High Holy Days Massacre

This is not a happy story

There is actually absolutely no comic relief to loosen the tension…it’s all tension, so if your hoping for some type of redemptive tale or at least an amusing anecdote I can assure you this is not going to be it.   You should probably skip over to the story where I accidentally give out X-rated Valentine’s to elementary school kids… that one’s a hoot.

I grew up in Michigan.  I didn’t move to New Jersey until I was 12 and by that point I pretty much felt like an adult.   

My parents were pretty young when they got married and had me..my mom was just out of high school and my dad was just out of should have fucking known better you stupid ass…so she was stating college and he was already going to Wayne State University. 

This is important cause it explains the constant moving the first 12 years of my life as they kept trading off going to schools and different programs. 

Highland Park Michigan =They both were doing Undergraduate at Wayne State University.

East Lansing=1 Year No fucking Idea

Ann Arbor 4 years=My mom got her Landscape architecture degree at U of M

Back to East Lansing… Dad got into MFA Play writing program

Then to NJ Dad got into Rutgers,

So lot of moving around. 

But through it all one thing remained constant.  Jewish Holidays were sacrosanct and were to be spent with my dad’s parents in Oak Park a suburb of Detroit.

For some reason, for the High Holidays instead of going to a regular temple, they would go to services held in an elementary school run by the ultra orthodox lubavitch which were completely in Hebrew and the men and women were separated.  I was always mystified by this as we weren’t orthodox.

I suppose in retrospect the one thing we were was poor and this was probably cheap to free. So that probably explains why we went there. The high holidays is when synagogues make all their money by charging for seats.

Yom Kippur is the worst of the holidays.  You start out by going to services in the evening… go back in the morning.  Leave.. go back in the afternoon and then go back to finish up in the evening.  Mind you this is all 100% in Hebrew and I am in 2nd grade and don’t really know any Hebrew… so I pretty much would sneak out of there as quickly as possible and just lay low and hope nobody missed me.  Any kids my age, were lubavitch kids, all in black who were preying in Hebrew alongside their fathers with the same back and forth fanaticism.   I would just go walk around the neighborhood… find a park…. Whatever… years later during the high holy days I would just go find somewhere and chain smoke.

Oscar

This year we had a dog named Oscar.

I always wanted a pet because I was incredibly lonely as an only child whose only real contact was with his father who I was incredibly wary of (and with good reason the fucking bastard!)   I was able to talk them into getting me a puppy…. Who I named Oscar… I supposed after my favorite character Oscar the Grouch.   

Oscar was some kind of Beagle and he was totally wild.   We had a fenced in back yard and he would dig a hole underneath and run.  He chewed up everything in sight.. he was a pain in the ass to housebreak…but he was a dog and I loved him despite him having chewed up my Monkees record I ordered through the TV!

It was Fall.  Yom Kippur.  Time to head to Oak Park for the holidays!  So we packed up the car with the dog and aimed it towards Detroit. 

Within an hour of getting there, I couldn’t find Oscar anywhere.

I searched the house, the neighborhood.  Nothing. 

My parents went out that evening and when they came back they said they had gone to the police and had found out that he had been killed trying to cross a busy intersection.

The next morning I couldn’t stop crying and ended up locking myself in the bathroom.  I did not want to go to services… I was too upset..which needless to say.. no one in my family really gave two shits about as they all went about their own affairs.

Finally my father came and started banging on the door. 

Mind you I am not sure if he used expletives but knowing him… probably. 

Get the fuck out of the bathroom we’re going services

It’s just a god damned dog

If you don’t open this door by the count of five …I am going to break it in 

and then I will give you something to cry about…

which meant his leather belt.. and 

He did not go easy with it.

What could I do.  This was not one of my many secret hiding places I had in the house where they actually couldn’t find me.  I was out in  the open… so I had no choice I opened the door.   He grabbed me.. pulled me out.. and death marched me the 3 miles to the elementary school that was rented out for the lubavitch services. 

That whole day I knew in my heart two things that I would carry with me for the rest of my life.

I fucking hated my father.

Sure, I really disliked him and was wary of him before this episode.  He was a total fucking prick to me, and he was my primary… and I use this term loosely care giver….I just learned to stay the fuck out of his way…but his actions on this day made me fucking hate him.  I preyed all day for him to fucking die… I used to alternate between that and my mom divorcing him,,,,,

The second thing I became deeply aware of was that there was no fucking god.  It was a total fucking sham.  What the fuck had I done to get stuck with my fucking asshole of a father?  Why would GOD put me in all these awful situations and make my life one horrible experience after another?  Cause he didn’t fucking exist that’s why.   So for the next 20 plus years as I got dragged to shul… I would jut kind of sit there realizing what a fucking waste of time this was and inevitably just go find a quiet place to go smoke. 

Eventually I was joined by one or two other people who somehow had gotten roped into going to services that day.