One of my favorite Jewish jokes -- and I grew up in New Jersey hearing a lot of them -- involves the old Jewish man who was shipwrecked on a desert island and is finally rescued after being stranded for years. Before leaving the island, he offers his rescuer a tour.
On this end of the island, he says (and the audio version of this joke might be better than the written variety) there is one shul. And here, on the other end of the island, is the other.
His rescuer is confused: "How can this be? You've been living alone on this island for 20 years. Why in the world do you have two synagogues?"
"To that one, I wouldn't go," the man replies.
I think of this joke often at this time of year, because my own family has turned into a something of a living example of to-that-one-I-wouldn't-go-ism. As it happens, my two younger brothers and I all live in the Washington area, and it didn't take too long after the grandchildren arrived for my parents to decamp from the Garden State to move here too.
Among the four families, we belong to four different synagogues: My parents attend a conservative synagogue in Bethesda; my family a conservative synagogue in the District. One brother and his family attend a conservative synagogue in Olney; the other has been bouncing between a Reconstructionist synagogue in Bethesda and a Reform congregation.
Oy.
This is, of course, completely ridiculous but not, as the joke suggests, unique. At the Yom Kippur break-fast we attend every year at our friends Ron and Monica's house, we are four families that go to three different synagogues (one Conservative, two Reform) -- and it has become something of a ritual to spend part of the evening complaining about our own.
We Jews are, I think it's fair to say, a kvetchy people. If Goldilocks were Jewish, she'd still be trying out chairs. So when we look at synagogues, we think: this one is too fancy-schmancy, this one too touchy-feely. This one is too hard-core for me; this one has bad parking. (Not making that one up: it's one of the chief reasons my parents won't switch from theirs to ours.)
Even within synagogues, there is often a buffet of choices these days. In my own, I find myself wandering from service to service, like the children of Israel in search of the Promised Land. Musical Musaf? Family Service? Traditional Minyan? My friend and fellow congregant Ben has the best line about our shul: "It's not a synagogue, it's syna-plex."
And while I suppose I appreciate the choice -- to that sermon I wouldn't go -- I miss the traditional, take-it-or-leave-it shul of my childhood. For the High Holidays, there was an adult service and a children's service, and children below a certain age couldn't get past the ushers and into the adult one unless they were bleeding. Profusely.
Even though there were not assigned seats, every family had its place, and woe unto anyone who blundered into another's chosen row. Near the front, on the right hand side, the Marcuses sat behind the Dormans, next to the Nusims, and all was right with the world. At least, that is, if we children turned up before the hour when my father would stand, pivot to face the entrance, and put his hand to his eyes, like Ahab in search of the whale, until we arrived, late and in trouble.
I went to my parents' synagogue for the second day of Rosh HaShanah, and I have to say: it was comforting to know just where to find them: up toward the front, on the right-hand side. Also, the parking was not a problem.
Ruth Marcus is an editorial writer for The Post, specializing in American politics, campaign finance, the federal budget and taxes, and other domestic issues. She writes a weekly column that appears on Wednesdays.
