I remember some sixty-odd years ago, waiting to see if the predictions would come true. Not very different from today. Sixty-five years later, they are still forecasting anywhere between one and twenty-four inches, with no real clue what havoc the Ribono Shel Olam actually has planned.

As it stands, they were right. Who is they? I am not sure. All I know is that the streets are covered and the memories of my youth are now uncovered.

Actually, they awoke last Thursday, when the radio and texting pontificators assured us that by Sunday morning, the New York area would be coated in a white blanket. That mattered, because we had a bris scheduled for Sunday morning. It was touch and go. The mohel had to get there from Brooklyn and pasken whether the baby was ready. Boruch Hashem, he was, but there were some people who simply could not make it from the tri-state area. I can just imagine all those who had to travel by plane. A bris can be held in almost any weather. A plane flight, however, is not so poshut. By Motzoei Shabbos, cancellations began popping up, and those waiting to come back from Eretz Yisroel had to contend with both snow and the Ayatollah.

But watching the snow swirl, I was not thinking about planes. Rather, I was conjuring memories of snow days and school cancellations.

Back in the 1960s, news was not instantaneous and Zoom did not exist. When it snowed deeply enough, there simply was no school. My father was the dean of the school (no one called elementary school heads roshei yeshiva in those days), so I was expected either to know whether there would be school or at least influence the decision that there would not be.

Anticipation was not instantly gratified. There was no email, no texting, and no automated phone call announcing closures. No websites. No recorded messages. When a real blizzard hit, we had one way of knowing whether school was closed.

We had the radio.

For those who don’t remember such a thing, it was a box that had a dial and many different stations. One of them was called WOR. It was (I’m not sure if it still is) a radio station, and it announced the schools that were closed because of the snow.

I do not know what WOR stood for or if it stood for anything at all. All I know is that on snowy mornings in the 1960s, we huddled in blankets in our freezing kitchen, holding cups of cocoa, waiting to hear the name of our school announced over the air.

Because my father was the dean, I was supposed to know the outcome before it was broadcast. But he kept it close to the vest, and even if I knew, I hated the 7 a.m. phone calls from friends asking whether school was closed, so I would tell them to listen to the radio like everyone else. They complained that my father never called it in. But he did. We were just not the first on the list. After all, Yeshiva starts with Y.

I began getting up before dawn to listen carefully and write down the exact time our yeshiva would be announced. I could tell my friends that they missed it. My sisters, who commuted by subway to Rabbi Garber’s Esther Schoenfeld School on the Lower East Side, joined in the vigil.

As the announcer droned on, it felt endless. So many non-Jewish schools. Saint this in Mamaroneck—closed. Our Lady of that in Scarsdale—closed. Holy something or other in Freeport—closed. On and on it went. Academies. Prep schools. Libraries. Nothing that sounded remotely like a yeshiva.

And then it happened.

Yesheeba Cha-Cha Sofer—closed.

Yesheeba… and Meseebta Chain Berlin—closed.

I cringed when they called Chaim “Chain.” But still two for the good guys. Years later, that same feeling would return while listening to election returns from distant states.

The YMCA of Manhattan would open at noon.

Yeshiva of Flatbush—closed.

More schools. More waiting.

I did not move from the radio. I would not even go to the bathroom. Our school still had not been announced.

Yeshiva and Mesivta Toras Chaim of Greater New York at South Shore was a long name, the result of a merger between my father’s Yeshiva of South Shore and Rabbi Schmidman’s Yeshiva Toras Chaim in East New York. I was convinced that the announcer simply refused to say it. He had struggled enough with Cha-Cha Sofer.

The phone calls came in. My friends were right. Our school had not been named.

I was crushed. It felt like my team never made it out of the first round.

My sisters’ schools were not announced either, but at least they had a class mother who called. I had nothing. I was sure my father had called it in. The station issued a secret code to prevent mischievous children from canceling school and he guarded it carefully. But he had already left the house before I woke, disappearing into the blinding snow sometime before six in the morning. There was no way to reach him.

I would never dare rummage through his desk to find the code and call it in myself.

The announcer was about to return to his regularly scheduled program. The clock ticked toward its final seconds.

And then, like a buzzer-beater, he stopped.

Something had just come in.

He stumbled over the words, clearly unprepared for what lay ahead.

And then he said it the way everyone on Long Island knew it:

Yeshiva of South Shore. Closed.

I looked at the clock and noted the time. March 22, 1967. 7:23 a.m.

And quietly, to myself, as if I had just heard the swish of a winning basket or the crack of the winning home run, I whispered: YES!

Things are different these days. Many walk to yeshivos that are on almost every corner. Others have remote. Others call for yeshiva no matter what.

I understand yeshivos. But public school? I heard that Mamdani paskened that there will be school via remote. Maybe the next generation of youth won’t vote him in!

Just saying.