2008 Woodie Awards
At Least They Let Me in the Building
A Siyum HaShas Perspective
Etan Bednarsh
Issue date: 3/8/05 Section: Opinion
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"Mazel Tov." The words seemed to fight their way through my quivering throat and eek out, somehow crawling over my cracking voice. True, the music was blaring loudly and the crowd was raucous and jubilant, yet somehow I knew my words - normally so pedestrian and cliché, but now eerily meaningful and unique - had reached their intended target. I tilted my head to the side, pretending to focus on the purple "Section 236" sign branded on the wall high above my shoulder, while actually pathetically hiding my misty eyes and feebly attempting to maintain my bravado. "You never thought I could do this" he replied, perceptive and correct as he always seems to be. True as that statement was, my father's full response was forthcoming and his confession reverberated in my ear: "I never thought I could do this."
Surely, he was right. My father didn't have the pedigree he had conferred on his children. He never had those post-high school years of learning Torah that his kids had taken as a given. Yet there he sat, finally resting at the end of a laborious journey. His odyssey had proved successful; his seven and a half year, daf a day campaign was being rewarded; my father, and the words overwhelm and inspire me as I type them, had just finished Shas. I looked at him and gripped his hand, and that newly formed connection instinctively bobbed to the beat of the music now pounding at the walls of the Continental Airlines Arena. Words had ceased between us, but our powerful silence hushed out the manic, celebratory surroundings.
The moment was so perfect and so full of meaning. It should have been the apex of a wonderful evening. It should have been a wave of personal happiness in an ocean of Jewish pride. It should have been the pinnacle of an event laden with inspirational words, religious meaning and memorable instances. That's exactly what I expected, but it is far from what I received. If anything, the moment was an aberration; it was one fleeting instant of ecstasy in an otherwise flawed and foreign ceremony.
Surely, he was right. My father didn't have the pedigree he had conferred on his children. He never had those post-high school years of learning Torah that his kids had taken as a given. Yet there he sat, finally resting at the end of a laborious journey. His odyssey had proved successful; his seven and a half year, daf a day campaign was being rewarded; my father, and the words overwhelm and inspire me as I type them, had just finished Shas. I looked at him and gripped his hand, and that newly formed connection instinctively bobbed to the beat of the music now pounding at the walls of the Continental Airlines Arena. Words had ceased between us, but our powerful silence hushed out the manic, celebratory surroundings.
The moment was so perfect and so full of meaning. It should have been the apex of a wonderful evening. It should have been a wave of personal happiness in an ocean of Jewish pride. It should have been the pinnacle of an event laden with inspirational words, religious meaning and memorable instances. That's exactly what I expected, but it is far from what I received. If anything, the moment was an aberration; it was one fleeting instant of ecstasy in an otherwise flawed and foreign ceremony.