Balls and Walnuts
more than you ever wanted to know
Hebrew School
I never described the fallout from my Hanukkah Lobster story. Humiliated in front of my first grade class, unmasked as an ignoramus, I vowed to learn more about my religion. I demanded that my parents get me some religious instruction.
In our community’s synagogues, Hebrew school provided preparatory instruction for Bar and Bas Mitzvahs. I was too young for that. For a few years, I went to Sunday School, and I have pleasant memories making challah by braiding instant biscuit dough ropes, saving quarters to plant trees in Israel (much needed for our New and Improved Israel, AKA Israel the Expanded Edition, AKA Israel post the 1967 Arab-Israeli war), and doing crazy shit with macaroni, Elmer’s glue, and gold spray paint; and somewhere along the way, I forgot my desire to learn more about Judaism. Religious instruction, such as it was, consisted of stories about David and Goliath, Samson the Crazy Motherfucker, Esther and Haman. This was fun. Pleasant. A great excuse to get out of the house on the weekend.
Then Hebrew school happened.
I think this began in third or fourth grade — after school, about two, maybe three hours, twice a week. A kickass student in regular school, I sucked big-time in Hebrew school. Maybe it was the seemingly endless stream of female Israeli teachers who insisted on pronouncing my name Dog, which meant all the other students got to call me Dog, too. Maybe it was the irrational mode of language instruction which has left me with a Hebrew vocabulary of fewer than two dozen words. (Sheket bevakeshah means, “Quiet, please!” I can still count to six. Ma means what, ken and lo, yes and no. Can I even muster a dozen words?) Maybe it was the unvarnished pro-Zionist propaganda, force-fed to us from the very beginning.
No, it was my fellow students’ class consciousness which galled me the most. I was from Temple City, a lower-to-middle middle class community, while the other kids were from Arcadia, an upper-middle class (and outright upper class) community. These kids went to Hawaii and Europe for vacations. I was dragged along by my parents for their cross-country Voyages of the Damned. It took me a few years to figure out why they wouldn’t talk to me (and the girls wouldn’t even look at me), but ultimately, class consciousness was the only thing that made sense.
As we neared our 13th birthdays, we were phased out of our regular classes and began to meet with our temple’s cantor, Morris Solomon. The guy would have been a ringer for Seymore Butts’s Cousin Stevie. He annoyed me with his illogical, obdurate beliefs — for example, Don’t shut the lights when you leave. It uses more power, shutting them on and off! — but I liked one thing about him. He didn’t give a damn if we understood what we read or chanted; all he cared about was pronunciation. Say the words correctly, don’t eff up the cantillation trops, and he’d be your best buddy.
In all of this, one thing was conspicuously absent: any sort of moral, ethical, or cultural instruction. I remember one, just one time when a rabbinical student (subbing for our regular teacher) spent an hour discussing the meaning and implications of this law from Leviticus*: “Thou shalt not put a stumbling block in the path of the blind.”
It was an eye-opener. And when our usual teacher returned, I felt robbed.
I’m dimly aware of thousands of years of such ethical discussions, Talmudic and post-Talmudic, and I would love it if someone (Shaina, perhaps?) would turn me on to an Idiot’s Guide intro to some of the good stuff. Diving straight into the Talmud didn’t work out for me — another story for another day. They’re handsome books, the two volumes I own, but I’m way too ignorant to appreciate them.
So I guess I never quite lost that desire to know more, to not be an ignoramus. Even if I am an agnostic, or perhaps merely an atheist who wishes he could believe, I still find myself wanting to know more. If nothing else, the ethical discussions are invaluable to me — as a father, a writer, a doctor. There’s good stuff out there, people. It’s not all mythology.
D.
*I often hear — usually as a flippant remark — that all of Leviticus can be disregarded. The wisdom of that one commandment proves them wrong, I think. (And if you think it’s obvious, you’re not thinking metaphorically.)
I don’t know, not being Jewish, but I suspect that for a Jew, there’s a certain personal incentive to learn more about, well, being a Jew. Since (like Islam) Jewishness is more than just religion, it makes sense.
There have to be adult schools available. There must be something available on the web, surely?
I haven’t read Leviticus much. When I do, I’ll read the King James version.
indeed, as dean says, “jewishness” is more than just a religion, it’s a way of life. which is cool.
as to an idiot’s guide, i’m sure there is one. like, seriously, go to your nearest borders or barnes and noble and look at the self-help books, and you’ll find at least one on judaism. other than that, my second choice would be to actually search out a rabbi. i think you’ve told me there aren’t any temples near you, but many temples have websites and rabbis have email addresses, and you could probably find one that would be willing to give you some pointers.
good luck! and of course, i’d be willing to discuss anything with you, providing i know about it. 🙂
as for dean, you are losing so much by restricting yourself to the James Dean, i mean, King James version of the bible. Although it keeps the same premise in many books, much of it is sensationalist, designed to provide “sound bites” for teachers of the Christian religion. I am not currently a Christian, i lost those beliefs some time ago, but when i still felt some connection to those beliefs, i found that learning a little Attic (sp?) Greek and reading some of the passages in an earlier form gave some new insight, and then the little bit of Hebrew that a Jewish friend had the kindness to translate for me, even more so. So much is lost in translation.
as to “jewishness” and Shaina’s comment, i agree wholeheartedly. I have a friend that i speak to on IRC, an Israeli going to Brandeis, who is no longer religious in even the remote sense, but the tradition and lifestyle still permeates who he is. He speaks Yiddish in the home. He reads Hebrew and studies the philosophies, and he celebrates, every holiday. I often poke fun by calling him the Easter-Christmas Jew, but it is important to him, because it keeps his connections to his family and his home strong. I would say that you have just as much, if not more, reason to study your religious traditions and their meanings now that you can actually look at them with a critical eye.
I know when i realized i could not be a Christian, i finally figured out which of their traditions made me feel i should be in the first place. (body is a temple, respect and honor, family above all else but god)
p.s. you might note that many of those are also Jewish concepts, i was just raised as a Christian.
Hi folks! I have books. Lots of books with lots of commentaries. I guess I should have distinguished between Biblical Judaism (with which I’m reasonably familiar) from later Jewish “wisdom writings”, for lack of a better term. I have a few of those books, but I fear I haven’t chosen wisely.
Ryan: it’s the sound bites I read the King James for.
When I was about 12 or so a Jewish friend invited me to attend Sunday school with her. I’d been raised (in a desultory fashion) a Methodist, complete with our own Sunday school classes. Besides the shock of the Jesus-not-being-the-Messiah being discussed so casually, the next biggest shock was that there were lots of games and food and songs I knew. They even ran down to the local bakery for extra treats (the most enormous cinnamon roll from Rose’s that was ever made, it seemed to me).
My own Sunday school was very dry and Puritan by comparison with our store bought cookies and juice, even though we did have some lively discussions of doubt over the existence of God, and I often pined for the far looser Jewish version thereafter.
I’ve often thought since then that churches would do a lot for religious tolerance if they’d just organize some Sunday school exchanges – it was a positive experience I never forgot, and I imagine most other kids would feel the same.
My friend from university told me Hebrew school was “A way to learn to read backwards and spit at the same time.” which always made me laugh, and feel a bit jealous because how cool is that??
Bahrookatah all annoy all a hay noo, melancholy baby…
Part of my family is Jewish and I spent many a Hannukah night reciting the evning prayer (as a kid I called it the ‘present prayer’ because there was a Gift afterwards…lol.) but mostly we celebrated Christmas and I was sent to Sunday school (although I did go to the temple a lot) and I always felt that I liked being able to switch back and forth between religions, sort of picking an choosing the pieces I liked and incorperating them in my life. Maybe it’s sacreligious – how would I know? But it’s still nice knowing a little bit about both religions. I’d like to learn more about Islam too, and Budhism…and whatever else is out there.
Sam – eternally curious, but not very serious.
Sometimes I wonder if I have any strictly sectarian readers . . . and then I remember Blue Gal! The rest o’ you are all a bunch of heathens 😉
I Like being a heathen!!
(yells a tarzan yell and swings around the jungle!)
There’s a lot to learn about Jewishness from “Radio Days”, Woody Allen. Very informative indeed. 🙂 I think if ya wanna know more after that, you can go to Coney Island and visit w/ my cousin Charlotte, sister to Gertrude, sister to Auntie Sylvia who once was a boardwalk dancer. No Nathan hotdogs for them, I tell ya. They were kosher hetherns.
I once had a fabulous opportunity to see the Klezmer Conservatory live in Boston. Man a-live… I danced so much that night I had to see my podiatrist the next day…
And to answer the age old question, “Why is this night different?”- Because I said so!
What’s missing from my life: access to good klezmer. Gogol Bordello has some klezmer flare about them, though, and that’s how I usually get my fix.
I remember that ‘gear’ in Hebrew means chalk.
That’s pretty much close to all.
Mark, that doesn’t sound even remotely familiar. I’ve forgotten so much. Abba, Ema (father, mother), those are another two. Ma ha’she’ah (or something like that) — what time is it, a frequently asked question by yours truly since I was always anxious for class to be over.