The Tomato Sauce That Wasn't

     Page Seventy-Two.
     When I was little, I spent a few years attending parochial school. I attended the Hebrew Academy of Cleveland for kindergarten, part of first grade and then third grade. The rest of my schooling was local public education. The Hebrew Academy was Cleveland's only orthodox Jewish day school at the time. I won't try to explain the situation in my home, but my family's religious tradition was primarily orthodox Jewish, mixed with a touch of the other Jewish denominations and a smidgeon of Christianity thrown in just to mix things up a little. (My parents didn't live in an insulated, Jewish world. They had true friends of other faiths and skin tones, very unusual for their generation.) So I went to the Hebrew Academy to get my nice religious education, but I only went erratic years because I don't know why. To this day I've never figured that part out. Why only part of first grade? Why not second grade? Sorry. I can't tell you.
   I didn't really like it there. Nobody does. To this day, those teachers have a reputation for being mean. But, I didn't actively dislike it until third grade. My third grade Hebrew teacher was the meanest person who ever lived (this is eternal truth). I just couldn't stand her or the school. There was only one thing I liked about the Hebrew Academy: the spaghetti. It had the best tomato sauce in the world.
     I've relived eating that spaghetti so many times over the years, I just can't tell you; though the last time I did it in reality was 1971. I've pondered that spaghetti with tomato sauce many hours during my lifetime.
     In about 2010, I was a guest at a friends Yom Kippur Break-Fast. Yom Kippur is the Jewish day of atonement which is ten days after the Jewish New Year, always in early autumn. You fast for 24 hours to make penance to God for all your sins of the previous year, then starting the next day, you are virtually sinless, just like a newborn baby. Many people have gatherings on Yom Kippur night to break the fast with friends and family. Even though I don't fast on Yom Kippur (for a variety of reasons) I do attend my friends Break-Fast and always enjoy myself tremendously.
     Well, the year in question, 2010, I got to talking with one of the other guests about the Hebrew Academy. Dan was some years older than me and had attended more years than me but still, we had some similar experiences. I brought up that glorious spaghetti.
     "You know what that sauce was don't you?"
     "No. I've always figured it was some ancient recipe."
     "Ketchup."
     "WHAT?!?!"
     "They mixed ketchup with the pasta and called it spaghetti."
     "I don't believe you."
     "It's true. It was ketchup."
     "You've just completely ruined one of my few pleasant memories of the Hebrew Academy.
     "Sorry. They still do it, too."
     "Let's stop now. I'm getting sick." The actual conversation lasted closer to ten or fifteen minutes. You get the idea. 
     So... there you have it. One of my favorite things to eat when I was a kid was pasta with ketchup. I just didn't know it at the time. For the record, I did love ketchup when I was young, still do in fact. But the thought of mixing it with pasta just makes me sick.