On Sundays, Rabbi David Posner Skips Lunch and Tickles the Ivories David M. Posner is retiring next year as senior rabbi at Temple Emanu-El on Fifth Avenue at 65th Street, a Reform Jewish synagogue that counts Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg among its 3,000 members. Rabbi Posner, 64, who grew up in Brownsville, Brooklyn, started there immediately after his ordination from Hebrew Union College in Cincinnati, in 1973. He lives with his wife and childhood sweetheart, Sylvia - he calls her Syl - in a building that is a 15-minute walk from work, and said he expected to feel both happiness and relief after delivering his last High Holy Days sermons beginning on Sunday. EARLY START My wife and I normally wake up every day at 6 or 6:30, because that way we don't have to rush. We live at East 71st Street and Third Avenue, the same building where we started out in 1973. Our daughter and son-in-law, who was one of my bar mitzvah boys, and their baby live in the building. THE SHAVE Next to piano, my daily hobby, my routine is great shaving. It takes me a full hour in that bathroom. I do an entire thing of shaving with the grain, against the grain, both on the face and on my head. I have a nice small Bose radio in the bathroom, so I can listen either to WNYC news or to music on WQXR. And I can look in the mirror and get ideas; I can get sermon ideas, I can get programmatic ideas. I have an encounter with myself. BREAKFAST My wife and I have breakfast every weekday morning at 8 o'clock at P. J. Bernstein's delicatessen. But on Sundays we don't go out for breakfast together. I'm out by 8:30 a.m. and walking over to the shul. I'll pick up a cup of coffee and maybe a plain bagel. THE BATTLE STATION In the morning, I will go downstairs and see what is happening in the religious school. I'm the friendly older statesman who walks around the building and says hello to everybody. And if people do want to see me, I will see them, if they are contemplating a wedding or something of that nature. If I have a morning unveiling, or God forbid, a funeral, that will occupy time. But most of the time, I'm here at the temple. This office is my battle station. I never have lunch. When I came here from Cincinnati in 1973, I learned that the rabbis of Temple Emanu-El do not have lunch. We are so accustomed to doing funerals in the middle of the day that lunch might just as well be forgotten. And then, you can have dinner and break your fast with a good martini. PIANO PRACTICE In between things at work, I'm always in the back, at the piano. I usually play lots of Brahms, lots of Beethoven, Schumann and Chopin. I've been doing about two hours a day lately, an hour here and an hour at home. I play for Syl and I play for my kids, but mostly for Syl, I like her to hear. When I play, I feel like I am communicating with the composers. We do go out for dinner virtually every night of the week, and mostly with members of the congregation. I try to do fish or something that's reasonably lean. And a glass of white wine. Back in the old days I would have two martinis. OR HOME FOR THE HOLIDAY For Rosh Hashana, I would say that we would be having around 14 to 16 people over. We order in, because we like to keep a meticulous kitchen. There is certainly going to be a round challah and apples and honey. On a usual Sunday, we turn on the Fox News at 10 o'clock and kind of fall asleep to it. At my age, if you sleep from 11 o'clock till 6, you've had a long night's sleep.