I was a royal pain to most teachers. But one rabbi actually cared about what I thought.
High school is like war; it can haunt you for years after you’ve moved on – even
if you’re one of the lucky ones who got out in one piece. This was especially
true for my Jewish high school, where academic and material competition left
everyone in perpetual mayday.
My survival tactic was simple – I spent as little
time in class as I could, wandering the halls or reading in the library. When I
did happen to show up, I interrupted the class with wisecracks. Few teachers
cared enough to reach out to me; most of them threw me out with a detention
slip.
This was especially true when it came to my Judaic
subjects, the classes I hated most. What was the point of busting my head on a
dusty, archaic language, learning about people who were long dead or deciphering
the geography of places that now only existed in chards underground? No one ever
discussed why we were learning these things –
certainly there was no mention of the word “God” – the whole exercise seemed
like a punishment my parents had inflicted on me to ensure that I would one day
marry a nice, Jewish doctor (though why that was so important, I wasn't sure). I
often held the tall, yellowing volumes of the Talmud vertical on my desk so I
could sleep undisturbed behind them.
There was only one class I went to regularly: Navi, where we studied the kings and prophets of
Israel. It wasn't the subject that kept me in my seat each day, but our teacher,
Rabbi Kavon. He was one of those teachers you knew meant business; he didn't believe in second chances (or third, or fourth…). Although in his forties, he
had the look of an older man, with stooped shoulders and pants pulled up to his
chest in various shades of beige. His gray curls sprung out in a tight, unmoving
sponge. He had a long beak nose and eyes that bore right into me, sharp and
steady, making me feel like he could hear my thoughts.
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