Hebrew school — it’s not just for children anymore

Herman Wouk argues the importance of a Jewish education in his book "This Is My God." After all, he says, "What adult sits down among the schoolchildren to learn the Hebrew alphabet, the Torah and the ways of Jewry?"

Um. Me?

Every Tuesday afternoon I join the 43 kindergarten, first- and second-grade students from the Bet Sefer religious school, along with their three teachers and the rock 'n' roll rabbi at Temple Beth Abraham in Oakland. We sing about holidays, about the Torah, about a double-named first-century rabbi called Ben Bag Bag. Our guitar-playing rabbi — the very reason my family chose this temple over others in the area — doesn't mind my being there, he says. He likes seeing me in the back, singing along. And it's absolutely the favorite part of my day.

While the Sh'ma moves easily from my lips, with words and melody recalled from my childhood, most of the other songs are unfamiliar. I stumble over the Hebrew, catch just the first few words and try to commit the melody to memory. (I'm jealous of the youngest ones there, those smarty-pants 5-year-olds who know all the words, even if they maybe don't know what they mean. They went to preschool there, I remind myself; they've heard these songs their whole life.)

After singing, the children line up to return to their classrooms to say the blessings for their snack of crackers, grapes and juice. I'd stay if they'd let me; I'd like to learn those blessings, too, but this is really my daughter's Hebrew school and she wants me out of there. So I leave them to do grownup things like grocery shopping or sipping lattes at a coffee shop with the copy of my New Yorker, all the while humming "Shalom Aleichem" or "L'Cha Dodi," or at least the parts I can remember.

Tuesdays are "Getting Jewish Day," my husband has joked. After my daughter's Hebrew school, which ends at 6 p.m., we come home and I skip right back out the door an hour later for what we call "Mommy's Hebrew School." It isn't really Hebrew school at all, but a course on Jewish literacy, held at Oakland's Beth Jacob Congregation and led by Rabbi Judah Dardik.

"So many people are walking through their Jewish lives possessing a fair grasp of knowledge in one area, feeling very comfortable with another, yet embarrassed of an area where they're especially weak," Dardik said. "I want people to be able to walk into a cocktail party, a synagogue, a social conversation and feel they can follow along."

The course description is promsing: "Perfect for those that missed out on Jewish education as a child."

Wouk might nod his head in approval. I'm learning all 613 of the commandments; I'll be navigating the prayer service — a one-session crash course, whee; and we're supposed to cover Jewish history in eight weeks, enough, I hope to squeeze in 5,765 years of our Jewish past.

This will be a good thing, because my biblical knowledge is lacking in the details. I know that Moses floated down the Nile among the bulrushes, later on he parted the Red Sea, and somewhere in there he was given the Ten Commandments. Other than that, besides an ark and a flood and several temple burnings, I'm not so sure what happened.

Despite the fact that I have a long way to go, Mommy's Hebrew School is already paying off, both the afternoon singing time with the children at Temple Beth Abraham and the more grown-up discussion version at Beth Jacob.

At rock 'n' roll Shabbat mine is the only adult voice I can hear belting out all the words to "Rabbi Ben Bag Bag," yelling loudly and proudly when we get to the line about the Pirkei Avot — "Thank you Ben Bag Bag for your cool and pithy quote quote. It's the best of Pirkei Avot!" — because I know what it means. I learned it at Hebrew school.




Joanne Catz Hartman lives and writes in Oakland. She can be reached at .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address).