Schenectady New York, 1964

It was a real chore, going to Hebrew school after ‘regular school’, trying to learn just enough Hebrew to get by on the “Big Day” – the day we would become ‘men’. On this particular day, I was hanging out in the parking lot of Temple Beth Israel Hebrew School on Eastern Parkway, with a few fellow bar mitzvahs-in-training.

We played stoop ball to pass the time while waiting for our respective rides home.  Stoop ball is abbreviated baseball without a diamond. The rubber ball is thrown against the corner of a cement step and bounced into the field. i.e., parking lot.  A catch is an out; A low bounce a single; over our head (high enough not to be caught but within the parking lot) a triple. If you could get it out into Eastern Parkway that was a home run.

Across the street from us was St. Helen’s Catholic school; a serious red brick building two stories high and built in the early part of the century it’s ornate architecture reflecting the traditions of the church. Our building was one story, pale beige brick and glass and relatively new, reflecting the practical modernity of the 1950’s.

I always wondered what it was like to be Catholic. Our Hebrew teachers were old world Jews from Eastern Europe who, only a decade earlier, escaped the horrors of the death camps. They did their best to instill in us our good fortune and promoted the idea that we were the chosen people and the ‘Goyim’ (non-Jews) were followers of a false messiah.

Looking at St. Helens, I wondered what went on in there. What did they learn and what did they think of the Jewish kids (if anything) across the street? Were they being taught that we killed Christ?

David Aftergut threw the ball hard enough to make it sail way over our heads and into the street. I was in the outfield, closest to the street, so I had to retrieve the ball which had made it all the way over to St. Helen’s auditorium door. I got the ball and lingered by the door. A plaid skirted girl came by and opened the door long enough for me to see into the gymnasium. It was cavernous and took up one fourth of the building. There was a stage at the far end with a few plaid skirted girls and boys in white shirts and ties clustered near it.

“Hey Schwartz! C’mon!” Someone called from the parking lot.

I made my way back just in time to wave goodbye to two of my playmates whose rides had come.

“See ya Schwartzy” Dave Friedman called from his dad’s 1960 Buick sedan, a huge black sled of a car that got maybe eight miles to the gallon, but what the hell, gas back then cost thirty cents a gallon. Jerry Ziffer and I sat on the stoop and speculated what went on in that mysterious place across the street.

A tall man wearing a maroon turtleneck sweater and tweed sports coat emerged from the auditorium. He had a mop of brown hair and a close cropped beard; He headed across Eastern Parkway right toward us. He was the picture of a college professor straight out of a Norman Rockwell print and it turned out that’s exactly who he was.

“Hi kids.” he said with a big smile. “My name’s Benny Reel. I’m directing a play across the street over at St. Helens. I want to know. Would any of you would like to be in a play?” Apparently half the cast had gotten the flu and the show just had to go on.

Some girls (bat mitzvahs) had just been let out of class and now there were maybe seven of us on the steps of Temple Beth Israel. We looked at each other with expressions ranging from awe to horror.  According to our teachers, St. Helens was off-limits: The enemy. My hand immediately shot up.

At age twelve, I ended up playing Simon Stimson, the drunken choir director in St. Helen’s production of Our Town, directed by Benjamin Reel, an assistant professor of drama at Schenectady Community College who was hired by the Catholic school to direct and produce a show, the clergy neither had the talent or time for, I suppose.

That was how I made my way into St. Helen’s Catholic School, and although my curiosity was satisfied, my desire for positive attention was ignited. I was hooked on acting.

Cut to my bar-mitzvah. I made it through without too much trouble. I did have a dry mouth and Rabbi Epstein gave me a cherry flavored Luden’s  cough drop, to help. I opened my mouth to sing the first words of my Haftorah, (the passage chosen for the man-to-be), Koo-oo mi Ori! A thin red line of drool dropped on the Torah! Oops! But I kept going.

At the reception friends and relatives came by with checks, savings bonds, and other gifts that were to be the foundation of my college fund. What did my parents do with the money? They bought themselves a 1963 Chevy Impala convertible.

I promptly forgot every word of Hebrew I ever learned and ran away from home and joined the circus.

That’s not entirely true. I wrote it to make you feel a little sorry for me. Also for hyperbole’s sake and to make you want to read on.

I did spend the summer away from home at Benny’s invitation, in New Paltz New York, where he was directing The Now Teen Mime Troupe, better known as TNT Mime Troupe. Our first job was to entertain the crowds collected by Pete Seeger, Arlo Guthrie, Don McClean, The Beers Family and others in front of the Clearwater Sloop as it made its way up and down the Hudson River doing folk festivals and then asking the crowds to clean up the banks a mile in each direction.

It was a glorious time. I hung out with other kids, copied mime routines I saw Dick Van Dyke, Jackie Gleason and Red Skelton do on their respective TV shows and performed them on my own in front of thousands.

My first routine was miming a tightrope walker on a unicycle I stole directly from the Dick Van Dyke show. I got my first laughs and applause and found out what I wanted to do with my life.

And that dear readers, is how I ran away from home and joined the invisible circus.