A Serious Game

When I was a kid, my family sometimes played a geography game on Shabbat and car trips. One player would say a location’s name (state, city, river, etc.), and the next would name a place starting with the last letter of the previous one. Not very exciting, especially with “A” places which often began extended loops; e.g., America, Albania, Alabama, Argentina, Alaska, Algeria, ad almost infinitum.

As I got older, however, I began to play a new geography game not requiring an atlas: Jewish geography. You know how it’s played. You meet someone Jewish, ask a few threshold questions (e.g., where do/did you live/grow up/go to school/camp? what was your/your mother’s maiden name?), and almost immediately you discover you have numerous mutual friends or acquaintances. Sometimes, you even learn that you’re related, if not by blood, then by mispacha.

A quick example. Last summer, while in Budapest on a wonderful Torah in Motion (TIM) tour, I overheard a woman on the tour saying that she went to HILI. Being a HILI graduate, I introduced myself, and by the end of dinner Diane and I had discovered that we knew dozens of the same people. Indeed, we figured out that we would have sat together at Judy and Gary’s son’s wedding had Sharon and I been able to attend. (I was, sadly, sitting shiva for my mother at the time.) And it’s from such a Jewish geography game that true friendships can be created.

Here are three more games I’ve played recently in the Modern Orthodox community.

1. I was on a Zoom call with Tzvi, the director of the Lamm Heritage Archives (and R. Lamm’s grandson-in-law). As part of taking the Archives to the next level — I’m avidly looking forward to the upcoming launch of its new website — he asked Michael and me, both devotees of R. Lamm’s sermons, to virtually meet with him and Dina, an American-born branding expert now living in Israel. Michael’s business obligations caused him to be briefly late (I’m retired and therefore was on time), so Tzvi suggested that Dina and I get acquainted while we waited. Here’s what ensued.

Dina: Where did you grow up? Me: Far Rockaway. Dina: Where did you go to school? Me: HILI. Dina: Really? My father went there. Me: What’s his name? Dina: [Gives name.] Me: He was in my elementary school class. Time elapsed, 30 seconds, at which point Tzvi declared we won an Olympic gold medal in Jewish geography. Our conversation continued with me noting that I had just recently met her mother and stepfather (also an elementary school classmate) at a book fair where her mother guilted her stepfather into buying my book, “A Passionate Writing Life.” (Parenthetical aside: The book is still available for sale at the Judaica House — brick and mortar in Teaneck and on its website — or directly from me.)

2. On this year’s terrific TIM tour to Provence and the Riviera, I was having a box lunch on a park bench in Avignon, sitting next to Bernie from L.A., who was also on the tour. I knew he was my good friend Helen’s cousin, but that was just step one. After I told him I lived in Teaneck, he asked whether I know his son-in-law, Ari. I smiled and said that Ari was one of my favorite lecturers at the Beit Midrash of Teaneck, and recently gave two wonderful talks about Philo, an important but relatively unknown first century BCE Alexandrian Jewish philosopher. I added that Ari and I were actually in the midst of an email exchange about Philo, with me noting that since the lectures, Philo’s name kept popping up wherever I looked. (Ever notice how that happens when you learn a new word?) Indeed, I had just emailed Ari that very morning that Marc Shapiro, Jewish historian and TIM’s guide par excellence, had referenced Philo on our tour bus.

3. A few days later, we had an hour of free time in Monaco to eat lunch, enjoy the scenic overview of that beautiful city-state and the billions of dollars of superyachts bobbing in the sparkling Mediterranean, and shop (Sharon) or search for some vanilla ice cream (me). (We were in the midst of a brutally hot European summer heat wave, though, to be honest, that wasn’t my only reason.) It wasn’t easy, but just before our scheduled tour of the prince’s palace, I finally found what I was looking for. I pointed to the vanilla, and as the woman behind the counter scooped it into a cup, I pulled out my credit card. When she saw it, however, she shook her head and said “cash.” I had none (it was the only time on the tour that my credit card wasn’t sufficient), so, to my consternation, she began returning it into the tub.

And then I heard a voice tell her “here’s the five Euros” and instruct me to “give it to tzedakah.” I took the ice cream, profusely thanking my benefactor who said he saw my tzitzit (which had come out of my shorts) and realized that a fellow Jew really needed that ice cream.

But now we get to the game. He: Where do you come from? Me: Teaneck. You? He: Same. Me: Really? What street? He: Sunderland. Me: I’m around the corner on South Forest. What’s your name? He: Rothenberg. Me: Oh, you must be Tamar’s husband, Ross. Seeing his astonishment that a guy he doesn’t know and for whom he just bought ice cream halfway around the world is a close neighbor and knows his wife and his name, I quickly explained that Tamar and I had been in Robbie’s carpool for several years, and I’d seen his picture and name many times in his law firm’s ads. We quickly went to surprise Tamar (which, when seeing me, she was), and then I was off to view the palace’s treasures and be mesmerized once again by Grace Kelly’s beauty. (I still remember “High Noon.”)

Playing these recent games reinforced my sense that the Modern Orthodox community is a tight one, whose constituents often have no more than one or two degrees of separation. It’s similar, in a way, to daf yomi, where Jews of all persuasions who participate in that program of learning one page of Talmud a day can feel at home anywhere in the world where there is a daf yomi class. Like Jewish geography, always being on the same page leads to connections being continuously made within this small community. Both are part of the ethos of this warm, connected community, whose members share friends, family, history, beliefs, and values; we feel at home — a very comfortable place to be.

But, alas, as with many things today, it’s not that simple. As a result of what I perceive to be undue support in the MO community for unconscionable and often cruel MAGA policies and programs, and the abject, continuing failure of our religious leadership to provide the needed moral direction at a time when so many of our values are being trod upon, I recently wrote that I also “feel lonely and alienated, living on the cold edge of the community I once felt was a warm home; ‘I dwell,’ in Frost’s words, ‘with a strangely aching heart/In that vanished abode there far apart.’”

So which is it? A community that feels like home? Or a community from which I feel alienated?

My answer, achingly given, is yes.

Joseph C. Kaplan, a retired lawyer, longtime Teaneck resident, and regular columnist for the Jewish Standard and the New Jersey Jewish News, is the author of “A Passionate Writing Life: From ‘In my Opinion’ to ‘I’ve Been Thinking’” (available at Teaneck’s Judaica House). He and his wife, Sharon, have been blessed with four wonderful daughters and five delicious grandchildren.

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