PURELY COMMENTARY for openers
‘Adon Olam’ Caper Takes the Cake
W
ell, if this happened, I know when it happened. I was in that middle time frame between childhood and teens, after my bar mitzvah, before I learned to drive a car and was ready to look for a partJeff London time job. I was every parent’s nightmare … a teenager with time on his hands. And to up the ante, I had a best friend to help me concoct interesting things to do to fill that time. I met Wally sometime after the end of sixth grade, when my family had moved from Pinehurst to Roselawn, from the neighborhood near MacDowell to one near Bagley Elementary. Though we had met earlier, we solidified our friendship in French class with a teacher Wally dubbed Miss McFoggy. I loved Wally’s creative sense of humor, how he coined nicknames for everyone, including me. He often called me Lindy Lundy in those days. And we just clicked. Though we would go on to experience high school, college and beyond as friends, this was a time when we were inseparable, joined at the hip. We made up our own shared language. “Dion” (as in Dion DiMucci, our favorite singer) was our word for anything cool. We loved to make up crazy games, like Buddy
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Bomar basement bowling, when we slept over at each other’s houses (one block apart on Roselawn and Greenlawn, both on the corner of Pickford). And we both had July birthdays and Wally’s family had previously also lived in a house on Pinehurst, a few Jeff (L) and years before. So of Wally (R) in course, we were charter younger days. members of the “July Pinehurst Club.” Our he talked about it!) We best friendship was obviously had both had attended many “beshert” (even though I had Shabbat services nearby, never heard of that word at the mostly at the bar mitzvahs of time!). our respective friends. I will spare you the details of We both had opted to cease most of our plans, but I vividly our formal Jewish education recall the summer when we post-bar mitzvah, although my would both turn 14. We were decision involved a deal with at the height of our collective my mom to continue my piano imaginations. When you have lessons (which I kept only for a best friend at that age, you the requisite six months). So, think anything you can dream we were both quite familiar up together is possible, even with the pattern of Saturday though an underdeveloped morning services at nearby part of your brain senses it synagogues. may not be the best idea. So, You might wonder why not surprisingly, we together two 14-year-old boys were developed what I now call the discussing religious services at Great Adon Olam Caper. that time. We were not longing We had not known each for spiritual awakening nor other at the time of our missing the davening and respective bar mitzvahs. I chanting from our pre-bar had attended Shaarey Zedek mitzvah days. Our needs were Hebrew School while Wally much more basic than that. went to the Chaim Greenberg We missed the seven-layer Hebrew-Yiddish School, cake served at the kiddush located in the Morris Schaver after services. And so, we Auditorium. (Really, that’s began to think of finding a what he called it every time way to have our cake and eat
Jeff and Wally now, still friends 60 years later
it too, which did not involve us sitting through a long religious service. Obviously, the idea of going to a synagogue for a Saturday morning service, after which we would be eligible to eat a slice of seven-layer cake was much too simple a plan for the Dynamic Duo! We began to contemplate various options. We could play cards, one of our favorite past times, and have the loser go to services and sneak some cake out for the winner. Nah! We had to do this together to make it worthy of our partnership. We could go to Zeman’s and purchase a sliver of our favorite cake with our allowance money. Nah, that was no fun at all! Gradually, over the next few weeks, we fleshed out a plan worthy of our partnership (with a dose of Mission Impossible): We would arrange a Friday night sleepover at Wally’s. I would sneak my bar mitzvah suit into my overnight bag. We’d sleep in the next morning, until Wally’s father and stepmother had left the house. Avoiding both of his sisters, we’d put on our bar mitzvah clothes, including a tie (oh the brilliance of our disguises), and sneak out of continued on page 7
JUNE 23 • 2022
