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noitacude suoigileR yM
to temple, which is American for shul (Yiddish?) or synagogue (Greek). My father had office hours on Saturdays, and my parents attended ser- vices at a synagogue in my youth only once that I can recall.
Finally, we did eat Chinese food, lobster, and shrimp at home. For those who find this curious and seemingly at odds with the fact that my mother never served pork or ham, it is important to point out that the rule, which I carry with me to this day, is that you may eat spare ribs and enjoy wonton soup so long as no one calls the ribs “pork” or tells you what is actually inside of the dumplings in the soup, at least while you are eating. (I did once start to eat what someone told me was a ham sandwich that I had inadvertently purchased in the Hudde cafeteria, promptly felt ill, stopped chewing, and never again ate ham.)
Although my parents might not have been Jewish in a practicing sense—we stayed at home on Rosh Hashanah because my mother said that gentiles should not know that we weren’t attending synagogue— they certainly identified as Jews. For them, being Jewish was a cultural, not a religious, phenomenon, and being Jewish was being unlike the people who weren’t. Thus, as I was their son, I was Jewish. I was there- fore condemned to have a formal Jewish education at the East Midwood Jewish Center Beyt Sefer for a period of five—count them, five—years (Grades Alef, Bet, Gimel, Daled, and Hei), supposedly to end in June 1958, but as it turns out, actually ending quite soon after November 9, 1957—when I would have my bar mitzvah and successfully argue that enough was enough. (Dayenu.)
The East Midwood Jewish Center was—and, fighting uphill against what is now a predominantly Orthodox neighborhood, is—a Conserva- tive synagogue that is located conveniently on Ocean Avenue between Avenues K and L, just one block from my homes at 1771 Ocean and 975 East 23rd. It is an imposing building that was constructed in the 1920s in Renaissance revival style, and it is actually in the National Registry of Historic Properties—for no reason, I hasten to add, having to do with my attendance at its three-story Hebrew School (which is cleverly hid- den behind it and has the architecture that one might observe in an office park), or with my bar mitzvah in its enormous balconied primary
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