Seidemann: Modern spiritual conveniences

From the other side of the bench

By David Seidemann

Issue of October 30 2009/ 12 Cheshvan 5770

My children probably will not like this article, and from hearing many of the conversations with their friends I would imagine they would not be alone. I can’t begin to tell you how many times I have began sentences while speaking to my children with the phrase “when I was your age.”

Yes, it truly is a different world today. When I was a child growing up you had two choices if you wanted pizza. The pizza your mother made and the pizza she didn’t. There were no other choices. We all had jobs out of the house and chores inside the house. The in-house chores began when we were six or seven years old and by 13 I spent my summers working in a clothing warehouse. All of my brothers and sisters, and in fact, all of my close friends growing up in Columbus, Ohio, did the same thing. There was no sense of entitlement that seems to exist today and parents were parents and not ATM machines.

Vacations and airplane rides were few and far between; hand-me-downs were the rule and designer clothes the exception. Bar-mitzvah celebrations and weddings were modest and people struggled and appreciated the difficulty in supporting a family and practicing Orthodox Judaism. In this regard, growing up outside of New York in what was clearly not a bastion of religious observance, provided a great sense of togetherness — between other Orthodox Jewish families, the few of us that existed. And because the community was so small we necessarily had to interact with every other Jew in the community and with non-Jews as well. There was no easy way out, no shortcuts, and I say without reservation that growing up in a small Jewish community had its benefits when compared to growing up in a large Jewish community.

If you didn’t show up  to services, there might not have been a  minyan. If you didn’t help build the shul sukkah, there might not have been  one. If you didn’t go down to the farm to watch the cows being milked for Passover, there was no kosher for Passover milk. If you didn’t dance on Simchat Torah till your feet fell off from exhaustion, there were no hakofos. You wanted a school, you had to build it. You wanted a mikvah, you had to build it. You wanted kosher meat, you either had to drive to Cleveland and stock up or make other arrangements. As the community grew these items became more available. There were more people to put up the sukkah, more people to watch the cows give milk in April, more people to dance with  on Simchas Torah. But what was never lost, was a sense of being a builder of the community. What was never lost was struggling and sweating to practice your religion. What was never lost was knowing that without your input, there would be little, if any, manifestation of Judaism.

Our history is replete, from the earliest of times until the present, with people that have struggled against all odds to live a certain lifestyle. Avoiding the easy way out by immersing themselves in frigid oceans in place of a warm mikvah, or going without meat for months at a time in order to comply with our complex dietary laws, made our people stronger and gave them a sense of pride. This is not to say that as we advance in society, we should avoid modern-day conveniences that make our practice more comfortable, or more palatable to those seeking an observant way of life. What I do mean to suggest, however, is that we should not constantly look to cut corners — to make the practice of our religion easier to the point that the struggle is no longer part of the appreciation.

In a totally tongue-in-cheek fashion, I offer some ideas that would make our practice of Orthodox Judaism a little bit easier. I kid you not, the lettuce bug-checker has already been invented, as has the Shabbos raincoat with a hood large enough to cover one’s shtriemel, not to mention Shabbos toothpaste and Shabbos toilet paper. The Shabbos oven is a feature offered on most new models and the Shabbos lamp seems to adorn each household. So here goes.

My first idea is patterned after E-Z Pass. I call it E-Z Schnoor.  Instead of having to dig in you to your pocket for loose change as you daven when a collector approaches (as they always manage to do during prayer time, which I find quite disturbing), the collector will be given an electric wand. The collector needs only to wave the wand in the vicinity of your tefillin (phylacteries) and 25 or 50  cents would be automatically deducted from your bank account. This invention allows you to continue to pray undisturbed and assists the collector in not having to carry around a pocket full of change.

My second idea is patterned after the aluminum oven liners which our holy wives and sisters use to cook for Passover. I am proposing the “Stomach Liner” which allows one to gently insert and remove both a meat and dairy stomach liner into one’s esophagus. The advantage of this is obvious as one will be able to partake of a dairy dish within minutes of ingesting meat. No longer must one wait the grueling six hours or the semi-grueling three hours in order to enjoy chocolate ice cream before one goes to bed, after having steak for supper just a few hours before.

Nothing is more  uncomfortable than climbing into bed at around 11 o’clock on a cold winter night and realizing that one has forgotten to pray the evening service of Maariv. And so my third idea, which I believe will catch on instantly, is the “minyan in the closet”. Simply blow into the red plastic ends at the bottom of the vest or pull the yellow ripcord and the nine vests hanging in your closet instantly pop up and transform themselves into nine reasonable facsimiles of human beings. Simply daven Maariv, deflate, put them back in the closet, and enjoy a good night’s sleep.

My fourth and final idea, at least for the present time, is what I call the REPENTER. It is very difficult to survive an entire Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur season clenching one’s right fist and beating it against one’s chest over and over again. Hand surgeons throughout the neighborhood have produced voluminous records indicating an increase in wrist injuries after the high holiday season. The REPENTER is an artificial arm contraption that slides over one’s shoulder. A little spring in the artificial wrist area is set to various speeds depending upon the worshipers proficiency in Hebrew and desire for serious repentance. The REPENTER gently beats one’s chest picking up on a special Shabbos microphone, the words of the Cantor alerting the REPENTER, that it is time for  the confession part of the service.

Returning to being serious for a moment, I do not believe that our religion demands that we find the most onerous way to worship. I believe that the more palatable we make our religious observance to those seeking to embrace it, the better chance that deeper practice will ensue. But let us not forget that if we constantly are searching for the easy way out we are, in all likelihood, worshiping ourselves instead of the Creator.

David Seidemann is a partner with the law firm of Seidemann & Mermelstein.  He can be reached at (718) 692-1013 and at ds@lawofficesm.com.