My name is Mark, but in Hebrew school everybody got me confused with the same people all the time, stupid, idiot, moron, and one fellow who I seemed to be a mirror image of, retard.

I hated Hebrew school, never liked it at all past first grade. First grade they just taught you the alphabet and history. After that it went down hill very fast. I was soon picked out as the one who you didn't want on your reading team, the one who messed up more than others.

 I don't remember much of second grade, so I'm going to talk about third grade, and a game the teacher called Hebrew baseball. The point of Hebrew baseball was to make my life a living hell. 

You had to read four lines, four damn lines to reach "home plate" there were two teams, and if the person "batting" for the other team made a error while reading the other team shouted out ERROR!!!! 

They loved it when it was my turn because it was a sure bet that I was going to screw up on the first line, usually on the first word too. I can't believe I remember this, but I only made six home runs that year.

 I hated it because I knew that the other students knew something I didn't about reading the Hebrew. When I got help from a student, they all gave up, because what was obvious to them I didn't know, and they didn't know I didn't know. 

It was the different with teachers. They told me something that worked for one word. But never told me that it was a rule for other words like it.

 But what was worse was the social interactions.

 Mockery behind the teachers back, verbal abuse, and physical. And I had no compulsions against hitting back, so much of what I remember is fights. The minute the teacher left the room I would notice stares, grins, whispers about what was going to happen to me after school. 

That's what Hebrew school was for me, because I had a learning disability that was interfering with my education. And since nobody knew about it I was branded a troublemaker, and a bad student. 

If you knew what my high school GPA was, you would know I wasn't a bad student. That's my only memories of religious school, and all I learned was how much I hated it