The Family That Bowls Together

I grew up smack-dab in the middle of the Bible Belt of the South, where statements like “The family that prays together stays together” were common. Every Monday morning in my elementary school, there was a competition among the various classes for the highest percentage of people who went to Sunday school and church, resulting in a feeling of inadequacy among those children whose families weren’t religious. No one even knew anyone who was Jewish or much less Muslim. Two missionary-like Bible teachers came to our class every two weeks for Bible class. Can you imagine this sort of thing happening here today?

When the idea of Temple Micah going bowling together came up, I was struck with just how different my current religious practice is from the one I grew up with. Growing up I had spent a lot of time with the people of my church, but it was mostly in singing and praying and reading the Bible, certainly not in just having fun.

But last night we did have fun! 280 members of Temple Micah – people of all ages – showed up at the Bethesda Medical Center Bowling Alley to enjoy each other’s company as we demonstrated time and again how little we knew about bowling. It was certainly not about getting the high score, but more about community. We had a scavenger hunt to find people who satisfied categories like: Person under 3 feet tall, Member for 20+ years, Person who had been to Israel.

We probably had the only all Blogger (or Blog-reader) lane, consisting of Prod&Ponder, Invisible Girl, Goldpoppy, Dsquared22, and Looking2live. But of course we used our real names on the “Temple Micah Bowling Together” name tag buttons. We had varying degrees of success at bowling, with Prod&Ponder being the resounding winner and me claiming the low score. Goldpoppy was recognized with a certificate for “Having the most nerve to wear that shirt”, referring to none other than her father’s bowling shirt featuring their family name and a map of Missouri on the back. It was very cool and made everyone think that she knew what she was doing.

While people were bowling their asses off, Danny (our senior rabbi) was in another room having a serious discussion of the book “Bowling Alone”, which prompted this community-building experience. So maybe our slogan should be “The temple that prays together plays together.” As with so many things, I just say “only at Temple Micah”, and wonder what in the world they will think of next!