Temples and theaters
I took the boy to the second grade service today for the first day of Rosh Hashannah. Last night I didn’t go to shul at all.
Most of the second graders were able to handle themselves. The boy was the only one who had a parent present. I wonder if it would have been better if I hadn’t been there. I told him he needed to behave, but that if he needed a break, all he had to do was ask. So my first day of Rosh Hashanah was pretty short, and pretty ineffectual.
Last night I couldn’t bring myself to get to shul. Instead I went to see the late show of All the King’s Men. I’ve been waiting for the movie for a couple of years now. It was, as I expected, disappointing. I don’t know how anyone who hasn’t read the book could make sense of it. I liked aspects of it. Whenever I’ve read the book, I never imagined it set in Lousiana, and I never imagined Jack Burden, Anne Stanton, or any of the other characters speaking in a southern accent. I mean, of course they would, but in my mind the action always takes place on the East Coast. Geographical chauvinism.
Shul these days makes me feel strange. Invisible. Betrayed. Ignored. Empty. None of the positive things I used to feel when I first started going there regularly, sitting in the back row with the other regulars. I even liked the bar mitvahs back then. I felt a sense of community, and anticipated being caught up in that stream. I imagined once we had a child, we’d be invited for lunches here and there, make friends, and so on.
But that didn’t happen. Or it didn’t happen like that.
Shul has become a chore to me. I’ve never been able to make it the father-son bonding experience with the boy that I anticipated when I used to bring him strapped to me in the Baby Bjorn.
Tonight was the first night of my subscrption at the Huntington Theater. I wasn’t going to go. I even tried to sell my tickets on craigslist, but no one wanted them. So I ended up going alone.
It was odd having Beth’s seat empty. The biggest difference between her being there and her not being there was that no one complained about anything. The people, the seats, the light, nothing.
I found the whole theater experience more satisfying than the shul experience.