Game 30: Susan and Joe Bua - Potato Pancakes
When I was 9 years old, I told my mom that I didn’t believe in God. She was sitting on the front porch of our home, an 80 year old house on the cresting border where the flats of East Hollywood turn into the hills of Silver Lake. When I told her my disbelief, I started crying. It didn’t make sense to me, the logistics of it. Of God. She told me not to think of Him as portrayed on TV shows, but to instead imagine someone that was everywhere at all times. That just muddied the holy waters even more. After an hour, I left the porch with my tear ducts dried up and my Atheism in tact.
I would’ve kept crying if I was physically able. The purpose of my impious declaration wasn’t to spite my mom or win the title of Most Adorable Lil’ Atheist. I just thought that if I told my mom the truth, she wouldn’t make me go to Hebrew School anymore.
When I was seven years old, I started attending Hebrew school at the oldest congregation in Los Angeles, Wilshire Boulevard Temple. At first it wasn’t that bad. Every Sunday from 9am to 12pm, I was dropped off in Koreatown to hear Bible stories and to learn my alefbets. But starting in 3rd grade, we changed synagogues. We were now attending Ohr Ha’Torah, a westside congregation run by a burly, pony-tailed redheaded ex-Marine. This congregation gathered at a Christian church in Palms that allowed us Jews to use its building when they weren’t using it. As you may or may not know, Jews typically go to temple on Saturdays. That meant Hebrew school was now cutting into the holiest of pre-Internet rituals for kids: Saturday morning cartoons. New episodes of Pokemon straight from Japan, not the 7am reruns on KCAL 9, were aired on Saturday mornings! ABC’s One Saturday Morning was on Saturday mornings! If I wasn’t already a hardened Atheist, this attack on my weekend turned me into the Metapod of Jews.
So starting in 3rd grade, I protested the only way I knew how: Complete shutdown. I went to school on Saturday mornings and Tuesday afternoons, but I didn’t speak a word. Not to my classmates. Not to my teachers. Especially not to the sing-alongs to those awful Debbie Friedman songs that began each day. I didn’t even play basketball during our recess, preferring to hang on the fence and wait for the bell to ring. I hoped that my awful “grades,” shitty Hebrew speaking, and complete disrespect of the entire institution would lead to my expulsion. Either they’d kick me out or my mom would be so embarrassed that she’d finally acquiesce to my opposition to organized religion.
Nope. She made sure I was going to complete my Hebrew education. Meaning, I was going to stay in Hebrew school until I became a Bar Mitzvah in 7th grade. The dread of having to invite my classmates -- for some reason, our class only had about 6 kids while other grades had around 20 -- who rightfully thought I was a weirdo hung over my head the entire year. But when the day finally came, I felt like how the Israelites felt on Passover (that’s how the story goes, right? Remember, I paid no attention during class).
I did my haftarah in front of the whole congregation. I read the essay I wrote. I posed for photos with both sides of my family, the Goldsteins and the Matiases. When I got home and saw a giant blown up card featuring my 1st grade class photo, the kind that Bar Mitzvah party attendees sign. It said “Welcome to my Big, Fat, Mexican Bar Mitzvah!” Not even that could mortify me. I was done. Done! After my party was over, I didn’t have to see any of these people ever again. Plus, those stories you hear about 13 year olds making bank at their Bar Mitzvah? Let’s just I bought a computer, Randy Moss-style. Straight cash.
Cut to a couple months later. It’s September and I’ve started my last year at John Burroughs Middle School. Unlike Hebrew school, I have plenty of friends and am looking forward to the year. Best of all, my mom promised that after my Bar Mitzvah, I was done with schooling. My brother and sister were getting ready to begin their Jewish education at our new synagogue, Temple Israel of Hollywood. But me? I could finally spend my Saturday mornings playing Counter-Strike and Day of Defeat -- my pastimes had changed -- on my brand new HP desktop!
Just kidding. My mom enrolled me into a Jewish social justice course and didn’t tell me until the night before it began. I’ve spite blocked most of it from my memory. I only remember two things from that course
I had a crush on a girl who went to see The Darkness, live in concert. She had to leave early one day to see The Darkness.
At the end of the year-long course, there was a class field trip to Washington D.C.
On day one, I told my mom that there was no way I was going on that trip. As the months went by and air fare was paid, I told her I was keeping my word. When April rolled around, my mom drove me to the TIOH parking lot to drop me off with all the other Jewish teens ready to… learn how to make pro-Israeli policy? Meet with AIPAC? Lick envelopes containing Birthright brochures? Who knows? So I stayed put. They would literally have to drag me to LAX. She got my teacher. Then the Rabbi. I didn’t budge. Finally, we drove back home. I had won, but I was terrified of the upcoming Sunday when I’d visit my grandpa. One of the only times my grandpa, also an Atheist, snapped at me was a year earlier when I asked why I had to do a Bar Mitzvah. “Because our ancestors died!” Okay. Sure. I’ll shut up now.
To my surprise, he barely mentioned it. We just watched the Dodgers like usual. But as punishment, my mom sent me to visit a therapist. My shrink was a young white dude straight out of grad school doing business in Larchmont Village. He was the kind of teacher who handed me, a wise-to-bullshit 14 year old, markers and pens and told me to draw what I was feeling. To no one’s surprise, I lasted a month there. There would be no more therapy, but there was still one more year of Hebrew school. My year as a social justice Jew qualified me to be a teacher’s assistant for the next generation of lil’ Jews. In my interview, the teacher asked why I wanted to be a T.A. I told her I did not want to be a T.A. Still, I served as history’s worst Hebrew school T.A. for Temple Israel of Hollywood’s 1st grade class. I didn’t pollute their impressionable young minds or try to sabotage their Jewish education. I just stayed quiet, like I had the previous eight years.
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My personal relation to Judaism is hard to understand. I’d be happy if I never stepped foot inside another synagogue ever again and yet, I’m a proud Jew. With my last name and incestuous, genetically-debilitating Ashkenazi blood (51% on 23&Me!) coursing through me, it’s not like I can avoid it. The closest I feel to a spiritual level of Judaism is through comedy and its history as a Jewish art form. Those old Jews who created it, molded it, kept it Jewish as our people assimilated into White Americans, those are the Jewish elders I’ve looked up to my whole life. Baruch Atah Mel Brooks.
But at the end of the day, I’m an Atheist. I should probably stop capitalizing that word. I think it implies that Atheism is my tenet, something I hold onto very deeply. It’s not. I just don’t think there’s a God. There’s nothing more to it. It’s just one of millions of beliefs I hold, like “I don’t like mushrooms” or “Eastbound and Down is an incredible TV show.” That’s it.
My girlfriend was shocked to learn a year into our relationship that I considered myself an Atheist. I never spoke Hebrew, rarely talked of religion or faith, and never celebrated the major holidays unless invited to a party. Still, she thought I was a full-blown Jew. It wasn’t until she asked me to nail a mezuzah, a decorative case containing a holy parchment, to our front door that she found out I was an Atheist. I have no problem keeping the mezuzah, along with a menorah, displayed around our house, But to nail a mezuzah to your front door is to say “This is a Jewish household.” It’s not. It’s an apartment in Thai Town where one of the inhabitants is a Jew who doesn’t believe in God but once posed for the Nice Jewish Guys Calendar for $125 because he was really desperate for money out of college.
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Potato Pancakes
4 potatoes
1 teaspoon salt
1 tablespoon flour
2 eggs
½ cup grated Cheddar cheese
Boil potatoes until soft, mash until they turn lumpy. Gradually stir in remaining ingredients. Form into patties. Fry in hot oil until lightly browned.
Latkes have always been one of my favorite parks of Hanukkah. Crispy and covered in apple sauce and sour cream is how I take them (and how my mom made them growing up). I’m not the biggest fan of non-deli Jewish cuisine, but I’ve always loved how cooking them in a huge pan of oil harkens back to the reason for the season: The Maccabees’ one day supply of oil lasted eight days.
The amount of oil I used to cook these would have lasted the Maccabees a month. These weren’t as flaky as my mom used to make them, but they did the trick. As I transferred the last ones to a cutting board to dry off, I started feeling pangs of a kidney stone. So I ate these (and some leftover Bill Bertka stuffings) while fighting against a wave of nausea. Are you tired of reading about my kidney stones yet?
