An Old Dog Learns New Tricks

Dear Friends:
 
My childhood Jewish religious education outside the home followed what I think was the conventional Conservative synagogue approach of the baby boom era.  We learned Bible stories and the aleph-bet, meeting a few hours every Sunday, from ages 5-9.  This was then augmented by two after-school weekday lessons which taught us to read Hebrew and recite some prayers.  That program started around age 10 and ended, for most kids, a few minutes after becoming Bar Mitzvah.  I actually lasted another year in what was called Hebrew High School which by my recollection only met on Sundays.  Our teacher was a most engaging Rabbi whose name I’ve forgotten but who memorably shared with us a passage from the Talmud, my first exposure to serious Jewish study.
 
In the pre-Bar Mitzvah period, I gained the skill of reading Hebrew (though with almost zero comprehension).  I also acquired the skill of leading a Shabbat morning service through mandatory attendance at Saturday “children’s” services.  Each week, a different class would be on the hook to provide leadership for various parts of the service.  The coveted position of cantor, which my brothers and I were all expected to seek, provided the prayer leader (shaliach tsibbur) with an opportunity to stand alongside Rabbi Ezra Perkal.  He seemed ancient to me then – in reality he was actually in his early thirties. Rabbi Perkal taught us the melodies for a typical Ashkenazi Shabbat service, and those remained dormant in my brain for a decade.
 
After age 14, Judaism played little role in my life until I arrived as a graduate student in Los Alamos and decided that there were probably worse ways to meet people in town than at the Los Alamos Jewish Center.  All those old melodies now were awakened, and I found that my singing could again help lead a congregation, this time one which comprised mostly adults. 

During the early 1980s, Rabbi Leonard Helman of Temple Beth Shalom in Santa Fe was under contract to visit Los Alamos roughly once a month to teach adult education, and he exposed me to the vast corpus of traditional Jewish texts.  It was a startling realization to me that Judaism was not something for children, and I embarked on a life-long study of the richness of our tradition, learning from other rabbis and teachers whenever possible.  I remember that Rabbi Helman taught a series on Pirke Avot, sometimes known as the Ethics of the Fathers, and we learned the passage (4:1), “Who is wise? One who learns from all people.”  I’ve been blessed to learn about and develop a love for Judaism from many people, and for this I am deeply grateful.
 
This past quarter I shared some of what I’ve learned from others on a variety of occasions including the Bar Mitzvah ceremony of the son of one of my first Bar Mitzvah students (time is flying by!!), at the annual Kochavim Israeli Dance Camp in Texas (I served as Beverly’s non-dancing spouse), at a Life and Legacy Jewish Endowment gathering in Albuquerque, at a Santa Fe Interfaith Leadership Alliance event, at the funeral and shiva minyans for a beloved congregant from HaMakom, and at the service honoring Los Alamos High School graduates.  I also learned either remotely or in person from Rabbis Tamar Malino, Azriel Fellner, Neil Amswych, Martin Levy, Berel Levertov, Ron Wittenstein, Avraham Kelman, Elizabeth Goldstein, and others.  And I close this PhysicsRabbi quarterly with a quote from Albert Einstein: “Once you stop learning, you start dying.”  May you all go forth and learn.
 
B’shalom,
Rabbi Jack
 

Last quarter’s reading list is below, with highlights denoted by an asterisk*