Sunday School Days
(Draft chapter from memoir in progress, “Journal of an Ocean Lover”)
When all Jewish boys turn 13 they have a Bar Mitzvah. Well, not all. But it was something like so many other things I accepted without question. A few Jewish girls, too, had Bat Mitzvahs back then in 1963. Today here may be as many Jewish girls performing them, but it was never something I ever contemplated back then.
It did occur to me the proposition anchoring this long tradition that a Jewish boy becomes a man at 13 did not jive with my experience. But that was a fleeting thought and I went along with the game plan without further reflection. Turns out our rabbi, Rabbi Isaiah Zeldin, agreed. That’s why our synagogue added a three-year confirmation school requirement leading up to the ceremony at 16.
I was in no way close to being a man. I was painfully more immature compared to other 13-year-olds, and the Bar Mitzvah, including the months of preparation leading up to my day at the synagogue, in no way pushed me along toward becoming a man. Perhaps if I was anywhere close to it I might have contemplated a Bar Mitzvah’s true meaning — that I would be helping to bind the Jewish tribe by participating in a sacred ancient ceremony. I had no appreciation of the fact that I was one in a long chain of Jewish boys, err, young men, over countless generations receiving the Torah from their fathers. Nor was I aware that the experience might bring me closer to a Higher Power guiding our ethical choices. Nor that I could contemplate actually calling that One to help me with important decisions.
My memory of this time isn’t entirely dependable owing to the fact that my adolescent angst was baseline high. Adolescence is painful enough normally. But the daily emotional and mental abuse our narcissist Dad perpetrated on us pushed my identity crises out of bounds.
Sunday mornings and early afternoons from ages 10 to 13 were booked with Sunday School at Temple Emanuel, a reform temple on the eastern edge of Beverly Hills at La Cienega Boulevard and Burton Way. Our Mom worked with other parents to form a carpool with classmates who attended my grammar school to deliver us to the synagogue school, about a 15-minute drive from our home.
We had a different teacher each year, none of whose names or faces I remember. This is in contrast with my clear memory of most all the teachers I had in regular school from K through 8th Grade. I do remember clearly the director of the synagogue school, a stern-looking tall thin man named Mr. Sharfman — unanimously unpopular among us students — in charge of discipline. Fortunately, I never met him face-to-face. And despite his reputation, my feeling is that except for one or two recalcitrant kids among us, my fellow Sunday and Hebrew School detainees never met Sharfman either.
Today I have great compassion for Mr. and Mrs. Sharfman, who was a teacher, and all the teachers we had. Their patience was yeoman-like.
Giving up our Sundays for yet another classroom felt outrageously unfair, especially because it seemed that only a minority of our grammar school classmates were made to go to religious school on weekends. Worse, for several years leading up to our Bar Mitzvot, on Tuesday and Thursday evenings, I attended Hebrew School where “prayer service Hebrew” and unfortunately not conversational Hebrew was inculcated into our skulls.
It would have felt more bearable if the lessons were interesting. The teachers and lessons were hopelessly boring, but the fact that my mind was shut, sealed the deal. We never gave the teachers a chance to teach what they knew, treating them worse than public school substitute teachers. They had no chance to enforce any discipline. Some students, the brightest among us who came to learn, including Gary Karton, Marc Bluestein, Cheryl Lewis and “The Twins” (identical sisters) who behaved Buddha-like amidst the fray. But the daring and most mischievous among us, a large bodied bully named Steven, was audacious in his desire to disrupt the rest of us. It never occurred to me I was making a choice to let the loudest class joker take over.
I never complained to my parents. I guess that was the cost of being born to a narcisstic dad and a co-dependent mom. Or, perhaps it was my own guilt. There was a certain pleasure I took in the torture and humiliation of teachers. I could have been tried as a co-conspirator! And so I tolerated swinging between boredom and laughter at the antics of this audacious prankster who constantly tortured the teacher with gags and outbursts. It was not that Steven was particularly creative in his opposition to authority. It was all about mocking whoever stood at the front of the class and exposing the weaknesses of these poor adults standing there.
Every Sunday after several hours in class, we trudged to the chapel for the Sunday morning service. If my energy in class was low, it flat-lined in chapel during prayers, hymns and sermons. Here is where my lifetime distaste for religious services was acquired. As an adult, that time was reduced to the annual High Holy Day services, which, only occasionally, and only in brief moments, stirred anything within. The piercing sound of the shofar or ram’s horn, the call to worship, was one of those few moments that temporarily awoke me, but barely.
We practiced reading Hebrew in class. We learned the alphabet and we could say some simple common contemporary words like henani (here) for roll call. But the biblical or prayer service Hebrew we learned was sadly all recitation. We knew the prayers by heart. And we knew automatically when to stand up and sit back down. Standing up was as great a burden as it was a relief to fall back into the pew.
But in the Fall before I turned 13 it was time to get serious and begin to study for my Bar Mitzvah Torah reading and chanting, as well as my speech. The greatest portion of my program was in Hebrew. My speech was in English. The main driver for this study was a vinyl recording made by Cantor Krawl. His voice with whom I mimicked in word and song for months on end became my only guide. I don’t recall a single instance when a teacher or clergyman sat down with me to discuss actual content.
For me, neither the reading of the Hebrew in my Torah portion, which was from the Psalms of David, Verse 34, nor the chanting of the Haftorah, Verse 23 from Leviticus, was particularly difficult. The Torah reading was all about memorization and we had practically the entire year to do that. The chanting was actually easier. I’ve always enjoyed music and was among a small group of boys in our regular school choir. Putting the words together to the limited number of notes in scriptural chanting actually made the memorization process easier. All this I could work on my own with the record.
All Bar Mitzvah boys or girls are expected to write and deliver a speech before the congregation. The topic was up to the student. Oftentimes, the speech is related to the Torah portion prescribed by the Sabbath date of the service. Today, a common topic is a community service project a student chooses to do in their Bar Mitzvah year. However, back then, it wasn’t a requirement. For many, the speech is the most difficult thing. It proved the easiest for me. That’s because our Dad decided to write it himself. I did not occur to me to object to being relieved of this burden. Our Dad was a brilliant thinker and writer, and I didn’t mind people thinking that I wrote it. It never occurred to me anyone would doubt it, even Rabbi Issiah Zeldin. Boy, would I be wrong.
The most difficult thing for me was overcoming my fear of speaking in front of hundreds of people in the congregation that included my parents and sister, family friends, relatives and schoolmates from regular school. I tried not to think about this. But it was impossible not to when it finally got to the day itself.
Perhaps it wouldn’t have been so frightening if I didn’t feel the pressure to perform. The Bar Mitzvah for me was all about the delivery, never mind the content, its meaning, or any pride in becoming a participant in the religious community and holding my own in leading it in religious practice. I had no clue about the true purpose of this holy tradition.
The sad fact was that the value it held for me at that time was solely in the performance. And then there was the extravagant celebration afterwards. The parties in most cases were outrageously expensive. The value of the performance on the bima (pulpit) was equal to the celebration to come. Our Dad, a successful courtroom litigator, and our Mom, an actress, would have never admitted they consciously applied pressure. But I certainly felt it. How much they believed my performance was a direct reflection of their abilities and skills I will never know. As a parent myself, I understand how that works. Just by them putting me up to it felt like unnecessary pressure.
With all this, despite my worst fears, I did not screw up. I seemed to please Dad and Mom and our many guests, although I wasn’t pleased with myself. I did not feel good about the work I put into it nor about my elocution. Today, listening to the recording made of the service 58 years ago I must say I did rather well. I even managed to deliver Dad’s speech with some feeling despite the absence of intuitive understanding of the words other than believing this was how we are supposed to behave. As I look back, I can appreciate my natural, but painful, acting skills.
The speech over, I sat down behind the bima greatly relieved that my part was over. It was now Rabbi Zeldin’s turn to deliver his sermon, and distracted as I was, overwhelmed with both exhaustion and relief, I was happily unaware that he started his talk briefly and gently calling Dad and I out for what was clearly a speech written by someone far older and wiser than this 13-year-old kid.
Originally published at https://amiasoldieryet.medium.com on June 20, 2023.
