There’s never been a teacher who didn’t loudly declare that he learns from his students. It’s a slogan of our profession, a pious protestation that advertises our humility, our open-mindedness. And occasionally, it’s true.
We bar mitzvah teachers have said it for years — a half-truth. But I did learn from Betsy Silverstein at our lunch lesson that mustard on a Swiss cheese sandwich wasn’t half bad. (Her mama had run out of mayo.)
She also taught me that the Haftarah blessing could be sung to the tune of “God Bless America” and nobody but the rabbi and Irving Berlin, spinning in his grave, noticed.
But that’s before I met Sophie, the student you dream of when your real-life student tells you he’s converting to Buddhism because his folks have agreed to sponsor a vacation in Tibet and Buddhists have no Haftarah requirement.
Sophie was a whiff of pure oxygen to a fatigued, overage bar mitzvah teacher on his last gasp. Girls are always better students. Rarely do their athletic interests compete with their studies. Girls are better. Many young ladies prefer the mall to basketball. A good thing — it takes less time.
Besides, Sophie had a talent all too rare among teenagers. She was as obedient to her teacher as Rabbi Akivah was to Torah. Five lines of Haftarah by Tuesday? You could bet on it.
But her greatest attribute was her birthday, which in the complicated world of synagogue programming landed her bat mitzvah smack on Aug. 7. So what, you ask? Well, the Haftarah for that day is Isaiah 49. So you might say that this 12-year-old diligent achiever introduced me to Isaiah. Oh, I knew him before, but not as well as Sophie, who — due to my insistence — repeated Chapter 49, in Hebrew, 10 times on tape.
Like I say, after several similar assignments, she knew him better than I. Well, Isaiah is her Haftarah, not mine. Why shouldn’t she know him better than me? (Besides, she was nowhere near my level of expertise on Amos and Jeremiah.)
“Ted,” she says, “did you see those beautiful metaphors that Isaiah uses?” (I prefer “Ted” to “Mr. Roberts, my persecutor”.)
Sophie had an ear for beauty. Isaiah 49:14 makes Wordsworth, Keats and even our own Hayim Bialick sound like jingle writers. The prophet who wrote almost 3,000 years ago (only a heartbeat away considering the breadth of eternity) is as fresh as Krispy Kreme doughnuts. Naturally, he retains his charm and currency. Why should that be surprising since prophets can see over the rainbow? They know the language of every tomorrow.
Isaiah speaks to you as though this morning you personally signed the covenant with the God whom Isaiah symbolizes as mother, father, bridegroom, feudal lord and sugar daddy; the awesome but merciful magistrate that looms over your world. He has a knack for talking solely to you, as though the Book of Isaiah began, “Dear Ted” or “Dear Sophie.”
The prophet’s song reminds us of that old love affair between God and Israel, whose ketubah is the covenant.
I couldn’t help but think, “Why couldn’t the liturgy for the holidays and Sabbath match the inspiration of Isaiah?” We all have trouble coping with the length of the services and our short attention span and the dreary repetition (yes, I know it’s traditional) of Amidahs, Kaddishes and other prayers.
The Amidah, gray with age, is cluttered with clumsy language and has little power after all these years. We’ve worn it out like a comfortable but ragged shirt.
Likewise, the Kaddish goes flat after three or four recitations. And even if the Moshiach himself arrived after the second hour of prayer, we might not notice. Who can stand on spiritual tiptoes after the second hour?
In my humble view the overwhelming, stifling length of our service is a major attendance wrecker. Even the Baal Shem Tov had to stop his spiritual exaltation to chop wood once in a while. Two hours of prayer may not be as good as a flash of inspiration.
On a practical level, guess how many more Jews will come home to synagogue if the service is halved?
I know an unconventional rabbi in Memphis, Tenn., who bows to tradition with a teasingly simple solution to this problem. “Cut nothing,” he says. “Don’t amputate the service, just jiggle your arrival time.”
He sees many levels of stamina in his congregation. Some come promptly at the beginning and stick it out, with joy. Others straggle in late like reluctant schoolboys. Finally, there’s my friend, Herb — an extremist — who shows up about Kiddush time. “I rarely miss Adon Olam,” he claims.
I say, give ’em Isaiah and his biblical colleagues instead of repetitive Kaddishes and Amidahs and their like. I know Sophie, even after eight months with the prophet, agrees with me.
Ted Roberts is a humorist based in Huntsville, Ala.