As I write this, today is the first full day of fall. You can clearly see it, the leaves are changing color, and it's getting dark much earlier than it was just several weeks ago. In fact, the days have as much dark as they do light. I would say that pretty soon there would be frost on the pumpkins, but it doesn't seem to get as cold as it used to and pumpkins haven’t been growing well the last few years.
This morning, I visited the Sunday morning Hebrew school. It was good to meet the parents and talk to them. It is very much appreciated that they have enrolled their children and that they were all punctual. We discussed some changes in curriculum format and our goals not just for the coming year but for the future years. My personal goal would be for each child to be able to read from the prayer books, at least phonetically. Possibly some of them will be able to translate some of the words or have learned them by memorization compared to the transliterations on the opposite pages. It would be very fulfilling to see them leading services on the Friday night of their B’nai Mitzvot. It would be especially wonderful to see them read from the Torah scroll on Shabbat morning.
Some people said to me that it would be too much to ask the children to demonstrate facility with reading from the prayer books and especially from reading from the Torah scroll. When my older daughter turned 12, I went to the rabbi of our small congregation which was primarily in a resort and retirement area. Just like Beth El now, a very large proportion of the congregation was over 60. The Hebrew school was nonexistent.
I asked him who would prepare her for her Bat Mitzvah. He told me I would. I hadn’t studied Hebrew since my Bar Mitzvah 36 years earlier. He said to stay a lesson ahead of her. It was a very painful year.
I had a long struggle with her every night, her fighting not to work and me fighting to get her to study. Every night we went through this display of ½ hour of fighting and ½ hour of studying. We were both pretty miserable.
But then a miracle occurred. She led the Friday evening services the night before, wonderfully. On Saturday morning , in front of her family, all 40 other children in her grade at school, and all her teachers and the school’s headmaster, she read from the Torah singing the trope beautifully. When services ended, we stepped outside and I quietly whispered to her, “It was worth it, wasn’t it?” She nodded and very quietly said yes.
Having learned to read Hebrew was not just a requirement to be a Bat Mitzvah but also gave her a feeling of pride of accomplishment and in her Jewishness.
We are very lucky to have such fine dedicated teachers as Faye, Eileen, and Roger. The rest of the congregation and the parents do not have to go through the process of having to learn or relearn Hebrew. Our goal of having prayer book reading competency and the self-satisfaction it will give our children, is the reason that the teachers, the administrator, the board and I will work very hard to help them learn Hebrew.
Richard Sternberg
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