Story of the Day 12/ 08/ 2011

My son likes to daven with kavanah.
That means he likes to pray with feeling.

That is normally good and fine....even though, being a certified, pure-bred cynic, I find it had not to make wise cracks about it in front of him, or I would, except that I can always do it in a soft voice and he won't hear me.
The advantage, to me, of his being deaf.

Jewish people have a special prayer that is said at the end of a meal that included bread. Saying that prayer is referred to as benching. Yep, like the thing you sit on.
You bench.
It is a long prayer. Not long like three paragraphs, try more like 20 or 25.
If you do it correctly, it takes several minutes. This is a reason that kids who grow up in religious homes often will say, "I don't want any bread" at meal times, so they can get away with a a really short after meal prayer.
Of course, if you are pure-bred not cynical, like my son, you jump at the chance to eat bread so you have the opportunity to recite it.
Well, that and if you are 6' 2" and still a growing boy, you happen to jump at the chance to eat almost anything.....
As for the prayer ?
If you are a non-cynic, like my son, you also recite it slowly, or , at least, not in a hurry.

In fact, if you are " sincere", which Aaron ,is , you " get into it."
So , with fervor, Aaron benches.

At home, this has led to several instance s of my yelling to him from a different room, " Can you be quieter!"
Especially when I have a headache.
And if you want to know what i mean about fervor, you need to understand that I am hard of hearing, so the decibel level , from a couple of rooms away doesn't' usually get my attention......
And that is just one "problem" .
The other one is that he is deaf.
I might have mentioned that previously.
And this prayer is sung. Sung, like you know, to a tune. Or , in Aarons' case, to the approximation of a tune by a deaf kid who is benching with fervor.
I am getting a headache just thinking about it.

Today, Aaron sent me an email about how he spent last Shabbat.:

I ate very well this Shabbos. It was a very fun Shabbaton with lots of dancing and merriment.

All of this led me to ask him, today, via email,how well his benching has gone over at the yeshivah, since they eat and bench in the cafeteria.

He responded:

Remember when you told me not to Bench so loud after eating? Well I bench even louder when I'm here because Kavannah is fun. I haven't gotten any complaints but I'm pretty sure no one likes my singing because the cafeteria clears up really fast when I start benching.

my next email said:

HAHHAAHHAHA !! i love u! maybe the cafeteria crew missed out on the kavanah genes. u cd always ask someone u sit near if it is an issue. do u usually sit next to the same people???-love, fat mama

And Aaron replied:

No the cafeteria workers have to suffer as they listen to me while they clean up as everyone else runs for the exits. I don't usually sit next to the same people...everyone here is a nice Torah scholar. They aren't going to tell me that I have a bad singing voice...


I suggested he make a video of this , for me, or for YouTube. Although,not onShabbat.