The Temple Defection

That evening I receive an e-mail from Sherri suggesting we meet the following day to discuss Ben's issue. Meanwhile I call around and get two recommendations for a tutor, the first being our recently fired Cantor. In the last year he was forced out by the newly hired female Rabbi, along with the temple board, in a gut-wrenching coup to rival Christ's last supper, or in more secular terms, Steve Jobs' early ouster from Apple. One hundred of the oldest and most religious jews in our conservative temple boycott this decision by the controversial Rabbi, and eventually defect. How could she toss out the Cantor with the golden voice, they ask among themselves. For over twenty-years he led the singing on the bima, started the children's choir, the adult choir, taught the Bar and Bat Mitzvah class to sing the difficult trope for their all important day. In the view of many of these congregants the Rabbi was committing a true sin of the commandments: "you shall not bear false witness against your neighbor." Or if that didn't stick, Proverbs 6-16:19: "there are six things that the Lord hates, seven that are an abomination to him-- haughty eyes, a lying tongue, and hands that shed innocent blood, a heart that devises wicked plans, feet that make hast to run to evil, a false witness you breathes out lies, and one who sows discord among brothers."

During the drawn-out dismissal process, rumors were rampant, congregants pitted one against another. Our newly renovated sanctuary had become an off-broadway theater; the bima, a stage for heart-felt soliloques, as one member after another approached the microphone with quaking hands clutched to hard-written notes. Some threatened to leave in a mutinous walk-out, others implored fellow members to remain and see the temple through the hard times.

And for the first time, I find myself a regular congregant. Transfixed by the drama, I was drawn into it, felt I had to be there, at long last summoned by a higher religious calling. But mostly I knew, as the mother of a Bar Mitzvah boy, I was in the thick of it. I kept wondering to myself, why, why alienate an entire congregation? If so many people loved the Cantor, why cause such a schism. But now it was too late, our temple was in shambles. And most of my friends had left. But we, the small group of Mitzvah parents, were stuck. Where were we to go? We mostly forged through, whispered amongst ourselves of the rift, what we'd do after the Bar and Bat Mitzvahs. Many were planning on leaving too. I was unsure. My idea of Judaism still hung mostly on Ben's comfort level with it. This was, after all, his temple, these were his friends.

And my defected friends were now true wandering jews, scrambling to various delis and restaurants in and around town for the morning Minyan -- the early Saturday service. They'd meet at the town library, Giorgio's Italian restaurant, above the Town Hall Deli where the best non-kosher sloppy Joes wafted in, but mostly they'd cram into one another's houses with potluck dishes for the Kiddish. A quarter of the temple leave, taking with them the heart and soul of the temple, the last of the sweet-hearted mensches, not to mention some rather hefty financial wherewithal. I miss them. Now the temple is full of younger families, perky jews, moms with stick-straight ironed hair and fashionable shoes. I miss my shuffling religous jews, the menopausal Jewish moms with greying roots, leaning over and kissing their high school sons and daughters during services.

Not that I was ever a regular temple goer, comfortable sitting in temple reciting prayers, rocking back and forth davening. My friend Rona and I would mostly go on the high holy days with our NY Times articles hidden in the Sedur, the book, swapping clippings from Modern Love, or the Lives section, then singing the sweet songs, leaning into each other. My Italian, non-Jewish husband Rob, keeping me warm with his grasp on my leg. This was fine with me, a kind of social, earthy-feely Judaism. And now that was gone.