Jessica Friedlander

On Saturday, March 8, 2025 (the first Shabbat following my mom's funeral on March 5), Sheryl and I went to Bais Abraham Congregation (my mom's synagogue home for almost 48 years) to say Kaddish.

Normally, services would be held upstairs in the main sancturary, but this service was being held in the social hall at ground level, to accommodate some congregants who could not manage the steps.

So, we came in and Sheryl went to the women's side of the mechitzah (divider), and I to the men's side. Before sitting down, we went to a rolling cart at the back of the room which held prayer books for each person to pick up. There were at least three shelves full of the books, so I randomly picked one.

Returning to my seat, I needed to figure out where we were in the service. (The service I know well, but this edition, the orthodox Koren Siddur (prayer book) I do not know. (This orthodox Siddur is different from the one our Conservative synagogue uses in Maryland, not to mention different from the Siddur "Bais Abe" used when I regularly attended in the 1970s and 1980s.)

So, I quickly figured out we were somewhere in the page 400 region, but while flipping through, the book opened to a page seemingly on its own, which was pages 22-23, with Adon Olam ("Lord of the Universe"), normally the end of the Saturday morning Musaf service.

(Photo taken Sun, August 17, 2025; click to enlarge)

However, I was completely stunned to see at that page spread, on the English side (p22):

a 3x3 inch yellow Post-It Note in my mom's handwriting.
(Click triangle to show note.)

It echoed the final couplets of Adon Olam with an attribution to a medieval rabbi and scholar.

Now, this was early March, and I have no idea when my mom would have last been at Bais Abe, but it had to predate her stroke in November, 2024. Furthermore, observant Jews do not write on Saturdays, and this note appears to have been from some class taken before then (i.e., not written during services), but who knows when? The Koren Siddur (© 2009) is moderately new.