This past year was our first year with both girls in Sunday school. We had a steady rhythm of Sunday mornings at Temple and monthly Shabbats with other families with young children. It was a nice addition to our school year schedule. Without planning it, though, along with taking the summer off from school, we accidentally took the summer off from Temple.

I say accidentally because it wasn’t planned, and I didn’t even think about it as a thing we were doing. Over the course of the summer, though, when I bumped into “Temple friends,” I felt a pang of longing for a community that is becoming a big part of our lives. This community is special because we all chose the congregation as a path to explore common values, and, for the families in our religious school cohort, we all chose it to help us raise our kids with those values.

Like any group of Jewish people I’ve ever been a part of, we don’t all agree on every element of practice. And like my own family, we weren’t all raised Jewishly. Also, the way we practice is not always parallel with the way we were raised, Jewish or otherwise. But we have all agreed to try to figure things out together, and to shepherd a Jewish identity for our children.

Another piece of this longing I felt is because while we didn’t take the summer off from being Jewish, as we welcomed the relaxing pace of summer, we also let loose on Shabbat. Late nights out or traveling replaced the ritual more than we might have preferred, but for better or worse for a few weeks we traded it for other adventures.

I love the loosening of schedules and predictability in the summer. I savor the long days and the opportunity to lengthen our mornings and evenings. I also appreciate the time to be together as a family away from our local communities. But I also miss some of the touchstones that ground our family – things like knowing we will be home for Shabbat, and even more so now, knowing we’ll see some friendly faces on Sunday morning.

So while we stumble our way to get back to school, I am also looking forward to getting back to synagogue. I look forward to seeing old friends, to meeting new ones, and to the rhythm that practice helps put in our lives.