The Past Comes Back To Embrace Me

This past Shabbat the reason I stayed with my dad was that I'd been asked to speak at evening services Saturday night, when we began the penitential prayers before the new year, at a synagogue close to his house. My father still drives on Shabbat, but I do not. So he drove to our regular shul and I walked to the closer one.



I'd been called and asked to speak two weeks previous. I'd attended this synagogue the week I was staying with The Ward while dad was on vacation. I'd been greeted and welcomed especially warmly when I arrived... Not that I don't think anyone would have been greeted warmly, but this synagogue is really quite wanting in the area of young membership. This is a synagogue that was one of the great flourishing Conservative institutions of the area in the 1980s and '90s. Now the neighborhood is changing, the people who are moving in are either not Jewish or Orthodox, and the old guard Conservative population is aging.

That's why I was initially welcomed so warmly. It got warmer when I introduced myself to certain members of the synagogue community and they realized who I was. See, like I said this synagogue had been flourishing in the '80s when my family's synagogue had been struggling. While my parents much preferred the philosophy and attitude of the shul we attended every Shabbat and on holidays, there was no Hebrew school to speak of. This other synagogue, though much more right wing and less academic in its approach to religious instruction than my parents would have liked, it was the best afternoon and Sunday morning Conservative Hebrew school in town. So my siblings and I all attended this synagogue's Talmud Torah program from first grade through sixth.

Of course, when my sister reached sixth grade, as I understand it, it was "suggested" that she should perhaps not return the following year. I think the problem was that she was arguing against the teachers and students who said that all Arabs are evil. When I hit the same age, I began to argue with the students and teachers who insisted that women could not read from the Torah or be rabbis. Our rabbi back at our shul happened to be a woman. I don't think I had yet realized how unusual we were in that respect. We'd hired her as our rabbi when she had been newly ordained in only the second graduating class to include women from the Conservative Rabbinical school.

Back to the present day though. I was remembered by a number of members, including the co-president of the congregation, who were the parents of some of my classmates back in the day. They were so thrilled and impressed that I was now a rabbinical school, they informed the rabbi of my presence and of who I was, and he publicly welcomed me from the pulpit. Everyone wanted to talk to me and ask me questions after services. I was literally a celebrity, a success story from their community, the produce of their program gone mysteriously right. Someone they'd raised, of whom they could be proud.

When I'd told my father how excited they'd all been about me, his response was "even though they kicked you out?" I reminded him that they'd only had to kick my sister out- my brother and I were eager to get out when we were old enough to attend a more serious post-Bar/Bat Mitzvah program in another part of town. But the truth is, I didn't feel any bitterness, any desire to throw anything in their faces, like I might have a year ago or even less. I was happy to be there, and happy that I could boost the morale of the congregation. It was just nice to be welcomed and appreciated.

The next day I received an email from the other co-president of the synagogue. He had not been at services that Shabbat, but had apparently heard that I had been. This man happens to be the father of my best friend from high school, with whom I am no longer so close, but without animosity. He'd heard that I was a rabbinical student and so he asked me if I'd like to give a "presentation" at services Saturday night before Selichot. This is one of the things about being a rabbinical student... You're expected to be able to speak meaningfully about stuff, regardless of whether you're about to graduate, or if you've just started a week ago. Me, I've completed (unsuccessfully, but they don't have to know that) one year so clearly I already know, well, everything, right?

Well, the truth is, while I certainly don't know everything, I do know more than the average Conservative Jew even imagines that they *don't* know. And that is a position in which it can sometimes be very difficult to maintain a perspective of humility. And humility is what repentance and atonement are all about. Incidentally, also recovery. So I decided to speak about that.

More to follow.

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