As a child, Michael Malina attended a unique Talmud Torah which was operated by an Orthodox synagogue, the Kingsway Jewish Center, in Brooklyn, New York. During the years before his bar mitzvah, he was exposed to Jewish religious customs and ceremonies, the Hebrew language, the prayer book (in its unexpurgated Orthodox version), and the text of the Chumash, together with Rashi's commentary. After his bar mitzvah, the extraordinary zeal for Jewish learning of his first teacher, Rabbi Samuel J. Chill, enabled him to continue my Jewish studies until he graduated from high school.