Synagogue and kids

It would have been nice to know that ours isn't a particularly child friendly synagogue when it comes to services. They have one family service a month and children are only welcome to other services if they can show a "modicum of decorum". Oh please, modicum of decorum after spending the entire day in school then sitting through a 2 hour service without making any noise. Follow that with the sugar fest that is the oneg and it's a wonder they have any control at all.

Recently they had a family service and there were a lot of families. Isn't that the point of a family service? They should have been happy. We weren't at that service but I heard the kids were fine at the service but got wound up at the oneg. A certain person in a position of authority was greatly offended by the poor manners of the children involved. Should the parents of those kids involved corrected them? Well, yeah. But they didn't. Early the next week an email went out informing everyone that they needed to control their kids at the oneg. Sounded fine to me. Case closed, you would think.

But this person decided that the children did not fit their definition of a "modicum of decorum" and that the email just didn't get the point across. During the next service she has someone from the board of trustees read a note (that she wrote) to the congregation chastising the parents for the unruly children. We'll uh, the two families with kids who were there (and there were just two) weren't at the family service. Needless to say we were both insulted. Our kids are far from perfect and now and then we have to remind the kids how to behave but the way she made it sound our kids were animals. I thought it was ironic that the author of the note chose not to attend this service.

The father of the other family and I decided not to let this go. Over the next week we spoke to countless people, made several phone calls to the clergy and wrote letters to the board. We got our point across. The woman who initially wrote the note was over ruled by the others. We heard from someone else in authority that she was extremely unhappy with the note being tossed. We received support and an apology from the board. She had wanted it read before every service. So now when we see her she gives us the hairy eye ball. I just give her a big smile.