It has been two hours since Temple Israel was attacked. I can feel the smoke in my lungs and hear the sirens. But I’m 20 miles or 60 years away — riding my bike by the original Temple Israel in Palmer Woods.

This is not for nostalgia or my health. I’m on my way to Focus: HOPE to retrieve my car. Judah drove there for Generation of Promise this morning but got a ride back to Berkley at lunch for National Honors Society before they locked the school down. 

It’s quiet and breezy, but I can’t shake the smoke or sirens.

It has been two weeks since Temple Israel was attacked. Phoebe and I both sitting here writing about it — depending on how you define writing and sitting. She came home from school last Monday and said that a couple classmates beat her to the punch to write about the attack for the Berkley Spectator. I suggested that such a big story deserved to be covered from multiple angles, especially when one of the reporters knows Temple Israel as well as she does. Or she could go with my original idea — Secretary of State Benson’s push to make driver’s training more affordable and accessible by bringing it back to public schools.

I suppose you could say she’s sitting at her computer. Her contorted knees-up, angled-back pose is within reach of her Macbook but bears little resemblance to the proper posture and QWERTY positioning we were taught on our Apple IIGSs in 5th grade typing class. I am vacuuming, folding laundry and looking for other tasks that seem increasingly appealing for their procrastination value. 

Reports and commentary, local and national, have been streaming in pretty much nonstop for the last two weeks. Phoebe’s approach to the story is about the community’s response. She is finding that being part of the community isn’t making it any easier to process how the attack stoked so much fear and triggered such a hopeful response. I remind her about my driver’s ed story idea.

It has been two months since Temple Israel was attacked. Phoebe got her quotes and pictures and filed her story on time. I graduated from vacuuming to cleaning the baseboards to touching up wood floors and furniture. 

When I shut off whatever’s in my ear and think about Temple, I feel that same raw feeling as the night after the attack. We gathered a Shenandoah Country Club and alternated between ugly crying and standing ovations for the tragedy, terror, heroism and miracle that occurred across the street. 

There’s this intrusive thought: I have never felt a particular affinity for Temple Israel the building. It’s big and far and there’s always someone driving in front of you who is not in a hurry to get where they are going and you forgot to bring a change of clothes for when you go to your in-laws’ after. You’re really hungry or too full and, until a couple years ago, you ran the risk of leaving with a goldfish.

But Temple Israel is not a building.

Temple Israel is Rabbi Yedwab meeting with Ben Falik and A.J. Rosenzweig before their wedding. Primarily to listen and then to share Yedwab’s Rule: When there is a tough family issue, it is your responsibility to have the difficult conversation with your own parents. And The Yedwab Twist: When there is good news, you get to share it with your in-laws.

Temple Israel is Cantor Michaels singing one song after another to accommodate the processional of our historically large wedding party. 

Temple Israel is Rabbi Loss coming, as a guest, to Judah’s bris on the second night of Passover and sharing that Passover is a holiday where we answer children’s questions — but maybe not this time.

Temple Israel is a horde of 7th graders going out into the freezing cold for a chance to take off their N-95 masks and smile for a group picture with Judah after his bar mitzvah service.

Temple Israel is Rabbi Lader sitting with my dad and me on a hospital bench next to his wheelchair and allowing idle chatter about the New York Times Connections puzzle to shift into silence and the feeling of sun on our skin.

Temple Israel is Rabbi Bennett taking a quiet moment with Phoebe before her bat mitzvah to acknowledge that moving and losing your grandpa and your dog, all in a matter of days and weeks, is a lot. That he knows she can handle it and that it’s okay if she can’t.