Month: August 2014

I Love My Seat

I’ve written before on how fortunate I feel to have so many close friends in my Shul. Nonetheless, today is a little bit of a blue day, because at 6:00 AM this morning, a flight took off from La Guardia to Fort Lauderdale. And on that flight was one of my closest friends, TG, who was taking the last leg of his year long move to East Boca.

I don’t want this to be a dinner-like salute to him and his wonderful wife, who is a close friend of my wife, but I do want to share two thoughts which are consistent with the themes of Shul Politics.

What is wonderful about friends, and people in general, is that each one of them is a world on to themselves. A unique combination of body, heart, mind and soul shaped by years of experience. As a result, we develop different relations with each friend, often based on our shared interests. TG is my unofficial (and unpaid) growth coach. He’s the only person who will approach me in Shul with a fist pumping “Growth Baby Growth” greeting. We also share a love of the 7 Habits, NLP, Mystical Judaism, Mussar and anything that will move us, the Shul, or the community in a growth direction.

The second thought has to do with emotions. As you may have noticed, men can be a little reserved when it comes to baring their emotions. Our Shul is a little above average here, in that hugs are quite common and there is a great camaraderie, but verbal male emotional bonding still mostly follows societal norms.

When TG first came to the Shul, he wanted to sit in my section, but there was no room for him and his sons, so I pointed out some other seating options, and I told him which I thought was the best choice. He took my suggestion and every so often he would tell me “I love my seat” and I would tell him “I’m glad to hear that”. But in reality, he didn’t need to keep on telling me that, he was really expressing something much deeper.

And now that he has moved and I won’t be hearing the “I love my seat” refrain any longer, I want to give him my real response, “TG – “I love you too.”.

Appreciating the Colors of Your Tzibbur

In his sefer, the Ten Terms for Tefillah, Rav Shimshon Dovid Pinchus zt”l, discusses the virtues of davening with the Tzibbur:

“Some mouths produce pearls in prayer, while other mouths bring out flashes of fire and untold precious jewels. The number of hues that come out from the prayers of Yisrael is endless…In any event, from all of them together is woven and embroidered a magnificent and beautiful crown for the head of G-d, may he be blessed…”

I was thinking along these lines in a different context a few weeks ago when attending a Bar Mitzvah on Shabbos morning at another Shul. It was a great minyan, quiet, serious, with many friends of mine in attendance, a Shul at which I felt very comfortable. It was however missing one crucial ingredient, it was missing the colors of my Shul, that I’ve come to love.

Every person has infinite depth and complexity, but in our guarded society, we often see only the surface-level grey. It’s through our repeated conversations, interactions and yes, conflicts, that we get to see the different colors of each person. I’ll be the first to admit that it can sometimes be exasperating, but when I’m able to take a third person view, I get a glimpse of each person’s unique colors.

Although my focus here is usually on trying to understand and resolve the inherent conflicts in the Shul environment it’s important to step back on a regular basis to observe and celebrate the colors of your Tzibbur.

Addressing The Shiur Gender Gap

One of the interesting phenomenon over the years is the proliferation of shiurim on Tisha B’Av. In our Shul, in addition to some live shiurim, we show both Chofetz Chaim Heritage Foundation videos. To handle the crowd we show the videos in 2 different locations in the Shul simultaneously. About 400 people view these videos, with a breakdown of approximately 300 women and 100 men. This gender gap also exists for the shiurim that are not halacha or Gemora oriented.

Three possible explanation for this gap are:
1. When men go out to learn it will be for Daf Yomi or to learn with a chavrusa.
2. Women are more drawn to lecture/inspiration shiurim than men and perhaps gain more from these types of shiurum.
3. Women do not have enough opportunities to learn, so they take full advantage when shiurim are given.

Most likely it’s a combination of factors.

An obvious takeaway from this is to schedule more shiurim for women. In our Shul this has been addressed by creating a women’s shiur committee under the direction of the Rebbetzin and the Rabbi. Many of the shiurim are schedule on Shabbos afternoon when more women have the opportunity to attend. To address the cost issue, many of the shiurim are given by women and local Rebbeim who are willing to give shiurim for free.

In our Kew Gardens Hills community there are also a number of regular shiurim organized in local homes. Bigger events are held in the Shuls and we are fortunate to host a number of them in our Shul during the course of the year. Thank God that lots of good work is being done to addressing this growing need.