Hebrew School Flashbacks

Simchat Torah.  The Festival that transformed from my favorite to my least favorite over a lifetime.  Childhood:  Marching with Torah Scrolls, flags, and singing in the evening with a candy apple distributed at the end.  One of those red hard shelled confections that probably still exist but I've not seen in years.  The following day we got off from school, public school some years, Sunday Hebrew School if weekend yom tovim that year.  Hijinx continued with some kids bringing pistol facsimile  water guns, not the super soakers they have now, and tying the tzitzit of the ba-al tefiloh together as he davened musaf.  Torah reading would take a long time since everyone got an aliyah and at the Orthodox congregations a lot of adults came.

Moving on to college, Simchat Torah remained festive but at a different level.  Sure there was singing and dancing with the Hakafot.  But a bridge developed with the Soviet Jews as well.  Despite targeting Jews for religious suppression and identifying them on their state issued ID cards, the authorities always looked the other way on Simchat Torah.  Russian Jewish youth, the parents of those who make Tzahal function today, would assemble in droves for their annual display of their heritage.   It may have been the beginning of twinning, where Bat Mitzvah girls in America would identify and share their simcha with a girl in the Soviet Union.  But on Simchat Torah, we did that in a communal way.  Our University services were festive, but not nearly as festive as the city-wide gathering in a large public space with hundreds or even thousand participants.  While the mass emigration of Soviet Jews has been a good thing, we may have lost the revelry of Simchat Torah as their special day, and our special day, in the process, along with that important ideological achdut.

For me, that is where the inner joy of the occasion stopped.  I do not remember much from my residency days.  Maybe I was on call each year.  After relocating to my current town, the Conservative synagogue had a bimodal celebration.  Adults would gather in one place at about sundown for tefiloh.  The festivities were for the kids, sans any Torah reading at night.  There would be Happy Songs of ten words or less, probably the capacity of the parents as well as the children.  I took my children each year.  The next day I was often Torah reader which gave me a challenge.  Even without the kids, who mostly went to school, the songs were almost the Hebrew School musical cliches.  Guys:  I graduated.  They even gave me a certificate.  This was Hebrew School, the greatest invitation to Jewish attrition of my generation and that of my children.  No way do I want that experience.

Onward to my current shul.  We no longer have the bimodal child/adult events.  A diverse crew came at night, more adults in the morning.  For the last few years, our supply of children has metastasized to other communities where they are junior contributors.  We have only adults now.  But the processional retains the sounds of our insipid Hebrew schools, places that achieve minimalist identification with no capacity to have a song longer than ten words.  Don't sell the kids short.  "Mary Had a Little Lamb" and "Twinkle Twinkle Little Star" each have twice that.  The services are not nearly as long, particularly in the morning, as attendance totals less than 20 men.  The women at our congregation have their own Torah reading, though no single woman can read more than one aliyah.  Even Creation is divided among seven readers.

I am left with a lifetime of progressive atrophy, multifaceted affecting interest, ability, and challenge to excel.  Instead we get by ritually and have replaced solidarity with our Soviet brethren with a mere chewy caramel apple replacing the one with the red hard shell as the highlight of attendance.  We have attrition over my lifetime.  We deserve it.  To what extent I contributed to what is clearly a sour attitude, we can explore, I suppose.