Finding Meaning in the Margins of Prayer Books

For many years, I considered myself a "High Holiday Jew." I had little interest in prayers or praying. But over the past few years, unexpectedly, I've acquired a small but emotionally resonant collection of prayer books. When my parents died and it came time to dismantle their apartment, how could I not treasure their 4-by-6-inch leather-bound siddur, with its embedded metal plaque picturing two men praying in front of the Western Wall? My father used it every Friday night to say Kiddush. The title page announces that it was printed in "Eretz-Israel (Palestine), 1930" and was most likely acquired in 1935, when my parents went around the world on their honeymoon -- "the world" constituted by Europe, Russia, and the land of Israel.