New Archive:

October 2000 Issue

Ode to Herzliah

By Rob Dixter

School is just starting up for another year, and while I no longer attend high school, I can firmly say that it was quite possibly the greatest time of my life (if you don't count the time I performed with Dolly at the Grand Ole Opry). High school has been over for 10 years, and my friends and I were wondering about a reunion. Should there be a reunion, will there be a reunion, who will go, are we simply living in the past?

Nothing will ever recapture the vibe that was Herzliah High School, even though we have tried to recreate it ever since. I attended a Jewish high school, where an emphasis was placed on Jewish studies, the state of Israel, and how to give emergency circumsicions. The school is in Montreal but quite frankly the hijinks that occurred there could be transplanted to anytown USA.

When I moved to New York and informed people that I had attended a private Jewish High School, a certain look would come across their faces as though I had suddenly become a Rabbi right in front of them and could stroke my beard with the best of them. Let me clear up any confusion.

While the school was steeped in the history and learnings of the Jewish people, it was no more organized then any other high school you might come across (with the exception of course of Beverly Hills High, where the only thing longer then the legs on the women are the sideburns on the guys).

The school was not a Yeshiva, and most of the kids had the same pissed off/ mad at the world/ hate my parents/ smoking is cool/ vote Democrat attitude that most high school students seem to develop. I think that Herzliah, while a Jewish high school, helped stir the students' mischief because of a lack of supervision and caretaking.

The one teacher I never truly understood was our Talmud teacher. He was a jolly fat man named Ben who never managed to perfect the art of tucking your shirt into your pants. Either he was not very good at it or his shirt was not long enough to reach over his enormous gut and into his pants . He would come to class and dictate to us about the learnings of the Talmud.

Now, the Talmud has it's moments, such as the teachings concerning mating seasons of chickens and the latest number of pi. But when you are a fifteen year old boy, the only things on your mind are girls, hockey, and whether or not your latest haircut makes you look like Mr. T's second cousin.

Ben used to bore us with laws like the one about how we needed to place a fence on our roof because if someone fell off our roof, we would be liable. He also had a system of grading that he would refer to as "extra tick." If you showed up to class you got a tick, or a check mark, and if you answered a question correctly you received an extra tick.

These were points that would be added to your final grade at the end of the semester. I think I collected around 75 ticks. When added to my 80 on the final exam it gave me a total of 155 out of 100 possible points. Apparently the Talmud isn't big on math.

Our Torah teacher was the exact opposite. A learned Rabbi with a Ph.D., he was a quiet man who believed the Torah should be respected and studied constantly. Rabbi White kept stressing that today's laws would be non-existent without the Torah, which I likened to the creation of The Facts of Life after Diff'rent Strokes. (That's right, Mrs. Garrett was in both.)

Rabbi White would attach a microphone to his tie in order to be heard over all the commotion usually going on in the class. The students, however, used to play with his speaker at the back of the class, usually turning the volume down so the teachings of the Torah would not disturb their afternoon nap or their flipping the knob in the other direction to create feedback that could rival an Aerosmith concert.

The Rabbi was a small man who stood at about 5'2", the complete opposite of our Talmud teacher who could chew donuts through his nose. One day some students managed to move an entire row of lockers in front of his homeroom door. When his class let out, the exit was blocked by a huge mass of metal. While it seemed funny at the time, we were later lectured about the hazards of a fire drill. This did not seem too important to me because we usually ignored the fire drills anyway.

A lot of teachers at Herzliah High were brought over from Israel, and aside from being quite fanatic about their Zionism, they had all served many years in the Israeli army. They were never really trained to teach but rather to capture terrorists along Israel's borders. (The two professions never seemed to have much in common other than the boots.)

Once they got out of the army, it seemed quite natural that the only place they could legally be employed would be our high school. They may not have known about child psychology, but they could make MacGyver look like he belonged on Saved By The Bell by disarming a live grenade with a toothpick.

Our Jewish History teacher, Mr. Danoch, was quite knowledgeable on the chronicles of the state of Israel. However, everything he taught us was from a first person account. He had fought in all the wars, and did not really tolerate lackadaisical attitudes. In fact, Mr. Danoch would take to placing students in headlocks if he saw them roaming the halls with no agenda in mind.

If a headlock did not slap some sense into you, he would twist your arm behind your back and slam you up against a locker so fast you didn't have time to wet your pants. The army trained him well--Herzliah just gave him a youthful environment in which to unleash his brand of education.

Some Jewish High Schools might have an aura of serious study, but not Herzliah. The only people less serious than the students were the teachers.

Since high school I have gone on to college and graduate school, and yet I still remember that I need to build a fence around my roof, that most laws in contemporary society are based on the Torah, and that it really meant a lot to fight for a homeland for the Jewish people.

So, I hope we do have a ten year reunion. It would be nice to go back and say thanks, and maybe push a locker in front of someone's homeroom.

Rob Dixter is a freelance writer in New York City. And he's a very serious guy.

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