When my boys were young - they are adults now - we used to walk to one or the other of two near-the-house congregations.
We lived in a mixed neighborhood. It was "mixed" by many different demographics - age, religion, ethnicity.
Usually the boys and I walked together, especially when they were very young.
We'd take our time and admire the things we'd see on the way - sometimes a flower, sometimes a rock, often peering down the train tracks hoping to see a train in the distance.
We left in plenty of time to still be some of the first to arrive for services.
Later when the boys got a little older they would sometimes walk before or after me.
If I was first, the neighbors would ask "Where are the boys?"
If they were ahead of me, as I passed, the neighbor's would report that "We saw the boys go by a couple of minutes ago."
But most of the time, we walked together, just us guys.
The wife and daughter, younger than the lads, might join us later at the synagogue and we'd all walk back together.
I was reminded of that in the latest of R. Marc Angel's weekly emailings.
The rabbi wrote:
We can most effectively transmit “the number of generations before” not by sending our children to synagogue—but by taking them to synagogue with us. We can most successfully communicate the values of Torah not by sending our children to study Torah—but by studying Torah with them ourselves. If we want them to be connected to our people and our traditions, we ourselves need to be connected to our people and traditions.
I've moved around quite a bit since the boys were young.
Sadly, some things never seem to change.
In almost every congregation there are few, if any, young people with one or both parents in attendance. Maybe on a special Shabat, but a regular Shabat? Rarely, and a daily minyan - even when school's out - forget it.
The synagogue where I currently have a fixed place - last row, southeast corner - just changed its Shabat schedule because, the rabbi said, parents complained that their children wanted to sleep late on Shabat and by the time they got to "shul," the Torah already was on its way back to the ark.
Last Shabat, with the later start time, there were no children present.
I wonder how early these same children - and their parents - get up if they want to play sports or go to an amusement park or ... or just about anything but go to synagogue.
When did going to synagogue, at least on Shabat, become optional?
The answer: When the parents let it become optional.
We DO have some youngsters at most Shabat services - usually four or five. They are in the early grades so no one expecrs them to sit quietly through the entire service..
When mine were little, I confess to being permissive. They could "disappear" to the weekday minyan room and play quietly until ברכו when Abba would invite them back into the main sanctuary. There they stayed until after the Amedah and usually until after the Torah was returned to the ark. As they "matured" they stayed with Abba longer and longer.
But there never - never - was any question about sleeping in. If we couldn't go to services - when it rains in Florida it really rains - we'd "do our thing" at home.
Even today, when they condescend to visit their abba there's no question that we'll be off to the synagogue, be it by car during the week or on foot on Shabat.
My boys are hardly material for a yeshiva, and frankly, that's fine with me.
But they ARE knowledgeable Jews and they are comfortable in synagogue - Moroccan, Chabad, Ashkenazi.
To his credit my son-in-law, about as "heloni" as they come, comes with me on Shabat when he visits here or when I visit him (in Israel). I don't tell him; in fact I don't even suggest it, but he gets his act together and comes along. I'll keep him. His Yemani grandfather was "datee," his father not at all. A Levi, he never had splashed water over a cohen's hands until he came to visit recently. He got plenty of experience. (Sefardim insist the cohenim recite the blessing not once but twice on Shabat and any other day there is a musaf; they get a break on "yomay hol" when they only go up once during the morning service.)
I suppose my relationship with my son-in-law is similar to mine with my father-in-law (z"l); when I went to Israel I was 90% "heloni". Almost everything I know, and do, I learned from my father-in-law; he was my Yethro.
The "bottom line" to all this rambling is that dumping kids off for Sunday school and letting them sleep in on Shabat is not giving the youngsters an appreciation of Judaism. Parents, sometimes grandparents and sometimes fathers-in-law, must set a positive example to "the kids" regardless if the kids are themselves fathers.
It really is a "monkey see, monkey do" world.
