The Other Side's Temple
Written Summer 2002
I was at Grandmom
and Granddad’s house that Saturday night, because my parents were going
to a Carey Ziegler convert. I was sitting at the dining room table and
listening to my Three Dog Night CD in their CD player that they had gotten
not three months before, my brother Joe sitting next to me and trying to
sing along with the singers when my grandmother came in. A short lady with
curly gray hair, my maternal grandmother is quite religious. One big difference
between her, my grandfather, and the rest of my mother’s side of the family
and my immediate family is that they are Christian and we are Jewish. Anyway,
she came into the room from the kitchen as “Black and White” was ending.
“I want to go to church tomorrow,” she said to my brother
and me. I paid no attention, thinking that it wouldn’t much affect me if
she went to church. I was wrong, though. I knew that with the next thing
she said. “Since you are here, if I go, then you have to, too.” I turned
around in my seat and looked directly at her, surprise in the bit of my brown
eyes that was showing through my long, almost black hair that was covering
part of my face. I probably care more about being Jewish than my brother,
my mother, or even my father. Jews do not go to church, and I didn’t want
to go!
My grandmother must have seen the look on my
face. “I understand if you don’t want to go, and you don’t have to.” Her
tone of voice told me that going to church was really, really important to
her. I couldn’t let her down like that! I’m not that bad a granddaughter!
“Oh, I’ll go,” I said.
Grandma was so happy that I agreed to go! She
said that it was okay that neither Joe nor I had any dressy clothes with
us to wear; we could just wear our regular clothes, thank goodness!
Early the next morning we went over to the church,
me with book in hand. I figured that I could just read the whole time,
but I was wrong again. Just goes to show how little I know when it comes
to my grandparents and their religion. Boy, I need to get this church thing
right! I thought, as Grandma told me that I had to leave my book in the
car. I reluctantly put it away.
As we entered the church, Grandma whispered
in my ear, “Now you’ll get to see how the other half lives.” I didn’t really
see why she said that, since I’ve seen plenty of her religion from her friends,
so I paid little attention to it. We were going to our seats in the middle
of the third-to-last row, first Grandma, then me, then Joe, and Granddad
bringing up the rear, and I was looking around. The church was much like
Temple Kol Ami, where I had last been to services. It had a bima, although
of course it was not called that; it was probably called a stage. The stage
had flowers decorating it, and a place for the leading prayer person to stand.
The rows in which the people who come to pray sat were regular old rows,
just like at Kol Ami, nothing new there. The windows had stained-glass scenes
that I had never seen before, but that was to be expected. Nothing much was
new until we actually got to the row. Instead of sitting down, both Grandmom
and Granddad kneeled on the floor! It was an unusual picture, as I had never
seen either of my grandparents on the floor. I was about to copy them, thinking
that I was being disrespectful, when Grandmom said that it was okay for
me to just sit in the row.
The beginning of the service was boring to me.
The guy on the stage talked in monotone, as if he did not care all that much
about G-d and the service, he was just doing his job. Grandma was listening
intently to the guy, but when she turned and looked at me she saw one of
my famous I’m-bored-get-me-out-of-here looks on my face, and she suggested
that that I look through the back of the prayer book to see if I knew any
of the songs in it. I tuned out the voice of the guy on the stage and paged
through the back of the book for most of the rest of the service. I had
spotted one song I knew, ‘Michael Row Your Boat Ashore,” when I came out
of my little reading world and noticed that people were going up to the
front of the church and getting something from the guy on the stage, eating
it, and coming back to sit down. This concept was totally unknown to me,
and when my grandmother got back I asked her about it. I don’t remember
exactly what she said, but whatever it was made sense to me and I went
back to my song searching.
I was quite surprised a little while later when
I found a song that I knew from being in the Temple Kol Ami Jr. Choir,
in Hebrew. “Shalom chavarim, shalom chavarim, shalom, shalom,” it read.
I hummed it and then showed it to my brother, who found the page for himself.
My grandmother heard my humming and put her finger to her mouth, but she
had a look on her face that told me she didn’t really mind. I spent the
last few minutes going over the song in my head.
Finally, the service was over and we exited
the church. My grandmother greeted many people on the way out, each time
explaining how she had her sweet little Jewish grandchildren for the weekend
who were kind enough to come with her to church. Boy am I glad to be out
of there! I said to myself as I got outside. I didn’t say that to my grandmother,
though. When asked what I thought of church, I simply slowly replied, “It
was an interesting experience, but I would not like to go again.” She seemed
to accept that.