Wednesday night. First, a disclaimer. Today’s topic, Yom Kippur, has been suggested by the editor. So if David writes about the same thing, the experiment has been rigged.
What does Yom Kippur mean to me? Well, not much. I manage to fast between meals. I had a pang of guilt this morning when I saw my neighbors all dressed up going to temple. But just a pang.
My own religious education was a monument to hypocrisy. My parents sent me to learn Hebrew and Bible stories, all the while making no attempt to hide their own atheism. To make things worse, they knew they were hypocrites. They shouted their hypocrisy from the rooftops. Every Rosh Hashana was an opportunity to discuss what new heights of pomposity the rabbi had reached. Every Little League game was an occasion to write a note to the Hebrew schoolteacher to let me out early. My own parents were mischievously conspiring with me to get me out of Torah class! Yet they still shelled out thousands to send me! Amazing.
When I was 10, the Hebrew schoolteacher sent us home to ask our parents what factors they thought favored the survival of the Jewish people, and what factors favored extinction. I forget what my father wrote for “survival,” but in the “extinction” column he wrote one pithy sentence: “Jewish education is at its nadir.” He wrote this to the Hebrew schoolteacher!
This small space, however, can’t do justice to Temple Ben Zion. (A pseudonym–it was really Temple Emmanuel.) Instead, I refer all readers to the brilliant Philip Roth short story “The Conversion of the Jews,” which captures, far more skillfully than I could ever hope to, the essence of American Jewish religious education. I also refer you to my college roommate, Jonathan Lisco, who was expelled from his Hebrew school for making a golden calf in arts and crafts class.
I don’t know why atheism gets such a bad rap in this country. Vladimir Nabokov wrote that only two topics could scare American publishers as much as Lolita: “a Negro-White marriage which is a complete and glorious success … and the total atheist who lives a happy and useful life, and dies in his sleep at the age of 106.” This may be the most incisive comment on American culture I’ve read.
Happily, my wife, Megan, is just as irreligious as I am. She grew up disdaining her Reform temple, as I disdained my Conservative one. In fact, Megan suggested, and I agreed, that our wedding be “yarmulke-free.” (In pronouncing “yarmulke,” the r and the l are silent, and the e is pronounced as ah–no one knows why.) However, tonight when I got home from a day in Princeton, Megan had made a special dinner for breaking the nonfast. True, it was a ziti casserole with fontina and ham, but her sister came by with wine and chopped liver and fresh bread (Italian), and we had a very nice little meal.
Jonathan Greenberg,
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