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4.2.12
WC: 191694

“another Bar Mitzvah boy” who had done a better job reading from the Torah, but who wasn’t nearly as good a student or person as Jerry. “We judge boys not by the quality of their voices or their ability to memorize, but by their understanding of what they were reciting and by the lives they lead based on their understanding.” It was a direct put down of me, and so understood by the congregation. It stung me and led me to conclude that I could do nothing right in the eyes of the religious authority figures. Even when I did something perfectly, they would find some way to turn my success against me. It discouraged me from trying.

A few years later, I had a similar experience in high school. The one subject that interested me was history, and the teacher was young and dynamic. I studied hard—a rarity—for a state-wide exam and got an 88. When the teacher, who knew my reputation as a mediocre student, told me my score, he said: “Don’t let it go to your head. You’re a 75 student. You’ve always been a 75 student and you’ll always be a 75 student.” (He gave me a 70 despite my 88 grade on the Regents exam.) It became a self-fulfilling prophecy for two reasons. First, all my teachers believed it. Second, I believed it and stopped studying because I could get 70’s or 75’s without much work, and if that’s who I am, why take time away from activities I enjoyed, such as sports, jokes, girls and messing around.

It was in the summer of my junior year in high school, when an authority figure—the camp dramatics counselor, Yitz Greenberg (also now a prominent rabbi)—finally told me that I wasn’t a “75 student.” He had cast me in the difficult rule of Cyrano d’Berjurac in the camp play. I memorized the lines and did a good job (my long nose helped). After the performance, Yitz put his arm around me and said, “You know you’re very smart.” I replied, “No, I just have a good memory.” He insisted that my smarts went beyond memorization. He told me I could be a good lawyer. I respected and believed him. It was an important moment in my life, for which I will be forever grateful. My parents loved me but never told me I was smart, because they believed my teachers and saw my report cards. I needed to hear it from an authority figure outside of my home, and Yitz was that figure.

Despite my inglorious high school career, Yitz’s faith in me led to consider college. My father thought I should go to work and take some classes at night, but my mother wanted me to graduate from college—as she couldn’t do. My mother filled out my application to Brooklyn College. I wanted to go to City College in Manhattan, because my best friend Norman Sohn was going there, but my parents wouldn’t let me go to an “out-of-town college.” Brooklyn College was part of the New York City College system, which had an excellent academic program, but little by way of any social or athletic life. It was free to any New York City resident, and anyone who had a sufficiently high grade average in high school was automatically admitted. Remarkably, the required grade score was different for boys and girls. Boys needed an 82 or 83 average (depending on the year) while girls needed an 86 or 87. Imagine the lawsuit today! The reason for this differential was that the school wanted “gender balance,” and if the same score were required, the college would be dominantly female. (Similar differentials are still at work today, but they operate beneath the radar screen under the rubric of “diversity” and “discretion.” An admissions officer at an elite college told me that he turns down many students with perfect SAT scores. When I asked him who these rejected students were, he acknowledged that they were almost exclusively of Asian and Jewish background: “if we took everybody with perfect

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