Forgive Us Our Trespasses. Diane Gensler

and unit plans, gathering and creating materials, making phone calls to parents, grading papers or tests, and at certain times completing interim reports or report cards. I would take work home every night and work after dinner until bedtime. I also worked on Sundays. I would allow myself Saturdays off to make sure I didn’t burn out. Besides, my father would remind me that Saturdays were our Sabbath which is a day of rest. On Saturday nights I would go out with friends or, on occasion, a date. When the school year started, I didn’t have a boyfriend.

      The faculty meeting concluded, and I was packing my belongings when I heard someone mention moving elsewhere.

      “What?” I asked. “Where are we going?”

      “To church,” responded the social studies teacher.

      What? Church?!

      Seeing my look of disbelief, she continued, “We do this every year before school starts. This is just for the teachers.”

      Church??? I have to go to church??? I’ll pass on this.

      As if she read my mind, she said, “Everyone is required to go. Come on.”

      I’m required to go to church? How could they force me to go? Was this in my contract? Didn’t they all know I was Jewish?

      I was never one to be contrary, so I went along. Besides, I didn’t know how to get out of it. The principal would notice I was missing.

      I had no idea where the church was located, so I followed everyone. I dragged my feet down the hallway feeling “like a lamb to the slaughter.” I may as well have been shackled as reluctant as I was to go. I had no idea what to expect.

      The church wasn’t far. We walked to the end of the corridor and around the corner. There, another smaller corridor led to a light-filled atrium. I had heard this extension and new construction was recent, and it showed by its magnitude alone. The wide open space was lined with windowed walls and decorated with tall white pillars and fresh, new flooring. The wooden doors to the church looked like the entrance to a medieval castle. They opened to a space so big that NASA could have built a rocket ship in there.

      A round stone baptismal was inside. I knew what it was from movies and television, yet I’d never seen one in person. A metal bowl trickled water into the pool. I thought this would be lovely if it were a fountain. At Christmas time they surrounded it with red poinsettias.

      The inside of the church was hexagon-shaped and had seating for at least a couple thousand worshippers. Overhead was a twenty-four foot high vaulted ceiling with beautiful exposed wooden beams that matched the long, polished pews. The pipe organs set high above the altar were gleaming silver. Each pew had a moveable bar underneath. I would find out later it was a knee rest for kneeling. There was a wooden cross hanging above the altar so big it would have held a giant-sized Jesus! I knew not all churches were this massive.

      How did they get a church this nice? This must cost a fortune!

      I tried to stay toward the back of the group so I’d be seated in the second row. But I miscalculated and ended up in the first row because the pews held so many people. Our group filled the pews at the front of the sanctuary. Behind us were rows and rows of empty pews. It reminded me of a funeral service where the dearly departed had no one who came to mourn.

      I sat uncomfortably, squeezed between teachers, my hands folded in my lap. I looked around at the big, open church. I had been in a church before but never during a service. What would they ask me to do? I wished that I were a church mouse, and I could scramble through a hole and disappear. It didn’t feel like one person sensed or cared how uneasy I felt.We sat so closely together someone should have sensed the heat emanating from my body, my legs shaking slightly, or my arms twitching.

      I was accustomed to religious services, because I had attended many synagogue services. Although in my synagogue, each attendee has his or her own seat, the hinged kind that flips up when you stand. When I was a youngster, I was so lightweight that, like the jaws of a crocodile, the seat snapped closed and folded me up in it!

      My mother was a reform Jew and not observant. The only time she went to synagogue was once a year during Yom Kippur to say Yizkor, a memorial prayer, for her parents. Ironically, Yizkor is said four times a year.

      My father, on the other hand, considered himself an Orthodox Jew who kept the Sabbath and holidays. He often went to services and many times would take me with him.

      In a synagogue there is a bema similar to an altar, and the religious leader is a rabbi. In Jewish orthodox services the men and women sit separately, and the women do not stand on the bema to read Torah, the holy scripture. Additionally, most of the service is in Hebrew which I learned how to read in Sunday/Hebrew school.

      I ended up a Conservative Jew which is somewhere in the middle. I am comfortable sitting with men and women during a service. I noticed that the church had prayer books as we do in synagogue. While there was no Torah, there were objects displayed that looked to have religious significance. I did attend a service once at a reform Jewish temple that used an organ. I was accustomed, though, to no musical accompaniment, so I startled when I heard the symphonic melody of the pipe organ that reminded me of the overture to Phantom of the Opera.

      The pastor started speaking. His booming voice bounced off the high ceilings and empty pews. He welcomed us and recited prayers. The teachers recited along with him. I sat silently.

      Whew; it’s just a service.

      At least this service was in English. But, as one would expect, there were lots of mentions of Jesus Christ. That was difficult for me. You would never hear His name come from my father’s lips. Nor would he ever write it. If he had to write “Christmas,” he’d write it as “x-mas.” As a matter of fact, when we’d drive past a local church, my father would say, “Our rabbi told me that Jews should never go into a church.” Ironically, here I sat.

      Sorry, Dad. How many of your rules have I already broken just by working here?

      My father grew up in an Orthodox Jewish household in Baltimore City, the son of immigrants who fled Poland and Russia in the early 1900’s due to persecution of the Jews. Both my parents had relatives who perished in the Holocaust. Both had grown up with childhood incidents of being taunted and beaten due to their religion.

      They sent me to a public elementary school where I was the minority among a population of African Americans. I was friendly with everyone. To my knowledge, no one ever mentioned my religion or ridiculed me about it. While my parents were sensitive to these issues, they made sure I led a relatively protected life.

      When I learned of the Holocaust in Hebrew School, I had a nightmare that the Nazis were invading our home. I have never forgotten the scene that played out in my sleep—the soldiers entering my bedroom and pulling me out of bed with their guns pointed. I was standing before them in my long pink nightgown, trembling, about to urinate on my lime green bedroom carpet, unsure of what torture they were going to use on me. The nightmare has always served as a reminder of my ancestry.

      The fact that I was teaching at a Catholic school upset my father. He wasn’t thrilled about the Virgin Mary lodged in my classroom whom he saw when he helped me bring my materials to school. But he had resigned himself to letting me “do my thing,” even though, every so often, he tried to talk me out of teaching there.

      “You know you can leave anytime,” he’d say to me occasionally.

      “Are you sure you haven’t changed your mind about teaching there?” he’d ask.

      My mother didn’t seem bothered by it.

      I knew not to kneel in church as that would be considered bowing before Jesus Christ. I must have learned that in Hebrew School. I had no interest in taking communion. And if anybody thought I was going to cross myself, they were crazy!

      If my father knew I was here, he’d pitch a fit. I will never tell him that I am going to church services. He’d make me quit my job immediately.

      I sat listening, enjoying a hymn, and admiring the splendor of this newly created, magnificent House of Worship.