Lost & Found Tables

Yesterday afternoon I decided to attend afternoon minyan, which has largely depleted to a non-minyan, whoever shows up. only the Rabbi and me yesterday.  Our space sharing arrangement with the USCJ congregation may be contributing to it, as parking was s hard to come by even with a nearly empty building due to building maintenance that halved the already tiny parking lot and sadly, the need for protection from anti-semitic attack that limits access to the building.  For the most part, this isn't worth the trouble of going so people vote with their attendance.  Their Rabbi heard the buzzer, graciously interrupted what he was doing to let me in, and I agreed to stand near the door until services to let anyone else who came by inside if they did not appear dangerous. 

To the corner was the Lost & Found table for the Hebrew School, and in the rack a brochure for enrollment in their Hebrew School, which seems well attended.  The tuition of $1600 staggered me, as it meets only two days a week, but if you want a Bar Mitzvah you gotta pay.  Along the way, you also have to wear a tallit, as that either inside a velvet bag or alone was by far the most common item on the table.  There were gloves, mostly unmatched, something that looked like the cover you would put on your golf driver with a U of Maryland logo, some water bottles, only one rather attractive knit kippah that I think looked feminine but wasn't sure.  I would think that most kids only have one tallit and one carrying bag, they would only have limited places to leave it:  home, car in transport, or at the synagogue, and would notice that it was missing.  The cost would also prompt people to look for them.  But they were the most common unclaimed items.  Gloves are easily replaced and could be dropped anywhere as could water bottles.  And you really don't need to cover golf club heads.

Osher  Lifelong Learning Institute also keeps a Lost & Found table.  The enrollment there far exceeds the enrollment in Hebrew School, the tuition a small fraction of what the Hebrew School charges, though people go there only for the enrichment so it is harder to extort a high attendance fee.  Despite the large enrollment, the Found Table is much smaller.  Water bottles or insulated coffee tumblers seem most common.  People lose gloves, misplace their reading glasses, a pierced earring will fall off, they remove their wristwatch during a class and leave it on a desk.  I did not see any dentures or contact lenses.  Items of this type could be lost anywhere and, unlike dentures or contact lenses, none seemed seriously expensive to replace.  A few of the seniors who attend probably go to few other places but most visit restaurants, libraries, movies, and malls so the lost items could be anywhere.  It's easier to replace them than to pray to St. Anthony of Padua, the patron Saint for Lost Objects, for their return.

I wonder how much of our own archaeological conclusions are distorted by lost things that people never recover that are discovered on dig sites centuries later.  When we find these artifacts, we assume they were important reflections of how people lived.  They could be just as transient and expendable as our water bottles or even our talesim.  A risk of Type 1 error, no doubt.