Temple Jeremiah revisited. The teachers explain. Challa bread and becoming a mensch. 20 teachers on Sunday, 18 more during the week for Hebrew classes. They "know how to talk to children."

Judaism "has something to say to every phase" of growing up, and "nowhere else in their lives is this happening." Here alone "is there time to talk about life."

Teacher talk . . . Sunday school director Anne Lidsky and teachers gather after classes. "Information is the focus" of this program, but with an ethical twist, Anne says. That is, emphasis is on what makes someone "a mensch, or decent human being."

"We are trying to create Jewish memories," says Barb Kite. They bake challah, set up a seder, discuss what it means to walk into the Temple, make shabbat baskets.

"We give them options," says Anne. "They may not feel at home here. We give them things to feel at home about. 'When you are a Jewish adult,' we tell them, 'you may do this and that, more even than your parents do it.' We try to light a spark."

"We discuss issues," said Neil Stein. "On the first day of class, we sang a song about peace. We talk about Bosnia now, the Holocaust in the past. This week in Hebrew school [which meets weekdays], we talked of the accident (school bus at train crossing, children killed), offering silent prayer, asking peace for the survivors."

"We talk about becoming a Jewish adult," said Laura Frazin, a fourth-grade teacher, "how we act professionally, as in medicine. We present a way of looking at the world. Even in investments, where honesty is essential. We tell about the business owner who made big donations the year he made a bundle."

For junior high kids, Art Azen supplies a strong interfaith component. They visit the nearby Catholic church and a synagog of another Jewish denomination, Conservative or Orthodox. About these other groups, Sunday school provides "a home perspective." They study comparative religion one term, the Holocaust and the world in another, Israel and the world in a third.

The director explains all . . . Anne talks later about the program. It has 20 teachers on Sunday, 18 more during the week for Hebrew classes. They "know how to talk to children." Judaism "has something to say to every phase" of growing up, and "nowhere else in their lives is this happening." Here alone "is there time to talk about life." Not in public schools, which "are overwhelmed."

Teachers are paid a "very fair salary," $1,100 to $1,600 per Sunday-morning session, of which there are two a Sunday, over ten months. Lesson plans are required, with the preparation that involves.

As for teaching comparative religion, with its emphasis on what's common to all, "it has its pitfalls," she admits. "Kids ask, then why not one religion? Or why Judaism?" But this temple is open to mixed-marriage offspring for its classes. In this respect, it takes on the difficult task.

Temple Jeremiah briefly revisited . . . More of what we had last week:

It's mid-morning at Sunday school. Fourth, sixth, and seventh graders are in the high-ceilinged sanctuary. The cantor is up front with her guitar.

Kids file in, filling pews on one side. Anne Lidsky, director of the program, is at the mike. The sound is excellent. She has announcements.

"On December 12 at the Hyatt Regency O'Hare in a big room . . . Put your feet down," she says to a kid in the front row. "Thanks." She continues. "Have you ever been to a science fair?" she asks. A few hands go up. She explains.

"This is a Jewish fair. Go home, talk to your parents about it. Maybe do something for it -- a diorama, for instance. After Sunday school that day, you can drive there."

The kids are quiet and attentive. A few boys sit wearing baseball caps. She sells the fair. "Yes" she tells one questioner, "an exhibit must have to do with something Jewish, unlike a science fair, where there's no such requirement."

"Music," says one kid.

"Right."

"But can it have something to do with science if it's also Jewish?" asks another, determined to get it straight.

"Yes," she says. "Music too. Yes and double yes."

She holds up a prayer book. "It's instruction time. Some things are in the prayer book and not in the Torah and its verses." She explains the difference. They listen quietly.

Then the cantor talks, then sings, using neither mike nor guitar. "Baruch Adonai . . . " The kids join in quietly in the room so big they are swallowed up in it.

It's less lively here than other synagogues, like the Conservative congregation down the road or the Reform congregation in Evanston. This is Reform too. Same tradition, subtler rendition.

"This is the watchword of our faith. . . . Schmai, Israel," says the cantor.

The cantor explains things, plays her guitar, leads singing. She sits or leans on a three-foot stand behind her.

More announcements from Anne Lidsky: news of a UNICEF collection. UNICEF "helps children all over the world," she says. "A dollar buys six shots to save children from diseases . . . Fourteen cents buys enough drinking water so the body won't get dehydrated. . ."

She finishes. They file out, the cantor at the sanctuary door lightly playing her guitar as they walk by. The kids put hymn books in a pile on a shelf. The books tend to be scattered. "Know a nice mitzvah?" the cantor asks. "Help stack these books neatly."

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Reader response:

Eerily Christian viewpoint . . . Stop the presses on that lumpy bread "eerily reminiscent of Christian communion" handed around at Temple Jeremiah Sunday school, as told in #37, per Reader Annabelle's response:

(a) It's not lumpy, it's braided, and it's challah bread, better purchased on the North Side [of the city], where you get the real stuff, I might say kosher.

(b) What's this "reminiscent" business? That is, which came first, challah or Christian communion bread?

I knew that one was coming. I did it to test readers. Indeed, Christian communion got its start at a certain seder dinner known at least since da Vinci's time as the Last Supper. (I knew that, I knew that, I knew that . . . ) However, I did betray a certain vantage point, did I not?

As for what means this communion bread, one may further say that the Christian tradition covers a multitude of nuances (sins too, but that's another question), but that they all to some degree at least imply the unification (communion) of partakers with each other. Among other things it's meant as a love feast, or agape (rhymes with “say,”) as they say so well in Greek.

Annabelle, again, this time only part right:

B.C.E. as substitute for B.C. (Before Christ, who many say hasn't arrived yet) is for Before the Common Era, not Christian Era.

Yes and no.

Annabelle may owe me a loaf of challah sooner than she thinks, because my 1996-copyrighted Webster's New World College Dictionary has "before (the) Christian (or Common) Era."

One of us better take the low road, the other the high road, and see which of us is in Scotland before the other.

Huh?