Good Discussion

My AKSE presence usually too often puts me at the intersection of Hebrew School and Rabbinical Junior College.  There are the trivial perfunctories:  yasher koach, Shabbat shalom, nice tie.  We go through the motions.  Sermons at or above threshold, rarely erudite, and challenges to what the Rabbi said make me wonder about the validity of our appointed teachers nurturing challenges.   Our legacy and folk practice does not seem to be that at all, starting with Hebrew school where obedience creates the pathway to the Class Honor Roll a lot more reliably than intellect does, at least for my class and my kids' experience.  Challenge to our Executive Committee seems the most reliable way to get placed on our inbred Nominating Committee's Do Not Call List.  What we say we value too often doesn't measure up to an assessment of the actual experience.  And at least for me, it generates a measure of resentment.

But sometimes the .200 hitter gets a hanging curveball for a moment in the limelight.  Our Education Committee hit that home run this week.  They sponsored a movie for us to watch, Why the Jews?, a documentary by John Curtin that explores why Jews have been disproportionately prominent in advancing science and culture in the past 150 years, particularly in America.  We were asked to view the movie in advance, then discuss its ideas and implications.

Basically, this is an hour-long film that one would show at a USY or Ramah to tell the kids how wonderful they all are and why they should appreciate their origins.  One more ego boost to the Children of Entitlement.  To play the same film for an audience already part of the dominant culture, highly successful with advanced degrees though a notch or two short of the elite that the movie profiled, the reaction in more circumspect.  While the Rabbis want to rally their USY troops to have ethnic pride and appreciation for what their sponsored agencies are doing for them, the reality when teased out is much different.  Those of us on Zoom could easily identify that difference.  Those who succeeded had to schect part of those institutions to go to their preferred direction.  Obedience may get you on the Honor Roll in Hebrew School or a seat on the synagogue Board where dissenters are often scorned, but Disruptive Innovation, that mixture of insight, chutzpah, and independence moves the world ahead.  Once done, Jews who did very little to move the world ahead, maybe even impeded it, still get some of the halo glow from those who did.  Irrespective of the conclusions, the level of thought on  Zoom that evening far exceeded any wisdom imparted from the Rabbi's podium.  For that hour, my mind sparkled.  I sparkled.

It was not my only successful mind immersion.  I had been to an awards banquet where experts spoke and the audience responded, including me.  As a senior, the analytical and inquisitive parts of my mind are still quite agile.  I derive satisfaction when the CNS does some exploration.  I'm a sucker for expertise, the real thing, not the title driven.  Later I attended an interview with Van Jones of CNN by the President's sister Valerie, who turned out to be an ace interviewer.  My mind again recognized new ideas, some really implemented with success, that I would have rejected on my own, had I thought of them at all.

Covid isolation, echo chambers, triviality of conversations that never progress beyond opening greetings, even deflection by our clergy and others when I try to expand an inquiry.  All batter me.  The exchanges without enmity or agenda to fulfill have become the CPR for my CNS.  For that hour or two at each event I was immersed.  If I could be participatory, I was.  If I required and agent, like the Van Jones interview, the agent represented me well, as did the moderator at the AKSE discussion.  I really don't have to settle for mediocrity.  We are done a great disservice when our agencies, Jewish, governmental, and secular aim too low, as has become the expectation nowadays.  But we admire, sometimes envy, those with the talent and independence to put themselves ahead of just getting by and offering a share of what they accomplished to those like me who are less accomplished, though fully appreciative.

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Fully Absorbed

My minimal, difficult to maintain attention span took a sudden reversal.  I had been watching some YouTube's on religion, more anti than pro, of late, scrolling past anything that took more than 15 minutes.  Comments by the late Christopher Hitchens repeatedly captured my interest, so I proceeded to check his most prominent book, God is Not Great, from the library.  The transfer of an e-book electronically failed so I requested the print version which I began reading.  And reading. And reading some more.  About a third of the book, when my intent was a chapter a day for ten days.

He writes of a more global attrition, or maybe a wishful attrition that has not happened yet, unlike my focus on decline that has already occurred.  He takes the view that religious institutions with the discipline they impose on adherents generate evil, which they do.  They also generate art, literature, music, and intricate discussions.  My spin seems more that the experience of being there falls short of other options that can be pursued instead.

After interminable Hebrew School flashbacks while I sit at services in my own congregation, with a Rabbi feeding me strings of interAliyah Sound Bites, though not at all evil, it's good to have my mind challenged in this more profound way, not so much about the merits of the Judaism that I have inherited, but the idea of deity and its historical legacy that we make so many often unconvincing excuses to defend.

Perhaps even more importantly, I had begun to doubt if I had the capacity to focus on any ideas or undertakings without the use of a timer to keep me captured on what I was doing.  This reading went on for hours, only needing short breaks to better absorb what I had just learned.  I really do have the capacity to grant full attention and derive pleasure.  I wasn't sure before.

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.