Hebrew Mondays

It is Monday morning at 6:00, and in the early darkness thousands of alarm clocks are going off around the city. Everywhere in Rochester people are rolling away from their warm beds and spouses having slept too little after watching football too late the night before. They grope through the darkness to their bathrooms and kitchens, shivering in the winter air.

I do not turn on my coffeemaker. I pull on a pair of dress pants, a button up shirt, and two coats. I pull my lunch out of the fridge, throw trumpets over my shoulder, and make sure I have everything I need for my teaching day in my bag. I close the door to our apartment as quietly as possible behind me, make my way downstairs, and step into the crunch snow, walking through our courtyard to my car. I leave behind everything but my bag of books, and continue walking through the snow down the street and up to Clover Street. There usually isn’t any traffic at that early hour, and I cross the street to the Bruegger’s bagel shop.

The bagel shop has already been open for several hours, and the two faithful bagelers are behind the counter looking bleary-eyed. I set down my book bag on the second table and chat with them about the weather while I order a bagel and a tall cup of coffee.

This is where I meet Calvus every Monday morning to read Hebrew together. He usually arrives a few minutes after I do, and when he greets the bagelers they brighten up and look awake. He always remembers more about their names and previous conversations than I do, and the few times I’ve been there without him they look disappointed that he doesn’t show up. (“Where’s your brother today?” they ask)

We eat our bagels and chat about how our weekends went, and then one of us will say “Well, want to do some Hebrew?” If I grew out a beard like his, we would look perfectly Jewish—sitting in a bagel shop in Brighton, NY, reading aloud from Exodus.

We both had much quicker work of Greek, and there are several words that we seem to have forgotten anew every week. We’ll get stuck on a single funny form for almost ten minutes one week, and then another week we’ll rattle through six or seven verses with no problem. (Genealogies make you feel very good about your linguistic prowess.) When something theologically interesting comes up we puzzle over it, but the morning is more about practicing speaking and translating than anything else. I keep a notebook with tiny illegible handwriting, and Calvus keeps a notebook with even tinier and more illegible handwriting.

We work until 7:15 or so, and then Calvus asks if I have time for another verse before I have to leave to teach. I usually don’t, but sometimes we do another verse anyway. We finish up, and I duck my way across a much busier Clover Street.

Out of all the poor folks who have to wake up early on Monday morning and start another work week, there aren’t many who get to start by having a hot cup of coffee with their brother and read 3500 year old literature from halfway around the world for an hour.

It’s a good way to start a Monday.