Honeycake and Tea - Feb 27 2026

 

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.