The following is an excerpt from my recently completed book “Imaginary Men,” a narrative about growing up Jewish in the heavily Catholic neighborhood of Gravesend, Brooklyn in the 1950’s. It picks up as three friends, Butchie, Stevie, and I are engaged in a game of slap-ball during the summer of my twelfth year…

On this particular day halfway through the game Stevie's mother stuck her head out the window and summoned our batter to lunch. Butchie, having already eaten, announced he had to go to confession. I had heard the term many times, but had never asked anyone what it was all about. I just figured it, like confirmation, fell into the realm of religious ritual and let it go at that. The recent incident of the statues however had jarred me enough to make me intensely curious as to what exactly went on in that church down the block. I asked Butchie what confession meant, and he explained that you sat in a booth, spoke to a priest, and related all of the sinful things you had done since your last confession. He then gave you some penance to perform, and absolved you of your sins. Apparently you could go as many times as you wanted or needed to. My mind reeled. Yom Kippur on the installment plan?

Butchie told me he went once a week. Intrigued, I pressed him as to some of the sins he had committed in the week since his last confession. He told me (and I remember this vividly) that he had committed the sins of impure thoughts and impure (it might have been unholy) touches. He rattled off some other sins, but he might just as well have stopped at the former two. I knew exactly what he meant. If I were to be held to account for those two particular sins, I would have to set up housekeeping in the confessional booth. I knew full well that I for one was not in the least inclined to wean myself from the error in question. And I suspected Butch was as weak as I.

During my third and last year in Hebrew school, I began to study for my Bar Mitzvah. This entailed staying after the last class for an extra hour of private study with the Rabbi. I was given a small book with the particular tractate of the Torah (called a Haftorah) that corresponded to the one that was scheduled to be read on the day of my Bar Mitzvah. These lessons were simply more intense versions of our class lessons, except that instead of just reading the words, I now had to learn the complex phrasing and melody required to chant it in the traditional manner. I had about six months to do this, and as the Haftorah only ran about three pages long, it was not a real difficult task. I learned it word-by-word, line-by-line, and practiced it diligently at home. The only fly in this ointment was that I (and very few twelve year olds) had ever done any public speaking, let alone singing in front of a silent audience which included my entire family, surrounded on the Bima by the elite of the shul, as well as my father.

Throughout the entire process, my older friends would regale me with tales of other kids who had vapor-locked on the big day and drawn a complete blank due to sensory overload and stage fright. Butchie related his experience on his confirmation, an event that seemed to me to be a walk in the park compared to what I was facing. Still, I practiced daily, and thought I sounded great. I began to view Al Jolson singing "Kol Nidre" in "the Jazz Singer" through new eyes. I imagined myself a member of the club.

My parents had bought me a small battery-powered portable tape recorder for Chanukah at my request, and I decided one evening to record myself singing my Haftorah. Confidently I cued up the little reel of tape and hit the record button. I let fly, the solitude of my room allowing me to impart a level of emotion and intensity I was too timid to reveal to the Rabbi at our lessons. Finishing as much as I had learned so far without a single error, I rewound the tape. Hitting "play" I leaned back and listened with closed eyes.

I sounded like dreck.

The taped version was not at all what reverberated in my head when I sang it live. I sounded like Arnold Stang with adenoid problems. I could sell this recording to pediatricians, who might play it at medical seminars as an example of the classic cracking, shrieking adolescent voice. Or maybe to ENT specialists who would be well served to play it for the benefit of their patients with warts on their vocal cords or badly deviated septums. It might make them feel better about their vocal timbres by comparison to what they were hearing on tape.

Why did they have to do this to me at thirteen? What about my sister, why was she exempt? No wonder women outlive men. The ancient Rabbis were either sadistic or crazy. Wasn't it bad enough that I was going to have to use a full tube of Clearasil paste to hide the moonscape-like complexion my hormones had bequeathed me, now this voice thing?

What was I going to do? The big day was only a few weeks away. My parents had dipped deep into their bank account in order to pay for suits, tallises, tefillin, and a hundred other expenses. I was going to reward them by standing on the Bima in my new suit, Tallis, and gold tallis clip, grunting and squealing incomprehensibly. Maybe I could simply slap the recorder on the open Torah and walk off stage, at least that would eliminate the potential problem of my forgetting everything I had learned.

The next few weeks were hellish. I studied frantically, one eye fixed on the plastic salmon-colored recorder on my dresser. I managed to not play the tape again, and certainly refrained from doing any more recording. The morning of the Big Day found me in bed, awake, going over my lines yet again.

Things went flawlessly, even though I was nervous. I was resigned to my fate. I guess that relaxed me. Sort of like the gazelle which when caught, meekly offers its throat to the lion. I walked to the table on which the Torah lay open, feeling the appraising stares of the men surrounding it. The Rabbi stood close by on one side of me, ready no doubt to whisper prompts to me should I suffer brain freeze and falter. My father stood on the other side. As I stared at the open scroll before me, I was struck by the beauty of the calligraphy. The Rabbi had told us that each Torah scroll was hand lettered by specially trained artists. These artists were entrusted with the task of ensuring that each new Torah was identical to the old so that The Law was passed intact from generation to generation.

He said that the letterers would recite a special prayer after inscribing each letter, or maybe it was each word. At any rate, I was swept up in the beauty and significance of the scroll, as well as the whole experience. Here I was, at thirteen, relating The Law as given by God to Moses thousands of years ago to our congregation, who sat and received it in respectful silence. The fact that I had no idea what I was reading mattered little to me, it was obviously vitally important and esoteric stuff.

I began to read and shriek (I had my Haftorah with me), and as I did, my nervousness disappeared. Halfway through, I began to see in my peripheral vision relieved nods from the men around the table as they realized I was going to be all right. I couldn't imagine how many disasters this crew had witnessed over the years. Thankfully, it appeared I wasn't going to be one of them.

Several years later, I grew curious as to what exactly I had read, and went to my high school library to consult a translation of that particular tractate. I remember sitting at the long table and cracking open the obviously little read book. As I began to read, I felt what Dorothy in "The Wizard of Oz" must have felt when the curtains fell, revealing the Wizard as a sham. In relating my portion of The Law, during my sweet moment in the sun, I had melodically imparted a fairly detailed account to my friends and neighbors of God making a point. He instructed one of his prophets (Hosea) to marry a whore, and live a life wondering whether his children were actually his or not. This apparently was part of the seer's "training." Man, I wish I had thought to invite Butchie to the service. God had told Hosea to marry a HOO-ah? We Jews not only seemed comfortable with impure thoughts, we obviously found they built character!