Our synagogue has a new rabbi.
He is energetic and cheerful.
Hopefully, we will not sabotage that, too soon.
As part of his energetic , optimistic, cheerful 1st week here, he set up for morning services, this morning. Sunday. Not Saturday, which means people having to roll out of their pajamas and hike on over to synagogue. Okay, it is Etz Chaim, they can come in their pajamas.
Anyhow, about 6 minutes after services started, I get a phone call from the rabbi. Can I send Larry over? Aaron is there, but Larry went off to the earlier morning service at the other synagogue across the street.
Well, Larry wasn’t back yet, but I said I would send him on over to make minyan. A minyan is a “quorum”. For traditional Jews that means 10 men over the age of 13 which is a necessity in order to do the full prayer service..
Not surprisingly, few minutes later, Larry comes home and I send him off to synagogue.
Larry comes home about 50 minutes later. He tells me that he had expected to arrive and be the tenth man, and have the others give him a relieved” finally!” look.
But that isn’t what happened.
As it turned out, Larry was only number 9.
After searching high and low for another live body, Jeff, one of the young and energetic members of the congregation ( we haven’t killed his spirit , yet, so maybe there is hope for the rabbi!), called the younger of the two Lubavitch rabbis who live in town. This one comes, sometimes, on Shabbat for services and is friendly, even on a bad day.
Jeff calls him up and says, “Say, have you had the opportunity of fulfilling the mitzvah of putting on teffilin today?”
If you are not Jewish, you will totally miss this. Sorry.
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4 comments:
Ha ha ha!
ROTFL, that is excellent!
Do they ever count the Torah as the 10th person?
In the distant past, I remember it happening. Obviously, this rabbi is the optimist sort, though! Also, I dont' think anyone had to do mourner's kaddish.
Very Cute observation. Sounds like this rabbi has his work cut out for him!
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