A new discovery – the telephone!

A few days before our synagogue’s musical Taste of Shabbat, a Kabbalat Shabbat service that meets quarterly at a member’s home (and for which I am one of the musicians and organizers), I decided to check the online signup sheet. Who was coming? What dishes would they bring for the potluck dinner? How many chairs and siddurim would we need to schlep from the real shul to the makeshift one?

It was time to get organized.

Much to my chagrin, only seven people had registered.  Typically, this haimishe service, with its lively music and bountiful buffet, attracts more than 50 congregants from Congregation Shomrei Emunah in Montclair.

What happened? Even for a congregation accustomed to last-minute RSVPs, this seemed, well, pathetic.

Should we just hope for the best, or should we be proactive? Perhaps an email or text reminder would help.

“Wait a minute! What about calling people? On the telephone!” I suggested to the hosts. Feeling somewhat heretical and nostalgic, I volunteered.

At the very least, I would leave a voicemail. In the best-case scenario, I would reach a human and have a conversation. It was worth a try.

I left several voicemails; a few people returned my call. Some even answered the phone, despite an unknown number on the other end. Everyone appreciated this personal invitation.

Something magical started happening as my Taste of Shabbat calls proceeded.  Savta Shirley of blessed memory (my daughter-in-law’s grandmother) came to mind. She used to describe a phone call as a visit. She savored this special time that kept her connected to friends and family.

As I made my calls, I also enjoyed visiting with congregants. We chatted about our families, a daughter’s wedding, the state of the world, and the state of the synagogue. No one seemed in a rush. There were no distractions. With a cup of tea in one hand and a landline phone in the other, I felt transported to a simpler era. I became reacquainted with my community. … and with my telephone!

I began to reminisce about how technology and our telephone usage have changed over the decades. For example, that evening, my phone was not attached to a wall, nor did it have a long, curly cord that stretched from the kitchen to my childhood bedroom.

Neither was it a rotary phone, with its short curly cord and clunky receiver that rested on a handset cradle on a desk. When I dialed, I didn’t include Esplanade (ES), Nightingale (NI) or Dewey (DE), common exchanges in my neighborhood in the 1950s and 60s.

As a parent, I remembered when the phone rang in pre-cellphone days.

“Who’s this?” I naively asked, as the caller was always a mystery.

“Dan, it’s for you!”  I would shout to my son from the kitchen to the attic. Before he could pick up the extension, I’d sneak in a brief conversation with his friend.

“How’s your mom? … Dan tells me you’re going skiing for vacation.”

Conversations with me (or whoever picked up the phone first) were just good manners. Screaming across the house to get someone’s attention, well, that was another story.

My daughter, Emily, always the pioneer in the family, was the first to get a cellphone. As a college freshman, it was a necessity. No longer tethered to a phone in her dorm room, she was free to roam and communicate from any location.

A vacation in London decades ago gave me a crash course in modernity. When I exited the Tube station, I noticed all the pedestrians were talking to themselves. Out loud!  Had the whole city gone bonkers? I learned that the universe had discovered cellphones and left me behind.

But never mind the flip phone or even my first smart phone. My favorite phone was the one my uncle rigged up for my best friend and me when we were kids. It helped that Unky liked to tinker with machines and that my parents had a friend who worked for AT&T.

So before you could say “ring-a-ling,” Maddy, in Apartment 5J, and Merrill, in Apartment 4J, shared a private line. Along the side of the building, a dangling wire connected two repurposed phones. A buzz that sent shivers down your spine alerted us to an incoming call. This was much more sophisticated than the technology it replaced — banging on the bathroom pipes to communicate. We could not believe our good fortune.  I spray-painted my phone gold and felt like a princess.

Way back in the 1950s, my uncle invented his own version of “Caller ID.” Not one to be bothered with answering junk calls, he set up a signal worthy of the CIA.  When my mother wanted to reach him, she would let the phone ring twice and then hang up. Unky (her bachelor brother) would then call back.

This system was so successful that when my sister and I later moved out of the house, we had our own signals to reach him.  Didn’t every family operate like this?

As I reflect on my personal quirky history with the telephone, I have mixed feelings. Of course, I love Facetime and Zoom, the ultimate phone calls. There’s a convenience to living life on your smartphone, as long as you don’t lose or misplace it.

As this wave of nostalgia rolled over me, I remembered when we didn’t make appointments to call a friend; we just picked up the phone and dialed. I recalled when pedestrians looked both ways crossing the street, not down at their cellphones, and when drivers focused on driving, not talking on their phones. I remembered quiet train rides, when I wasn’t privy to the details of a stranger’s personal life.

The old-fashioned telephone call worked its magic for the Taste of Shabbat. As I practiced the art of conversation, I also learned that we needed more than seven chairs for the service. We’d have an abundance of food. We needed to provide a ride for someone who doesn’t drive at night.

My evening on the phone was a success. The only thing missing was the spray-painted gold telephone that made me feel like a princess.

Merrill Silver and her husband live in Montclair; she’s a freelance writer and teaches ESL at JVS of MetroWest. Her work has appeared in the New York Times, Hadassah magazine, the Forward, the New York Jewish Week, and other publications. Find her at merrillsilver.wordpress.com