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Cheder Memories
Chumash and Talmud and Midrash, too,
taught to the tune of Ein Kalohainu.
TED ROBERTS SPECIAL TO THE JEWISH NEWS
W
ell, it's "back to
school" time. Back
to Chumash, Tal-
mud, and Midrash
as well as reading, writing, and
'rithmetic. Time for Jewish edu-
cation — as sweet and sour as the
persimmons of fall — to call our
kids back to the schoolroom.
Most modern Jewish educators
don't have many sweet words for
the cheders or Hebrew schools of
my generation. In fact, there's a
classic joke they tell, involving —
naturally — the minister, the
priest, and the rabbi. It seems
their houses of worship are
plagued with mice.
The minister calls his congre-
gation to a prayer meeting where-
in he beseeches the Creator of
mice and men to ban the mice.
The mice disappear — but only for
a week. The priest does a four-
star exorcism and the mice stay
gone for two weeks.
And what does the rabbi do?
He makes the mice go to cheder.
Naturally, they never return. Get
it? Jewish education will push 'em
out of the synagogue door quick-
er than a lathe fried in motor Oil.
Maybe so, but our Hebrew
school teacher was a virtuoso with
a ruler. His baton orchestrated a
dozen or so hooligans into a func-
tioning class. They learned. It
was like teaching walruses to play
a harmonica.
Nothing was farther from our
natural instincts than the learn-
ing of this 3,000-year-old language
that had no relationship to Joe
Dimaggio, Lou Gehrig, Sid Luck-
man, or the girl next door who,
due to some enchantment in our
brain and body, we just noticed
was more than a substitute sec-
Ted Roberts is an attorney in
Huntsville, Ala.
and baseman.
We were a reincarnation of the
Philistines. We had no interest in
spiritual or literary beauty. Some-
how, our teacher — this drillmas-
ter in a crisp, brown suit with
matching vest and tie — hiked us
down the road of learning for the
two to three years we were under
his authority. His weapon — be-
sides that artful ruler — was his
pointed stare and the single epi-
thet he used to perfection — "Dum-
my."
He used the term with accura-
cy. It was not hurled as a de-
grading insult. It was simply a
descriptor. If you couldn't memo-
rize 12 words in a week, you
weren't a"slow learner," nor were
you an "under achiever," or an At-
tention Deficit Syndrome suffer-
er. You were a dummy.
Every Hebrew school class had
several girls. We considered this
unfair since we boys were draftees
and all of us had to attend — the
dull as well as the bright. But the
girls were volunteers, a select
group, "a few good women" to
paraphrase the Marine Corps
motto.
And they weren't distracted by
sports. They were deadly com-
petitors. Vocabulary words
poured from their mouths, today's
assignment, tomorrow's and next
week's, if you didn't stop them.
They won all the medals.
It was unfair competition, said
one of our gang who was a full-
time second baseman, but only a
part-time student. What else did
they have to do? They didn't have
to cut the grass. They weren't bur-
dened with baseball practice. They
could spend the entire afternoon
memorizing their Hebrew vocab-
ulary.
In class, we'd put our vocabu-
lary words to use in translating