Dear Beth El, Utica, Friends,
As I transition to yet another aspect of retirement – setting aside my white Cantorial robe and tall kipah – I wish to thank you all for entrusting your High Holy Days leadership with me for these twenty some-odd years.
Beth El has allowed me the space and time to practice my art, deepen my spirituality and perpetuate the Traditional Conservative liturgy I hold dear. I hope that my art has brought beauty into your lives, that whatever spirituality I was able to conjure has inspired your own sense of k'dushah and that you have come to value along with me the rich tradition I represented during our shared Days of Awe.
Now it is time to pass the baton to Rabbi Geier. I have come to know Gustavo, albeit from a distance, during the long and arduous process of searching for your full-year spiritual leader. I believe that you are now in excellent hands. I ask that you offer Rabbi Geier your trust and patience, as you have offered them to me. I am certain that you will find that he is an individual of integrity and emotional depth. I also sense that there are many "stories" that his life experiences will convey, and that these will enrich you in ways that are both obvious and unforeseen. As sad as I am to be leaving, I do so with a heart that is warmed by your future prospects as a shul.
The High Holy Day season before I first came to Beth El, I served as Hazzan at the Jewish Community of Amherst. Amherst, MA was the home of the late, great poet Emily Dickinson. The JCA is housed in the former Dickinson family church building, replete with stained glass windows announcing the Dickinsons' support of their worship community. I think it is meaningful, therefore, to share with you a poem I wrote several years ago about Emily Dickinson, as I now take my leave with my wishes for many meaningful High Holy Days seasons to come.
With thanks and deepest affection to you all,
Cantor Larry Fader
Emily,
To sign away
What apportionable parts
There be, between
The storm's heaves
And your
Too still,
Too solitary
Respite room;
It is time,
To fetch
The Spring tomatoes,
Unripened,
Loden Green,
You will find
Camouflaged
On thinning vines;
To pluck them,
Emily,
Before they soften
From unseasonable cold,
Spill their final seeds
To the forbidding
Earth;
Go, now,
Number all the pennies
In your tall, glass tea cup:
These for William,
These for Lavinia,
These to leave behind,
Just so;
Set the holy water a boil,
Put up the bright yellow squash
You tended for
Some other woman's
Season;
And sit,
Emily:
Patiently waiting
For that solitary fly
To interpose between
Your eyes and blindness;
It is time,
Emily;
It is time;
At last,
It is time
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