#and of course like starting 5th grade u couldnt be into any of that | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

glumnet-blog · 6 years

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correct me if im wrong but i dont think u ever had to experience the mandatory joys of hebrew school. maybe u did i forget i dont want to make you too jealous here but i went to hebrew school on thursdays and sundays from 7-14 years old. hebrew school lasted for just a couple of hours but it felt excruciatingly longer than that. hebrew school was just like going to school, on top of goin to regular, grade school during the week. that is a ratio of 2 schools to every 1 week! only a generous masochist would send their child to 2 different schools right? i think it was worse than regular school though, bc i simply didn't have friends there. the only vivid encounter i remember with a peer before 5th grade was with Lucas in the second grade, whom my mom delicately tried to pair us together in order to have our conversational sparks ignite, over a luigi video game, like she was trying to start a fire in the wilderness out of uninterested rock and twig. lucas had a 7 year old mullet and had a lot of confidence. i didn't like either of those things. especially the mullet shit bc i was a rat tail or die kind of 7 year old. after my mom literally accompanied me to hebrew school for awhile and the other kids thought i had special needs, she tried the opposite approach. she hired the UC berkeley student hebrew school teacher to come tutor me once a week for an hour. this was pretty fucking weird. my hebrew school was pretty lax and progressive. in retrospect i realize the institution of the temple sinai hebrew school is much more about socializing with other jewish kids and pretending to memorize the va'haf'tah (or actually memorizing it if you're hannah sternberg and like to impress the rabbi) then to actually embed the jewish youth into intense and arduous jewish centered academia. so having hairy 21 year old Noam awkwardly sit next to me at my kitchen table and timidly correct my mispronunciations of hebrew words was all a wash if you will. but my mom was a stubborn mom who wanted her son to carry on the 'teachings of our ancestors' a forcefully sentimental phrase that makes you feel like a melodramatic bible scholar whenever u say it out loud. thankfully these at home sessions didn't last long because of Noam's scheduling problems. so for the rest of the fourth grade i was free of hebrew school. but sooner or later fifth grade rolled around and my parents threatened me with no screen time for a month if i didn't go in. no screen time was a punishment way worse than death so i relented.

i think it was at this first day of fifth grade hebrew school that shit changed. 2 things changed specifically. 1) i made nate laugh and 2) i made julia laugh. when i wrote earlier i didn't have any friends in hebrew school i mean like i didn't even have acquaintances. like i lethargically walked into class, pretended to be invisible for 2 hours, hid the bathroom during break times and waited impatiently after class on the sidewalk scouring the downtown oakland avenues for the plain yet angelic white of my moms 1995 honda oddesey. i had made people laugh before at regular school i guess . but there was something different about making hebrew school people laugh... i had somehow broken the social engima of this institution i had distain for, for so long. not only that... it was a different kind of laugh ... at least coming from nate. i didnt just make nate laugh i made that motherfucker crack up. watching him laugh was like watching a firecracker go off. like i got him in trouble from the teacher he was laughing so hard and uncontrollably. making julia laugh was different. she didnt crack up like nate. but her laughter was genuine nonetheless and just as euphoric. it felt like whatever i imagine heroin to be everytime i saw her begin to open her mouth and smile and vibrate her whole head because of something i had said. within the space of 2 hours i had acquired my first hebrew school friend and first hebrew school crush. i was a fucking social millionaire....i would call this period of time, 5th grade, the golden age. i could make nate laugh consistently and julia was a similarly consistent vessel to validate my 5th grade ego. i was closer with nate bc we were both boys , and julia already had a very insular and exclusive trio which was not accepting new members. herself, hannah, and arielle (who demanded to be called ari which i always was irritated by she was a fake ari. her real name was arielle! she was a fraud, imposter! my full name is ari. i am the real ari. stupid aside)....time pushed forward and 6th grade began. several important dynamics changed in 6th grade. the friends of nate who went to his real, 5 day a week school (st pauls) had been assigned to our 6th grade class. additionally, puberty was pretty vivaciously in affect and thus social hierarchies were further matured as well as a recognition of elementary sexual thoughts and feelings. i continued to make nate laugh but i felt like my secret companion was bein taken away by his St paul friends. in order to combat this i tried to befriend all his friends. something i learned then and throughout my life almost never works.... attempting to pass as an insider in a group where u are and always be an outsider. i could make nates friend laugh a little bit but they were much more fond of making each other laugh. also because they went to school with each other nathaniel (different than my friend nate) and jackson had an air of superiority and seniorirty over me. even in the 6th grade i think i could detect this kind of unspoken social heirachy at play. and with julia other guys were starting to make her laugh at hebrew school. if you want to talk about social heirarchy she was definetly the queen of our class. as puberty progressed the less cool i became. bc my only claim to fame socially was humor , but i didnt understand all the other shit. like dressing cool, talking cool, walking cool., etc. that otther shit became important in middle school if not the rest of my life... because of this, and the fact im just a fucking shmuck at the end of the day , made julia talk to me less. and with less talking came less laughing. nate and julia's laugh was to special to me during this time just less frequent... and therefore more rare. so when i did get it from them it felt all that much better.

thhere was a point there end of 5th grade start of 6th grade i looked forward to hebrew school. i looked forward to sitting down in the creaky, plastic black chairs in room 04 and whispering to nate about how ugly our teacher was. i looked forward to playing tic tac toe with julia in the art room instead of drawing menorahs, and arguing with her about who had the ineferior tic tac toe skills (she did i got XXX like almost everytime ok) . i even started to like the fucking moldy, bookish smell of the temple because i associated it with having good times with julia and nate.

in the 7th grade my connections with nate and julia fell apart uninterestingly and sharply . my friendships were fading with nate and julia before the year even started ....but of course with 7th grade we entered mid'rasha. mid'rasha is just hebrew school for teenagers, explained my mom on teh car ride over to my first mid rasha class. that may be true for my mom but for me mid rasha was a new world. a world i did not want to reside in. midrasha was different in many ways, it was at night, it lumped in loud, sparkly 17 year olds with unsure, gangly 13 year olds in the same room, it was a different bigger campus, it was off. clqiues were formed immiedatly and it was obvious i was not in the st pauls group. the group nate was in. i didnt even see julia at all i think she was being ultra extroverted befriending the royalty that was 17 year olds who wore sean john and listened to MGMT before it was cool ( this was 2007) . i went to naybe 5 or 6 mid rashas but i understood the jig was up. i was no longer a funny person in the room nevermind the funniest in the room. the teachers were young attractive college students who you couldnt fun of at all for being ugly. i wasnt even in the same elective as nate anymore so i couldnt whisper ' ruby is ugly' even if i wanted to. 1 time i did have an art class with Julia. but now as an ambitious and earnest 13 year old she tackled the assignment sincerely. i saw her drawing these detailed portraits i thought were gross because they reeked of being a try-hard. i just wanted to play tic tac toe.

i stopped going to mid rasha and i didnt see nate or julia again for a while. i didnt see nate until i was a junior in HS and i took the SATs at the high school nate attended. when we were all getting checked in i saw him at a circular lunch table with his st paul friends. i walked by him to say hello. we gave each other a stoic and cold ' whats up dude ' .

the next time i saw julia was at my high school school sponsored dance. at the time i was nervous as shit bc i did not know how much i would have to dance with my then girlfirend, what kind of dance i would have to do, if i should get mad at other guys dancing with her etc. a bunch of high school dance inspired neuroses were blossoming in my head. i was suprised as a motherfucker when i walked into the high school lobby and saw julia sitting a dinky plastic table checking students in. i remember my brain being blank with confusion. i walked up to her to get checked in. she said hi ari with a smile. the kind of trained smile a social butterfly has deployed many a time. it was an impersonal smile. it was warm and cold at the same time. i said hello took my ticket and left without any small talk or acknowledgement of our hebrew school connection. i went on to dance with my girlfriend a little but to mostly stand around and pep talk boris into making a move on yael.

i have not seen either of them since. i had a dream last night i was in hebrew school in the 6th grade. julia was sitting across the class room. she was mad i was looking at her and mouthed for me to stop. nate was sitting next to me like he normally did in the 5th and 6th grade. but he wasnt trying to exchange goofy remarks with me about all the flaws of the teacher. instead he was listening attentively. i leaned into to whisper somthing but he waved his hand faintly. he was not to be disturbed

in sophmore year of high school my 'mentor' relayed to me that she was getting reports from teachers that i was exhibiting disturbing and unproductive behavior. disturbing and unproduvtive behavior? i thought. i was just tryna get motherfuckers to laugh. i was trying to chase the high of the first time i made nate cry. i was trying to recreate the time julia was so approving of whatever joke i had made she rubbed my leg as an appreciating gesture and said youre soooo funny. i never was able to recreate those highs in high school. that kind of blind temporary euphoria stayed untapped, stored in my memories of hebrew school. my mentor said it was problematic that i was so loud and disruptive in class. she understood i liked to horse around but she argued ' thats not the real you ari. we both know you are better than that. the real you is working hard , studying hard, respectful of teachers and avoiding distrations in class. this class clown act you put on isnt the real you'

that kind of pep talk , even at the time , felt weird to me. who are you , some distant authoratative figure i meet with twice a month , to tell me who i am and who i am not. and much more importantly beyond that, you tell me my true identity is attached to some golden scholar who wouldnt dare partake in the low life humor of classroom banter. everything about academia makes me ripe with disgust and disinterest. the only reason why school has been bareable at all is the social aspect. making people laugh

during junior year of high school i went through my first break up , i cut friends off , friends cut me off, i went to my first funeral, i had an anxiety attack in jerasulem (symbolic of my relationship with judaism....in my opinoin) i felt increasingly alienated from my wealthy and narrow minded private school brethren, started smoking weed every night before bed and so on . my mood was bad all the time, i was tired, and the last last last thign i wanted to do was to go to school. this i now realize is my first bouts of Depression (dun dun duuunnnn).

it is senior year of highh school now. the students check in for the first time with their mentors. my mentor relays to me personal behavioral report - teachers now view me as quiet and respectful. teachers are somewhat cognizant of my general apathy towards what is in front of me, but complimentary of my willingness to put my head down and do the school work given to me. my mentor is smiling and exclaiming ' see ari you did it! this is the real you. this is the hard working and respectful guy i know you have always been. you dont have time for distractions you have higher priorities now' . i just wanted the meeting to be over so i nodded my head rapidly in agreement. however in my mind i thought the current version of myself teachers are describing could not be further from the real me. the real me is still at temple sinai room 04 sitting in those cheap, creaky black chairs. the real me is shaking nate's arm bc i just thought of a joke about the how ugly the spoken version of hebrew sounds to a non native speaker. the real me is singing stronger by kanye in an obnxious robotic way , parodying the chorus in order to get julia to chuckle. the real me has not been seen for or heard from for a while. the new me is content with surviving the day without any interaction with peers. the new me doesnt want to be seen. the real me is still poking julia's shoulder, waiting for her to turn her head

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