Cheaper Than Therapy

Cheaper Than Therapy

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Cheaper Than Therapy
Cheaper Than Therapy
Spin The Bottle

Spin The Bottle

She is such a sucker...

Shani Silver's avatar
Shani Silver
Mar 09, 2023
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Cheaper Than Therapy
Cheaper Than Therapy
Spin The Bottle
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1982, a newsletter by Shani Silver, does not publish free content. If you’d like to read this newsletter and all weekly newsletters that have already been published, you can join at the $5 per month tier. xo

Back in the day I’m pretty sure it was Fanta.

Under no circumstances should children ever be left alone, overnight, together, in a synagogue. I feel like I’ve just described the worst-possible remake of Now and Then but what I’m really talking about are “lock-ins” that I attended from my pre-teen to early teen years. In my youth specifically, adults were still under the impression that nice little Jewish kids actually should be placed in romantically exploratory situations, mostly unsupervised, to promote the chance that they sort themselves into pairs eventually get married and make more Jews. Mazel Tov.

Today, the concept of a lock-in is, I hope, something left to period piece television shows where kids ask their parents if stuff like that actually happened. While lock-ins were almost entirely physically harmless if you don’t count the fact that twelve and thirteen year olds really don’t need to stay awake until two in the morning, the emotional trauma cannot be understated. Friends, readers, colleagues…I’m talking about Spin The Bottle.

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