Yesterday I shared a parking lot with four Jewish women who were praying at a rest stop off the Jersey Turnpike. I saw them all standing with the western sun at their backs, rocking gently back and forth while they read their prayers from the tiny books that they held before them in both their hands. They stood in a staggered line beside their car so that some of them prayed from the asphalt and some from the sidewalk among the weeds and the wild mustard that were growing there. They were young women all of them, and they wore long sleeves and long loose skirts that wimpled in the breath of wind whenever it blew across the lot.


I do not fully understand what they were doing, and I do not pretend to know what their worship meant to them, what thirst or need it satisfied. But as I passed them by to perform my own prayers in yet another remote corner of the parking lot, I felt a quiet awe that something as ancient and reverent as this still moves other people in the world, and I was glad to have their company.