Win Some, Lose Some: The (Hebrew School) Class of '62
Bass, Susan
WINSOME, LOSE SOME WHATEVER HAPPENED TO THE (HEBREW SCHOOL) CLASS OF '62? SUSAN BASS You know how it's supposed to work: Here and there, handfuls of young Jews develop genuine Jewish enthusiasms,...
...We read a bit, books rather than periodicals...
...not only because it's Shabbos but also because it's the end of1 the week...
...That seems to be the rub, at least so far as the Shabbat is concerned...
...And, because it was a small town, and a small Jewish community, Hebrew School was more or less the center of our social lives: Classes from Monday through Thursday, and services on Shabbat, and athletic activities on Sunday...
...I don't think about what would be the Jewish thing to do in any particular situation...
...we've now extended outside our home as well...
...A small town, a traditional synagogue, a devout rabbi, a Jewish community of perhaps 200 families, and a Hebrew School class of 13—ten boys, three girls...
...We went, of course, because we had to...
...And our ways of being Jewish were what you might expect: Of our 13 families, one observed kashrut at home...
...A mixture of history and allegory...
...Seventeen years later, what has become of us...
...Or, "It puts me on my guard, even though I don't want it to...
...In fact, our little boy is just beginning to learn that our holidays are not necessarily celebrated by everyone...
...I am proud to be a Jew...
...Well, there's no reason for us to be coherent, precise in our definitions and understandings...
...as infrequently as we do it, it is more than my parents do it...
...Susan K. Bass lives in Oak Park, Illinois...
...I'm not at all assimilated...
...No prescriptions, just hopes...
...but I don't need a synagogue, or a diet, or things like that to consider myself Jewish...
...Torah...
...I never thought of not belonging," says one...
...A little bit of synagogue, and a little bit of Israel, and a lot of Holocaust, and...
...Except that's not the way it's worked for the 13 of us who were graduated from the Hebrew School of a Conservative synagogue in central New Jersey back in 1962...
...Judaism as a residual category, vague and without form or definition...
...we now celebrate the minor ones as well...
...in both cases, the non-Jewish spouse converted...
...but it is a part of me, even if I can't measure it, and it's part of my family...
...The models their parents offered are not necessarily the models they will end with...
...two of us invest some effort in observing the Shabbat in meaningful ways, in making it a day of prayer and rest...
...There's a temple around the corner...
...The rest have no childhood recollection of any celebration of the Shabbat at all...
...But five of us do feel detached from the organized Jewish community, and from traditional observances...
...For us— most of us—all that motion is remote...
...we often have dinner at my parents' home on Friday night...
...we feel as if we along with everyone else were affected by it...
...And we celebrate a bit...
...Or, as another observes, "It doesn't play a great part in my 24 hour day...
...It is often—and heavily—on our minds...
...Shabbat was observed in some of our homes by the lighting of candles, but in none by very much more than that...
...Belief...
...Four of us haven't had children yet, and the children the other eight have had are still young...
...What I see around me are many of my contemporaries who were brought up as agnostics...
...Judaism as something to "be proud of," but not as a network of activities and commitments...
...the male convert is "absolutely not" a practicing Jew, nor does he consider himself a Jew...
...my mother always lights candles and we say kiddush about half the time...
...So far, we have produced 12 children, but the final count won't be in for a few more years...
...And (save perhaps for one of us) each and every one of the members of the class of '62 is "accessible" to Judaism...
...One is considering a day school education for his children...
...Five of us have visited at least once, three for their junior year in college...
...And of course, we are well-educated—all college graduates, seven with advanced degrees, including two lawyers and one Ph.D...
...fully half...
...What do we actually do...
...one, recalling his own days in our class, says, "I want my kids to have a better Jewish education, than I had...
...Where are we now...
...Since we don't have to join in order to use it, and since that means we don't have to pay, we haven't joined...
...for five of our number, there is no acknowledgment at all...
...We're not by nature sluggish people...
...To a person, we dozen feel good about being Jewish, feel that being Jewish is a part of what we are...
...As one person put it, "It pops up continually in family discussions...
...By and large, we lumber along, doing pretty much what our parents did, and not thinking about our "Jewish problem" one way or the other...
...Or, finally: "Occasionally we'll light candles and attend services...
...My husband and I started with kashrut at home...
...I was born Jewish...
...And only one subscribes to any Jewish periodicals...
...While only one of us had a fully kosher home, five of our families purchased only kosher meat...
...Not bad, I would guess, by comparison to others...
...Two of the members attend services weekly, one several times a month, another perhaps once a month, and the last of the members manages High Holiday services every other year or so...
...Hardly scientific, but—or so it seems to me—not without interest...
...The motives for joining are diverse, but have to do more with a general desire for Jewish affiliation than with a specific theological orientation...
...Three (of the five) even made it to the Hebrew University for their junior year, and two currently study in adult programs of Jewish education...
...and I resist that, because there's enough that's positive in Judaism to hold us...
...Nor is it a total loss if we look at the vague thing we call "Jewish identity...
...So it's not a total loss...
...the expense isn't worth it...
...As one puts it, "My Jewishness is very much in a state of flux right now...
...Close-knit, self-contained...
...Ben Gurion was Israel's Prime Minister, Golda Meir its Foreign Minister, John Kennedy was our exciting President, and we practiced air raid drills in school...
...I feel like showing my identity...
...Two of the marriages were to spouses not born as Jews...
...Bestselling fiction on Jewish themes, and popular non-fiction, too, like World of Our Fathers, and books on the Holocaust...
...And because of what has happened to me, I began to wonder whether others who were once my friends might have experienced similar changes...
...historical truth which teaches us moral truth...
...five bought their meat from the kosher butcher...
...But what about our behavior...
...although four attended Hebrew high school, and five took some college level courses in Judaica...
...If there are going to be synagogues, people have to support them," adds another...
...No, there's no evidence of running, of trying to escape...
...Inertial Jews...
...Most announce a great desire to go, but have no plans as yet...
...Our one Israeli is a strict Sabbath observer...
...one lives in Israel, where his children will attend the religiously-oriented public schools...
...for our son's sake as much as for our own...
...And the High Holidays are doing well, with 10 of our 12 attending services, refraining from work and fasting on Yom Kippur...
...And I feel warm and open to my Jewish heritage...
...we've discussed lighting candles and probably will soon...
...So how do we get talented and ambitious and energetic people to turn their talents and their ambitions and their energies to exploring Judaism...
...As one of those who has found enormous pleasure and richness in my own Jewishness, I have hopes...
...Overall, as one of us said, "I read about it to develop a feeling for my heritage...
...as I was...
...it just hasn't been found, yet...
...Basically, it appears that three or four of us have extended our Jewish understanding, practice and commitment beyond where our parents were...
...and what...
...Still, at least two of the non-members have synagogues which they consider "theirs...
...That leaves four—our two unmarried, one of whom says he'll join "eventually, if I have a family," and two others with no intentions of joining...
...Every now and then, I think about going over on a Friday night, but I know I never will...
...We were 12 years old in 1962, getting ready to become a bar or bat mitzvah...
...She is completing a Ph.D...
...The kosher butchers were better off with our parents...
...Others do attend a family seder, but Pesach is pretty much a one or a two day holiday for them...
...Sure, we believe h\God (with one exception...
...Or, in another: "My wife sometimes lights candles...
...But looking back, I wouldn't have it any other way...
...most likely, we will become more active"—to intense observance, as illustrated in the following vignette: "Our year definitely follows the Jewish calendar...
...Elsewhere, perhaps, Jews are still running, hiding, passing, forgetting...
...I've started wearing a Jewish star lately...
...On the whole, an unremarkable background...
...it's certainly given me an identity...
...Three of the seven non-members claim definite plans to join within the next few years: "We will join either a Conservative or a Refqrm temple when our son is old endugh to be involved...
...Israel...
...We started with the major holidays...
...The female convert is a practicing Jew...
...He's started asking other people he meets if it's their holiday, too...
...God is "some kind of force...
...It keeps me thinking of myself as a Jew by outside identity...
...Elsewhere, perhaps, exciting things are happening, people are rediscovering their heritage and Judaism's possibilities...
...But the others—although they all recall their own Hebrew school experience as unpleasant—intend to impose the same experience on their children...
...a book written for people on a different level of consciousness...
...We don't feel we need to belong now...
...another three or four are just about where their parents were...
...No, I don't have any prescriptions...
...In fact, all but two of us report that the overwhelming majority of our friends—70 to 80 percent—are Jewish...
...that calendar determines the holidays we celebrate, the holidays our children know...
...The contrast is between a kind of accidental observance—"We observe whichever holidays we happen to' remember"—through a gradual awakening—"it's possible to be more active, and we're just getting our family started...
...SUSAN BASS You know how it's supposed to work: Here and there, handfuls of young Jews develop genuine Jewish enthusiasms, often going well beyond the nondescript backgrounds their parental homes offered...
...Chanukah seems to be in somewhat better shape...
...It's not something I had any choice about...
...We're becoming more Jewish...
...Three more say that aliyah is something they've thought about rather seriously, and are open to, while two others have thought about and rejected the possibility...
...On the other hand, none of our parents observed kashrut outside the home, and two of us do...
...and the balance—five is the best estimate—are less consciously Jewish than their parents were...
...mostly as an anchor for the family...
...fairytales with a very large element of truth...
...Or another: "The Holocaust makes us feel more Jewish...
...So I expect that what's been happening to my friends will start happening to me...
...We're now approaching our 30th birthdays, starting families, and coming to decision points...
...I set out to find the answers a while back, in part because my own Jewish involvement has—for reasons I do not fully understand— become substantially richer of late...
...So ..., "Most of the time I wear the Star of David...
...God is "an entity that was there before anything else and created everything else...
...God "did his job but He isn't around any more...
...We've also, all but one of us, bought Israeli bonds...
...If we're lighting candles we'll also do a motzi and make a blessing over wine...
...We started with the kindling of the Shabbat candles...
...As one explains, "There is a synagogue near our home we go to...
...in clinical psychology...
...With a couple of exceptions, we seem to have emerged as "inertial" Jews—entirely unassimilated on the one hand, largely unenthusiastic on the other...
...On the contrary...
...Everyone celebrates it...
...Among us, their children, the number is down to three...
...that depends very much on what other models they encounter...
...Luckily, I managed to locate all but one of the original 13.1 managed fairly extensive conversations with nine, spoke to the parents of a tenth, to the brother of the eleventh—and I am the twelfth...
...four more recognize the Shabbat in more modest ways...
...Sometimes I wish that I could somehow share what I think I've come to know with my classmates...
...But the surprise is that most of my classmates are pretty well satisfied with their Jewish education, and are quite sure that it will be good enough for their children...
...And there is our one "success" story, our classmate who moved to Israel six years ago...
...Actually, the Holocaust seems to be a more powerful connector than Israel, certainly more powerful than the synagogue...
...But real hopes, because the one thing that comes through very loud and very clear is that the class of '62 is available...
...Pesach is observed in some detail by five of us, the same five who observe most of the other holidays...
...Recognizing" the Shabbat means, in one case, "Friday night is the one night I make sure to get home so we eat together...
...Sometimes I wish I could turn the clock back, make Hebrew School more exciting, make our homes more aware...
...But we'll go to a breakfast on a Sunday morning, or to a Purim party, and I call bingo for them...
...It's not lost...
...More often, young Jews wander off and away, succumb to the lure of assimilation...
...I try to read everything I can about it in order to understand it...
...we've added havdalah, and filled the space between the two with rest rather than with errands, as we used to...
...we've got the degrees and the jobs and the hobbies to prove that...
...And most of us have donated money to Israel-oriented organizations, albeit irregularly and in small amounts...
...Half my classmates (only half...
...As time goes by, I expect I'll become more Jewish...
...recall their parents going to temple on Friday night, or kindling Shabbat candles with some regularity, or having any kind of special Shabbat dinner...
...Hebrew School Clou of 62 56/ Moment For most of us, our graduation in 1962 marked the end of our formal Jewish education...
...But I find now that more and more people are turning to study our religion, people I never would have thought would be interested...
...Perhaps that explains why only five (including our one Israeli) belong to a synagogue (two Reform, Two Conservative...
...Ten of us are married, one is divorced, and one is single...
...On the Fourth of July he went next door and asked our neighbors if it was the Fourth of July for them...
...Several suggest that identification with the Holocaust is a principal source of their sense of Jewish identity...
...Only one has read Singer, despite the publicity...
...But these are floating numbers, numbers which can change...
...I have very little contact with Judaism as an organized religion...
...Yes, I know, this sounds pretty muddled...
...Sometimes I wish people would stop talking about alienation, and would figure out a program to entice my classmates, my generation, not back to where we were—that wasn't so much to boast about, after all—but on to where we might be...
...What kinds of Jewish homes are we creating...
Vol. 4 • October 1979 • No. 9
