SUNDAY SCHOOL and HEBREW SCHOOL

I remember Rabbi Newberger talking about the anniversary of the state of Israel - maybe in 1950/51 - as an important (he probably used a much bigger word than that) moment in history. His emotion moved me - but I could not grasp the significance of it. At the age of five or six, I assumed Israel had been around for at least as long as Woodbridge had. Israel was a place with a lot of Jews. So was Green Street or Tisdale Place. I knew nothing about the war that had ended the year I was born, or the creation of a Jewish homeland in 1948. I cared far more about what candy would be in the bag next Purim. But 58 years later, the only thing I remember about Sunday School is Rabbi Newberger and Israel.

Hebrew School was another matter. Bobbie Lang and I were the only two girls in the class of rowdy pre-pubescent boys. I don't know why our parents started us a year before the other girls. Pure torture. We were teased mercilessly - but I probably deserved a lot of it because I was no Yentl. Bobbie and I would scheme for hours about ways to get out of going to class. We'd sometimes sit on the landing leading to her living room, and practice pushing each other down the steps. Seriously. The aim was to break a limb - preferably an arm to restrict writing -
but a leg would do. Alas, neither of us managed a break or even a fracture.

I was a hopeless Hebrew student. Did anyone else get a practice tape recording of his or her Haftorah? Sure, kids get cds now, but in those days it was probably rare. I'd sit in front of my father's huge reel-to-reel tape recorder and listen to Rabbi Newberger's melodious voice singing my portion over and over. The Friday evening of my Bat Mitzvah (I don't think girls read from the Torah on Saturdays in those days) I probably set a world record in speed reading. Getting it over with was all I was interested in. Whew. My relatives chuckled, and my teasing continued.