For Heaven's Sake, Quit Fighting

This past Thursday, I got up later than usual, and as my only option for prayer in a minyan, I went to the Shtiebl in a nearby Bnei Brak neighborhood.  A Shtiebl is a kind of prayer house that's not necessarily a proper synagogue associated with a particular community, but rather just a structure men come together to pray in.  Such places are often referred to in the plural, Shtieblach, Yiddish for rooms, indicating that there are a number of prayer rooms all in one place.  This a phenomenon that is ubiquitous to areas that have a very high density of religious families, such that the overflow from the more established synagogues (by overflow I mean people who get up late, since it's rare to find a synagogue that holds weekday prayers later than 7:30 am, or those who can't find their place in a proper synagogue) is great enough to support such a place.  

I arrived just before 9 o'clock.  At such a late hour of the morning, I know what kind of a minyan I'll find, and I cringe at the thought, but the alternative is praying by myself in a house full of children on summer vacation, which is bound to be a far more painful experience.  You see, the latecomers are mostly of two persuasions: those who are in no hurry, such as the retired, unemployed, or teenaged, and those in a great hurry, because they got up late and need to start their work day.  There are a very few, like myself, who got up late but are in no great hurry, because they know there's no sense in rushing your prayers - then they will just be a bunch of mumbling and page-turning, all the while glancing at the clock.  No connection to God here!  Another thing to keep in mind is that the nature of the place is such that the organization of the individual minyanim is very loose. In the case of this particular shtiebl, there is a single aged gabbai who drifts from one crowd to the next, making sure the honors of blessing the Torah are properly auctioned off (sometimes for a little as 10 ILS, but it all adds up), and not much more. Each minyan starts when someone goes up to the lectern and starts belting out the start of the prayers. And so it's not uncommon to have one of the aforementioned types of latecomers leading the service, and some of the other kind in the crowd, grinding their teeth with anxiety and frustration. 

The shtiebl at 7:30 in the morning. In an hour both the
covered area and the outside will be packed. 

This morning was no exception. The man who was leading our prayers was a tall, middle-aged individual who didn't seem to be in any sort of a hurry.  He carefully said the introductory Psalms, chanted the three paragraphs of the Shema dutifully, and everything was humming along smoothly, if not as quickly as possible. And then we arrived at the silent prayer. Once ten participants have finished their silent prayer, the leader begins the repetition of the prayer, said aloud, with the congregation answering each blessing with a resounding "amen". The halachic sources make it clear that starting the repetition with less than 9 members of the congregation answering with an "amen" is bad for  the spiritual health of the prayer leader. 

So our hazzan, in the vernacular, starts looking around and motioning to those who appear to be finished, in order to confirm their status (all communication at this moment must be done in utter silence so as not to disturb the majority of the congregation, who are still deep in prayer).  But some of them aren't looking at him,  or don't respond to his gestures, and he's having a lot of trouble taking a reliable tally.  He keeps trying, and a minute, two minutes pass. It's clear that well over ten of us have finished the prayer and are waiting for him to start the repetition.  A couple of men try to motion to our hazzan that it's safe to move on, but he ignores them.  He wants to be sure of the count.  A twenty-something clean-cut man, standing at the back of the room, whose face says he's running late to his office job, clears his throat.  A moment later, a soft but clearly audible "Go ahead" is heard from his direction.  These also go ignored, the goal of nine definitely and undoubtedly available men still unreached.  Another moment of silence, and our impatient young man in the back turns into an angry heckler.  "What are you waiting for?  Can't you see that you've get nine answerers already?"  The hazzan calmly replied, "I don't know if I have nine yet.  Let me count.  I know what I'm doing," and continued to make his tally.  The heckler was nonplussed, "Oh, come on already!  Your holding all of us up!"  This time his plight was echoed, in a calmer fashion, by other members of the crowd.  "He's right, you should start already."  "There's no need to wait any longer, you're needlessly delaying the prayer."  In a moment, the repetition was underway, in the same even, unhurried tone as the rest of the prayers had been.

At that moment, I looked around the room, and was not surprised to discover that, like me, many of the other men present found the situation quite uncomfortable.  The problematic part was that they were both right.  On the one hand, no one wanted to be leading the repetition without being sure there were nine attentive members of the congregation answering their every blessing, nor did they want to pressure anyone else into doing so.  On the other hand, this hazzan did seem to be ridiculously thorough about counting his answerers, even after at half the people in the room, who numbered more than 40 persons, had finished the silent prayer.  On the third hand, the young heckler's remarks had felt too harsh and too vicious (I did not translate here the full flavorfulness of his words).  I felt like some kind of making up and apologizing needed to happen before we could all go on praying together.  But it's probably better that nobody demanded such a thing, since it would certainly have made the impatient heckler even more angry.

Within a few short minutes we were ready for the Torah reading service, and the venerable gabbai took his place by the lectern and began auctioning off the honors of opening the Ark and blessing on the holy scroll in his gravelly voice.  By this time, the tension from earlier had dissipated from the air, but the incident was not forgotten.  Nobody seemed interesting in paying a few coins for the sacred task of taking the Torah scroll from the Ark and pronouncing the blessings.  Nobody, that is, except for our hazzan who never lost his cool.  And now, with a little smug smile that may have only been a figment of my imagination, he offered 10 shekels, and the honors belonged to him.  What happened next, I already saw coming.  When the gabbai announced the opening of the Ark, the calm hazzan, instead of going up and doing it himself, motioned to his antagonist to do the task.  The young man hesitated for a fraction of a second, but knowing that he can't refuse to honor the Torah no matter what he thinks of the guy who put up the money, he went through with it.  His face, however, betrayed his bewilderment.  After that a Cohen and then a Levite were called up to say the blessing over the Torah reading, and lastly, the hazzan said the blessing, with a sweet smile on his face.

Day 28 - Reunification

5 Minutes of Glory

This morning I woke up exhausted, like most of the other days this month, but with one thought in my head: "this is the last morning I wake up alone in the bed."  The morning passed by without a hitch, the kids in school, me pounding away at the computer.  It was only after Binyamin, who was home for the day after having a late-night school trip the day before, reminded to check if Michal's flight was on time that I was pulled back into a state of anticipation.  Just like yesterday, today had turned out to be much less "on edge" than I was sure it would be.

As it turned out, the flight came in early by about 20 minutes.  All the kids wanted to come to meet their mother (and baby) at the airport, except for Chanania, who had an end-of-the-year party in his afterschool electronics activity.  The flight was originally scheduled to land at 3:15 pm, which meant we could pick up Amiel from kindergarten at 2, bring him home, and shortly all head out together by bus and train to make it to the airport before 4 o'clock, about the time Michal was likely to be finished with customs and baggage.  But now it looked like we were going to be hard-pressed to get there before she got out to the welcome hall.  Amiel was brought home, had a few bites to eat, and the five of us flocked to the nearest bus stop.  

At 3:23 we boarded a train for the airport.  Yesterday, it had occurred to me that it would be fabulous if we made a large sign to wave for them when they came out, something to the effect of "We missed you so much!", maybe with a handful of helium balloons, to boot.  Then I scratched the idea, realizing there was no time for such luxuries.  But then I dreamed up a scheme to film the encounter - I'd have one of the kids hold the camera from afar, one kid would grab the luggage cart, and I - I would pick up my wife and carry her off into the sunset, like the ending to some old Western.  But now, seeing that we would likely not have more than a moment to set the stage, if that, I began to let go of even this last fantasy.  And my worst fears (yes, I'm being melodramatic) were indeed realized.  The kids rushed forward into the welcome hall, trying to squeeze in between the throngs waiting to greet their loved ones, but I just looked around the perimeter of the crowd, and pop! there they were, Michal calmly waving to me, one hand on the luggage cart, one hand holding Elisheva's hand, who was sitting strapped onto her in a Baby Bjorn carrier.  I called the kids over, and together we converged on the long-lost portion of the family.

There were no fireworks, not even a residual spark of emotional electricity.  Everyone got a hug and a kiss from mother and baby, and it was time to go on home.  Within 15 minutes we were back on the train, and the honeymoon was over.  Suddenly I was being questioned about what the kid were going to have for dinner, if laundry needs to be done, did I make that appointment to renew our passports at the embassy, and...  It was if she'd only been gone for half a day, she fell back into her position so quickly.  It seems I'm the only one who was deeply affected by this whole things.  Oh well, at least it's finally over.

The Revenge of the Goat

First night back, and she had to remind me of all the goodness I had while she was gone.  Whether jet lagged or just being her unpredictable 5-month-old self, Elisheva aka Vooch-Vooch aka The Goat gave a star performance tonight.  Within an hour and a half of going to bed, I was awakened three times.  The third time I got up I thought to myself, "Enough is enough!  I can't take any more of this!  I've got to put her into a deep sleep this time!"  She apparently read my thoughts and took me to challenge.  The first two times, she calmed down and started to doze fairly quickly, and then it took some time for her to settle into a deeper sleep.  But this time, she meant war!  After an hour in which she never really stopped twitching and whining, I was spent.  I lay her down on the couch, aware that she would commence to scream with all her might, but beyond the ability to care.  I then sprawled out beside her, dazed, trying to figure out what tactic had I not yet used that might have some effect on her.  seconds I was unconscious.  A few minutes later her mother appeared, scowling at me for letting the poor child cry (and what about her poor father?).  She decided the baby must be jet lagged and unable to sleep at this hour.  I was allowed to go off to bed.  Later I learned that The Vooch played happily for an hour before finally konking out.

It Ain't Over

And so, our tale comes to an end, a very anticlimactic end.  But for me, the adventure has just begun.  The adventure is writing down and sharing life's mysteries, intricacies, frustrations, and surprises.  Oh, and I mustn't forget, the Dedicated Son-In-Law gift I was awarded upon my wife's return.  Was it worth all the trouble?  Probably not, but it's a damn good bottle of Scotch.

Day 27 - Penultimate

Today I mark as the last day being without my better half.  For some reason, I expected it to be a day that was centered entirely around The Big Event that will happen tomorrow.  Yet somehow, it was very much a day like all the days in the past few weeks.  It's true, the kids made some drawings and prepared a welcome sign that they hung on the front door, but I wanted there to be more excitement, more preparations, more ado.  I suppose the reason why not is clear enough: the kids never felt deprived, never felt any acute loss, and therefore don't feel like tomorrow is a big deal.  And I, while I certainly felt the loss, I'm just too exhausted and burned out to get myself worked up with anticipation.  

And so the day passed by.  The kids went to school, went to feast at their grandparents' place, I got some work done, took a nap, and slowly prepared the kids and the house for the night.  Tomorrow, while not like any other day, is still a day that we must face.