Temple Every Friday

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Pop likes to ask, "If God's in charge of everything, who appointed God?" He's asked rabbis and he's asked priests. He's being honest, too. You see, Pop was an accountant by trade; out of habit, he's got to account for everything and everyone. 

Pop belongs to two temples (the reasons are somewhat complicated); he goes to one or the other every Friday evening. Since he doesn't like to drive at night, I chauffeur him and his "companion," Betty, to and from whichever temple. Thanks to his two lousy hearing aids, he can't even hear the service. He goes all the same. Afterward, Betty, with her shaky memory, does her best to sum up the rabbi’s “drasha” on the car ride home. 

Back when Grandma was alive, Pop rarely went to temple at all. Sure, like everybody else, they’d attend a service or two during the High Holy Days—Pop would even serve as an usher. But after many years of this, Grandma finally asked, "Why are we paying dues to two temples we never attend?" So Pop made a choice. He stuck with the newer temple, the one he gave more money to, the one that overlooks the lake; the one that might (if you squint and use your imagination) resemble the skeletal remains of Moby Dick’s great-great prehistoric grandfather. It’s that big. The sanctuary’s bone-white ceiling and walls undulate in such a way that you cannot speak from the bimah without generating a terrific echo. The installation of a speaker system didn’t help much, if at all.*  If anything, it only amplified the echo. For this reason, few of the congregants can understand what the rabbi ever says. This is why the congregation built a second, much more modest sanctuary less than a decade after erecting the first. 

The rabbi of the original temple down the road told Pop, "If you pay or not, you're a member here for life.” 

You see, the organizational congregation that inhabits the new temple (Temple Moby Dick) is older than the organizational congregation that inhabits the old temple. Many decades ago, the original congregation split in two over a rabbinical popularity contest. At least I think that was the gist of it. I was an infant at the time. 

Anyway, I never go to temple anymore. Almost never. I’ll go with Pop when Betty’s sick or something. But when I'm an old man, will I become a hypocrite and "find" God? The funny thing is, I do find myself praying on occasion… almost semi-regularly. Is it a result of cultural conditioning, or is it a smidgen of actual faith? Does it matter? 

April  8, 2004 

*[I’ve read that the powers that be at Temple Moby Dick have somewhat recently installed a brand-new sound system that somehow corrects the echo.] 

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