observance, I identified. This is how I felt attending my nephews’ Bar Mitzvahs: there was a sense of alienness and arcane knowledge in the whole affair, which I uncomfortably drifted through feeling I didn’t at all belong in that milieu. Lemann eventually became part of it. I didn’t.
And belonging is essentially what Lemann’s piece is about: the established Jews desperate to be accepted, to feel they belonged in New Orleans high society; and the newcomers, who commit themselves to the belonging offered by the Jewish nationalism of Zionism. Ultimately, the need to belong is one of the most powerful forces in human nature. And considering the tribalism it gives rise too, it’s an oddly unifying concept: everyone not only wants, but needs to belong … in some way, to something.
I took a few liberties in describing the service. In my brother’s Orthodox synagogue, the women don’t sit with the men, they are relegated to an upper gallery. I imagine their hair would in fact be modestly covered, or that they’d be wearing wigs. And the men would cover their heads with skullcaps (I ended up adding this after all), obscuring those shiny bald spots. Also, I’m not sure if “hymn” is the appropriate word.*
But when I began the poem, this depiction of the congregation and that word were fine: I was going to make it more universal, so readers of all religious backgrounds could identify. (And it fits my memory of the High Holidays and Bar Mitzvahs at the Reform synagogue of my youth (also, coincidentally, called Temple Sinai) — the only services I ever attended.) As I continued to write, though, I realized the poem would be far more effective if I made it unapologetically personal.
*Here’s what my AI helper turned up:
Jewish prayer and song use specific Hebrew and Yiddish words like zemirot (table hymns sung during Shabbat meals), piyyutim (liturgical poems), or pesukei dezimra (psalms in morning services), rather than “hymn,” which is primarily associated with Christian worship.
