Maryland to Virginia

October 7 

Erev Yom Kippur

We woke up early this morning. Ralph was the only member of his household awake also. A low sun was hidden behind low clouds as I dragged our bags out to the van and did my best to avoid the heavy dew on the tree lawn. It was cold enough in the van to warrant turning on the heater. A swipe with the wipers to clear the dew off the windshield and we were off on a new day of travel.

The route I programmed into the GPS showed we had 4:45 hours to our destination in Hampton, VA. This route was designed to avoid the congested interstate loops around Baltimore, Washington and Richmond. We headed directly into the heart of Baltimore on Reisterstown Rd and noted the look of the old row homes we drove past. They must have had a glorious past. They looked stately, uniformly made as they were of dark red brick with white trim. Many had bay windows. Sadly, poverty lapped at their doorsteps – wooden porches on too many of them needed repair, or had been ripped away altogether. Some were boarded up. A patina of poverty spoiled their historic dignity. We came to the business district and traffic moved along well. A broad boulevard named for Martin Luther King flowed well also, as it took us up to the baseball stadium and around the football stadium to where the Baltimore-Washington Parkway begins. We picked up speed and were pleased with ourselves for taking this route directly through Baltimore without any delays. The Beltway was flowing too, as it took us to the beginning of Interstate 97 which set us on our southward course to the Crain Highway (US 301). I depended heavily on my GPS to keep track of all these different names and numbers and Razelle marveled at how many of these had to be navigated just to get us through the municipal maze.

We passed through bucolic Chesapeake landscape and made good time. I was weary of a school bus we caught up with as it drove its morning rural pick-up route, but I managed to get past it before it made any stops. We pulled into the Walmart in Waldorf, MD to buy beverages to drink for the rest of the drive. We would be starting our Yom Kippur fast late in the afternoon, so drinking fluids as much as we could before we had to stop eating and drinking by that time was an imperative now. The chill of the morning had turned into a bright warm day. It felt good to be cruising along watching the scenery pass (I speak for myself; Razelle didn't get the same pleasure out of this).

Just before coming to the Governor Harry Nice Memorial Bridge we pulled into a visitors' center on the Maryland side for a pit stop. The staff on duty thought we'd just entered Maryland and they wanted me to sign a guest register. I humored them and signed, even though I was leaving their state. I showed them that I hailed from a very distant land. They showed me a signature that came from an even more distant land: from the United Arab Emirates. That was certainly a "gotcha!" in Maryland moment.

Before we could cross this bridge we had to pay a toll. Not a problem – they accepted cash. The bridge itself is quite narrow – one lane in each direction – and an amazing piece of engineering with steel elements going every which way and forming a webbed tunnel high in the air above the broadest part of the Potomac River. Upon reaching the opposite shore we were in Virginia once again.

This part of Virginia has so much to offer history buffs. We passed signs leading us to landmarks worth spending the day – if not an entire week – stopping to take in. But we were hard-pressed to reach our destination before the fast began and the solemn Holy Day commenced. At Port Royal, VA we took the Tidewater Trail (US 17) all the way to Newport News before getting on an Interstate highway. Signs pointed out the way to the birthplaces of Madison and Washington and to historic Yorktown, Jamestown and Williamsburg. We said to ourselves, "next time we're here we'll see these." We've been saying this everywhere we've been along this trip.

When we reached Hampton, VA my GPS failed to give me sufficient notice which lane to be in and I missed my exit. Odd that it would be lagging behind all of a sudden. I maneuvered my way back to where I needed to be and we reached Rodef Shalom Temple just as Rabbi Dror was leaving to run a quick last-minute errand. The timing couldn't have been more serendipitous. She let us in so we could rest in her living room then, shortly thereafter, she returned. I had been here once before on a previous visit so I felt comfortable with this. Rabbi Dror and I had communicated by email and she was expecting us – welcomed us – to observe Yom Kippur at her congregation and stay here for the duration of this sacred day. She had prepared a meal for us in her kitchen: baked salmon and steamed string beans. We had been hydrating ourselves all day and continued to drink water here up to the last minute before the fast began. Rabbi Dror gave us instructions how to stow anything uneaten and rushed off to prepare herself to officiate during the service. I had time to take a quick shower before we had to go to the Temple building ourselves.

We climbed into the cocoon of our van in travel clothes and emerged as butterflies, dressed in our "going to worship" apparel, including a shirt I'd just bought for this day, and a set of earrings Razelle had bought for herself at the same time. As we entered the synagogue, I scanned the faces looking for any I might recognize, so I could reintroduce myself to whomever that might be. No one recognized me.

Razelle and I took prayer books from a table and found seats in the far corner of the large social hall where the service was being held. When Rabbi Dror took the podium to begin the service Razelle and I looked at each other and smiled broadly. Of all the congregations we'd been to on this trip, this one was the most significant to us. This was our Rabbi – our Rabbi Gila. She may have been gone for 10 years, but as far as we were concerned, she was only away on permanent loan. She still belonged to us. We settled in and enjoyed the service.

The Kol Nidre prayer was about to begin. A woman chazzan came to the podium and we all rose for the prayer. Her voice moved us. We were most definitely in the right place for Yom Kippur. Razelle and I followed the service in our prayer books and noticed how wonderfully these had been compiled. Razelle decided we had to order a pair of these for ourselves. Rabbi Dror gave her sermon. It was special to us because her delivery and content took us back to the days when she had led services in our synagogue.

When the services were over we returned to the Rabbi's house. We adults were all fasting now. We sat in the living room and talked. Her daughter Shoshanna was there with her little ones, a precocious 5 year old daughter and a newly born infant. We knew Shosh from Beer Sheva and had been at her wedding. Shosh and Razelle talked a bit, but the little ones needed attending to, so Shosh excused herself and turned her attention to them. Rabbi Dror showed us what sleeping arrangements we could improvise if we stayed in the house, but this meant one of us on a single bed and one on the carpeted floor beside it, or alternatively, one on an upstairs single bed and the other on a downstairs single bed. We really did weigh these options, but in the end we opted to sleep in our van as we had originally planned, parked as it was beside her house on an unobtrusive patch of perfectly flat pavement in the cool night air with a breeze whispering through the branches of the woodlot at the edge of the pavement and the chirping of crickets to lull us to sleep. We pulled the van doors shut with us inside and made the bed comfortable for a good night's sleep. We hadn't slept in the van in a long time and we missed its coziness. It was the right choice.