Page 126 - WhyAsInY

Why (as in yaverbaum)
auditorium for services. (Imagine my delight when I first strode out onto its bimah and looked up at hundreds and hundreds of somewhat attentive faces that day.) More than one thousand families, mine among them, belonged to the EMJC. In the case of my family, I suspect that what impelled them to pay their dues were social imperatives and the fact that, without joining and sending me to the Hebrew School, they could not have had me bar mitzvahed.
As was the case with P.S. 193, the EMJC Beyt Sefer held few memo- ries for me. Unfortunately, in the case of the Beyt Sefer, there were a lot fewer good ones. In fairness, however, it must be said that the number of days that I devoted to attendance there was very limited—by both the call of post-school softball games at 193 and a generally bad attitude on my part.
On the first day at Hebrew School, I was told that there is no Hebrew name that directly corresponds with Harvey and that my Hebrew name would be—and here I transliterate—Aharon, which is the Hebrew name for Aaron. I am not happy about that, but I am happy that my Beyt Sefer name was not Flounder. (See Animal House [you really should], a 1978 movie that features John Belushi.) Why Aharon? Why not? It was in any event a good thing that I learned the name Aharon, because the Hebrew phrases that I best remember from that time (and here I transliterate again), phrases that were used constantly by Mrs. Mandelbaum—all four feet ten inches of her finger-wagging body—presumably for reinforcement, are, “Aharon, sheket buhvakashah” and, stated more emphatically, “Sheket, Aharon, sheket!!” (The first translates as “Harvey, please be quiet.” The second is, as you would infer, a bit less polite.)
And there were certain other important things that I learned in Hebrew School, especially about the Hebrew language:
• Hebrew is written in strange letters that are unlike ours, very many of which look a lot alike to the unpracticed eye.
• All of the twenty Hebrew letters are consonants, which you would think would lead to some very funny-sounding words.
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