4 | JUNE 23 • 2022 

PURELY COMMENTARY

for openers

‘Adon Olam’ Caper 
Takes the Cake
W

ell, if this 
happened, I know 
when it happened. 
I was in that middle time 
frame between childhood and 
teens, after my 
bar mitzvah, 
before I learned 
to drive a car 
and was ready to 
look for a part-
time job. I was 
every parent’s 
nightmare … 
a teenager with time on his 
hands. And to up the ante, I 
had a best friend to help me 
concoct interesting things to 
do to fill that time. 
I met Wally sometime 
after the end of sixth grade, 
when my family had moved 
from Pinehurst to Roselawn, 
from the neighborhood near 
MacDowell to one near Bagley 
Elementary. Though we had 
met earlier, we solidified our 
friendship in French class with 
a teacher Wally dubbed Miss 
McFoggy. 
I loved Wally’s creative sense 
of humor, how he coined 
nicknames for everyone, 
including me. He often called 
me Lindy Lundy in those 
days. And we just clicked. 
Though we would go on to 
experience high school, college 
and beyond as friends, this 
was a time when we were 
inseparable, joined at the hip. 
We made up our own shared 
language. “Dion” (as in Dion 
DiMucci, our favorite singer) 
was our word for anything 
cool. We loved to make up 
crazy games, like Buddy 

Bomar basement bowling, 
when we slept over at each 
other’s houses 
(one block apart 
on Roselawn and 
Greenlawn, both 
on the corner of 
Pickford). And 
we both had July 
birthdays and 
Wally’s family had 
previously also 
lived in a house 
on Pinehurst, a few 
years before. So of 
course, we were charter 
members of the “July 
Pinehurst Club.” Our 
best friendship was obviously 
“beshert” (even though I had 
never heard of that word at the 
time!).
I will spare you the details of 
most of our plans, but I vividly 
recall the summer when we 
would both turn 14. We were 
at the height of our collective 
imaginations. When you have 
a best friend at that age, you 
think anything you can dream 
up together is possible, even 
though an underdeveloped 
part of your brain senses it 
may not be the best idea. So, 
not surprisingly, we together 
developed what I now call the 
Great Adon Olam Caper. 
We had not known each 
other at the time of our 
respective bar mitzvahs. I 
had attended Shaarey Zedek 
Hebrew School while Wally 
went to the Chaim Greenberg 
Hebrew-Yiddish School, 
located in the Morris Schaver 
Auditorium. (Really, that’s 
what he called it every time 

he talked about it!) We 
had both had attended many 
Shabbat services nearby, 
mostly at the bar mitzvahs of 
our respective friends. 
We both had opted to cease 
our formal Jewish education 
post-bar mitzvah, although my 
decision involved a deal with 
my mom to continue my piano 
lessons (which I kept only for 
the requisite six months). So, 
we were both quite familiar 
with the pattern of Saturday 
morning services at nearby 
synagogues. 
You might wonder why 
two 14-year-old boys were 
discussing religious services at 
that time. We were not longing 
for spiritual awakening nor 
missing the davening and 
chanting from our pre-bar 
mitzvah days. Our needs were 
much more basic than that. 
We missed the seven-layer 
cake served at the kiddush 
after services. And so, we 
began to think of finding a 
way to have our cake and eat 

it too, which did not involve 
us sitting through a long 
religious service. 
Obviously, the idea of going 
to a synagogue for a Saturday 
morning service, after which 
we would be eligible to eat a 
slice of seven-layer cake was 
much too simple a plan for the 
Dynamic Duo! 
We began to contemplate 
various options. We could play 
cards, one of our favorite past 
times, and have the loser go 
to services and sneak some 
cake out for the winner. Nah! 
We had to do this together 
to make it worthy of our 
partnership. We could go to 
Zeman’s and purchase a sliver 
of our favorite cake with our 
allowance money. Nah, that 
was no fun at all! 
Gradually, over the next few 
weeks, we fleshed out a plan 
worthy of our partnership 
(with a dose of Mission 
Impossible): We would arrange 
a Friday night sleepover at 
Wally’s. I would sneak my bar 
mitzvah suit into my overnight 
bag. We’d sleep in the next 
morning, until Wally’s father 
and stepmother had left the 
house. Avoiding both of his 
sisters, we’d put on our bar 
mitzvah clothes, including a 
tie (oh the brilliance of our 
disguises), and sneak out of 

Jeff London

continued on page 7

Jeff and Wally 
now, still friends 
60 years later

Jeff (L) and 
Wally (R) in 
younger days.

