By Michael Ginsberg
LOUISVILLE, Kentucky — On October 21, 1961, I finished my bar mitzvah speech at Judea Center Synagogue in Brooklyn, thanking my parents for raising me as a Jew.
Six months later, I interrupted our family’s Shabbat candle lighting to announce that I was finished with religion.
The next 30 years, I diligently dodged Judaism: Brooklyn to Buffalo, Louisville KY, and points south and west. At the University of Buffalo, I did break the Yom Kippur fast every year with a big Italian dinner. But, I skipped services . . . and fasting.
I moved from Buffalo to Louisville in 1970, left in 1974 and returned in 1989 with my religious abstinence record intact. This time, however, I found Temple Shalom, a synagogue I wasn’t seeking, a congregation that filled an emptiness I didn’t know I had.
I’m no longer running from religion. But my synagogue may be running from me, and time may be running out, as our congregation battles shrinking membership, shrinking coffers, shrinking options, and ourselves. Temple Shalom, at 43, considerably younger than our average member, may not be around much longer.
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There was no Temple Shalom when I arrived in Louisville in 1970, age 21. However, my accountant father decided Louisville’s Jewish population, was big enough, at 12,000, for his son to rediscover his religious roots.
Dad tried to help. He called a Jewish accountant in Louisville, who invited me for dinner. I accepted. Then I cancelled.
Dad also found a Louisville rabbi and asked me to call him to help me find a “niche” in the Jewish community. I said I would. I didn’t.
I did write a “Dear Mom and Dad” letter, suggesting my parents give up imagining their son’s Jewish wedding and family.
My mother cried. My father wrote back, the only letter I ever received from him. He thanked me for my “very lovely letter” and declared “complete confidence that none of your decisions will lead you down the wrong path.”
Then he changed paths: “Being of a logical nature, I must point out various loopholes in your reasoning which you appear to overlook.”
Loophole #1: “What percentage of your dates since you broke off with (name redacted) have been with Jewish girls?”
Answer: Zero.
NOTE: I became involved with “Redacted,” a young Jewish woman, a year before moving to Louisville in 1970. To my parents’ dismay, the relationship didn’t survive. No wedding, no Jewish grandchildren.
Loophole #2: “To the best of our knowledge, you have not made a close Jewish friend since your college days.” True or False
Answer: True (at the time).
Several loopholes later, my dad abandoned diplomacy and logic for raw emotion: “We are chilled by the thought of having grandchildren not of our faith,” he wrote.
My parents’ suffering notwithstanding, life in Louisville was good for me. I did not, however, find a satisfying career, so, in July 1974, I headed west, tearfully leaving behind close friends but no Jewish girlfriends.
My father died less than a year later. I married (non-Jewish) Jeri Swinton in 1987 (with my mother boycotting the wedding) and returned to Louisville in 1989, with Jeri and our 1-year-old daughter, Perry (named after my dad, Percy).
It felt like coming home.
However, my vision of home still did not include organized religion. Only as a matter of ethnic identity did I consider myself Jewish. Two years later, however, when William was born, Jeri insisted we raise our children as members of some faith community, not as “NOT______.” (Don’t tell her, but she was right.) She proposed Judaism; I grudgingly agreed.
We weren’t synagogue shopping, but friends invited us to a Shabbat service at Temple Shalom, where Rabbi Stanley Miles delivered a sermon about radon detectors. Drawn to Rabbi’s warmth, sincerity and wisdom, if not his metaphors, we joined the temple, and I found my “niche.”
Quiz: What do radon detectors have to do with practicing your faith?
Answer: Just as radon detectors are worthless if left in the box, unopened, Judaism is empty unless actually practiced. Really not such a bad metaphor.
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Shalom has been good to me and my family. I’ve made strong friendships with congregants, including contemporaries, older temple members, youngsters I entertained (as temple magid) with original holiday stories, and a Holocaust survivor who became a hero to my entire family.
Jeri felt comfortable enough to teach at our religious school, then decided to convert. (She loves to describe trying to explain to her Western Kansas mother why converting meant giving up Christmas.) William felt comfortable enough to cheer repeatedly during services, at age 4, whenever Rabbi Miles spoke. (“We appreciate your enthusiasm,” Rabbi replied, smiling.)
At his Bar Mitzvah, William joked about Abraham, turning down a free cemetery plot for his wife, Sarah: “‘Don’t be a schlemiel, Abraham,’ Grandma would have said. ‘Take it. Take it. it’s free.’” (William got bigger laughs than any of my stories.)
Perry felt comfortable asking to swap Torah portions for her bat mitzvah speech, when she was assigned a long, graphic description of the Kosher slaughtering of cows. Rabbi offered a Ten Commandments bat mitzvah weekend, and Perry, no schlemiel, took it. One of the guest readers was Jan, a young adult family friend just beginning her conversion classes in northern Ohio. (We recently attended Jan’s daughter’s bat mitzvah in Cleveland.)
Perry and William received a religious, cultural, and social education at our temple, including a Jewish cotillion before their b’nai mitzvahs. They can thank their religious school for everything they know about the proper placement of forks for eating and feet for dancing.
My temple education was less structured. I learned to appreciate what I had run away from for so long. In our temple’s commitment to “Tikkun Olam” (repair of the world), I remembered my father’s strong sense of civic responsibility, and I became a better person myself. The warm, friendly Temple Shalom atmosphere has reminded me of the warmth of family and friends from my childhood; I even find myself, in socializing with older temple members, channeling Percy and the seemingly ancient Judea Center men he hung around with; and, in reciting once-familiar verses such as Kaddish and the Shema, and singing Hebrew songs (badly and loudly), I’m transported back to shul in Brooklyn, praying and singing with my father (badly and loudly).
In the years since he died, I’ve never felt closer to him. If he could hear me introduced on the bima as “Mikhael, ben Pesach” (Michael, son of Percy), I know he would smile.
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These days, smiles are hard to find at temple, but questions, arguments and recriminations are plentiful. Along with many other faith communities, Shalom is desperately searching for ways to survive, as we face the possible loss of our spiritual home and the home of our spiritual leaders: Emeritus Rabbi Miles and Rabbi Beth Jacowitz Chottiner.
Rabbi Miles has always been here for my family: blessing our home; praying for us in illness; praying with us when my mother died; leading ceremonies for life events; recommending a movie or restaurant.
He’s a kind, wise, loving man.
Rabbi Miles has retired, but we’ve built a strong bond with Rabbi Jacowitz Chottiner, who conducted Perry’s wedding ceremony in spectacular fashion and continues to lead and inspire us. She is one more Temple Shalom gift that I’ don’t want to lose.
Call me Mikhael ben Temple Shalom.
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Ginsberg is a freelance writer based in Louisville, Kentucky.