Jewish-American Comedian's Live Torah Blessing: Who Did It Move, and Why?

The Jewish-American comedian and actor Adam Sandler recently surprised audiences during a popular U.S. radio program hosted by the Jewish host Howard Stern, when Sandler began singing the blessings for the aliyah to the Torah.

During their conversation about the Jewish bar mitzvah ceremony, Stern asked Sandler if he knew how to continue the blessing 'Baruch Hashem HaMevorach'. Stern then commenced singing the blessings live. Enthusiastic about Sandler’s response, Stern joined in with his own tune and later shared that it took him three hours to learn this blessing - yet he still doesn’t understand what it means.

Their video, subsequently spread through social media, received enthusiastic reactions on one hand and sharp criticism on the other - and rightfully so. One of the most captivating critiques I encountered was from the American blogger David Werdiger, who found it fitting to highlight some significant and fundamental points in the act of the two, a sight becoming increasingly common among American Jews.

Opinion Piece: I Agree with Werdiger / Shira Cohen

Right from Werdiger’s sharp and poignant title, I felt there was a clear message here - that we all must read and internalize: "The Tragedy of the Stern-Sandler Bar Mitzvah" (in English: The Tragedy of the Stern-Sandler Bar Mitzvah, and you are welcome to search for the original article on Google and enjoy it at least as much as I did).

Werdiger begins by writing: 'Who would have guessed these celebs know the blessings of the Torah so perfectly? Unfortunately, that’s perhaps all they were taught'.

Both the opening and Werdiger's words in the column itself transported me to a completely different space of consciousness, and specifically because it came from the instructive finger of an Orthodox Jew living within the culture of America - his words pierced straight to the bone.

With his penetrating and accurate words, Werdiger touched on a sensitive point at the heart of Jewish-American culture, which only someone who has lived in the U.S. for a certain period, like me, can acknowledge its truth. This is not intended to rouse judgment on the small acts celebrities do, because anyone who read my latest column about Aviv Geffen knows I am all for these deeds - but, and there is a big but here, enter Werdiger’s words into my frame.

As Jews, we all need to know our tradition, we all need to learn, unlike Stern - what stands behind each mitzvah and each blessing we say. What's the meaning of each blessing not just in its plain form, but also in depth: where does this blessing touch me, how can it impact the abundance it holds upon me?

This is precisely the problem with many Americans who 'coincidentally' were born Jews.

"While I usually tend to look for and focus on the positive, I feel that this short episode encapsulates everything wrong with Jewish education in America. The Bar Mitzvah education these two men received involved rote learning of a few phrases in a 'secret language' they have no clue at all what the king meant", writes Werdiger, exclaiming: "Considering the skill with which they recited the blessings decades later, the teachers must have been good at something. But is this the only impression this experience left on them?".

Be More Precise on the Path to Our Purpose as a United Entity, as One People With One Heart

Perhaps those living in Israel do not understand what Werdiger is exclaiming about, but those who have seen these 'voices' with their own eyes in foreign lands (literally) - are well aware of what is being discussed, and even find the phenomenon painful, as it not only spreads more and more in America but also receives reinforcements where the eye should mobilize a bit of suspicion and criticism.

Again, not to judge, God forbid, but solely to earn the right to be more precise on the path to our purpose as one entity, as one people with one heart. This precision will someday bring the Messiah, but if we do not learn to be 'Messiah' - that is, to discuss all the inaccuracies that exist in the meantime, how can we merit this?!

"I do not know how much more they retain from their Bar Mitzvah lessons, nor how widespread this type of Bar Mitzvah preparation is throughout America," writes Werdiger. "What I can see are the results of this approach to Jewish education: generations of Jews with no meaningful way to understand faith in Hashem, so they don't. They never learned to reconcile the concept of the 'chosen people' with their liberal and egalitarian views, and therefore also rejected the correct choice for assimilation. They were never given enough taste of Torah, so it remained an archaic closed book for them - and this type of Jewish education, is a tragedy in itself".

You hear? A tragedy! Because learning a few phrases in flawed Hebrew without knowing the meaning behind them, meaning that contains more than a collective layer of the term 'chosen people', a meaning that holds so many personal messages for a being created in the divine image - is a tragedy. Learning phrases that hold such significant meaning behind them without even wanting to understand what they say - is a tragedy. Reciting these important phrases remembered from the Bar Mitzvah after so many years have passed over you without sparking the divine spark during them, the inner urge yearning to know Hashem and His commandments - is a tragedy.

A tragedy of a different kind of Jewish education, which is so far from the Judaism Hashem sought to give us all, at Mount Sinai.