Mendel Letters 89 — Hebrew School

August 6, 2022

Dear Mendel,

Warren and I really hated going to Hebrew School, Warren even worse than me. Starting when we were eight, we had to go to Hebrew School at the Jewish Center of University Heights on W. 174th Street off of Nelson Avenue in the Bronx four nights a week and on Sunday mornings. We also attended the junior Saturday services from 10 to 11. Although not all the Jewish kids in the neighborhood went to Hebrew School, in our family, there was no discussion. It was what we had to do. The only thing you did promise was that after our Bar Mitzvahs when we were thirteen, we could decide if we wanted to continue.

Hebrew school always felt like punishment. It meant I couldn’t play punch ball, stick ball or basketball with my friends whose parents didn’t make them go. It also meant putting off homework until after supper so we couldn’t watch the 7:30 cowboy television shows.

I figured the one benefit of Hebrew School was that since God didn’t understand English, we could pray to him, it was always a male God, in Hebrew. Of course we didn’t understand the Hebrew, we only knew how to sound out and mumble the letters. As a boy, I was convinced that whatever the tortures involved in going to Hebrew School and however implausible the Biblical stories, at least our religion was doing it right.

If my memory is correct, all of the teachers at the Hebrew School were old and stern, but who knows what that meant to an eight-year-old. Once I really impressed the “principal” of the Hebrew School. He was explaining to our class how Israel had resurrected Hebrew as a national language and they were adapting old words to new meanings. He asked the class what word could become electricity. I suggested lightening and was correct.

Usually we came home after school and then headed out for either a 4:30 or 5:30 class. During the winter months it was dark, windy, and bitter cold. Classes were held rain or snow. Because we were in different age cohorts we didn’t have classes together or at the same time so Warren and I didn’t walk together. I usually walked up Jesup Avenue to Featherbed Lane, then left to Nelson and right to 174th Street. There was an Olinsky’s Supermarket on Featherbed Lane and I frequently stopped for a nickel sour pickle. To vary the trip, going home I usually took Nelson Avenue to 172nd Street by PS 104 and then 172nd to Jesup. When they were building the Cross Bronx Expressway they were demolishing buildings and digging trenches and the entire neighborhood was enveloped in a dust cloud.

Months before our Bar Mitzvahs, we started Bar Mitzvah lessons, which meant more time at Hebrew School and away from friends and sports. We had to sing our Haftorah, the lesson explaining the Torah or Bible passage at the service on the day of our ceremony. It was a big deal and I couldn’t carry the tune no matter how hard I tried. Somehow I eventually made it through. Warren, it later turned out, had a beautiful voice and musical talent, probably things he inherited from you.

I was pretty good at following your rule that we could be as bad as we wanted in school as long as we knew to stop before the exasperated teacher decided to called home. Warren wasn’t so good at this and once he really blew their minds. It seems he was doodling in his holy notebook That merited a call home and we were both almost expelled. Whatever you negotiated, they let the Singer boys stay in Hebrew School, probably figuring they needed to save our souls.

We both quit Hebrew School the Monday following our Bar Mitvahs. Certainly not their intention, but Hebrew School helped convince Warren and me to become atheists.

Your son

Hard copies of these typed letters were discovered in an old camp trunk in the basement storage facility of one of the few buildings that remain standing in this Brooklyn neighborhood. The building is quite decrepit and is scheduled for demolition. The letters were found in November 2048 by a teenager who believes they were written by his great-grandfather. The letters are addressed to Mendel, the letter writer’s father, who appears to have been dead for at least six years when his son, whose name we are unsure of, started to write him. The son appears very agitated in some of the letters. With permission from the family, we are publishing them on the date they were written, only 28 years later.

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