A week ago Friday, winter on the North Fork showed up with a vengeance. It’s on those frigid nights that I think to myself, “There is no way we’ll have a minyan.” But then, as I left the house and walked half a block to the synagogue, counting cars, I did quick math and hoped for the best. Sure enough, once inside, I saw we had a full minyan. “Wow,” I thought, “we are a persistent people. We seek out our identity and our close degrees of separation, regardless of the degrees outside. The minyan on that cold night created an intimate warmth of a personal people, and a corporation of free individuals.

Sara Bloom