Seating Archives - Shul Politics

Choosing Shalom Over Emes

My Shabbos Shul gives members who come on a regular basis a set seat each week. Since I was responsible for allocating the seats when we moved into our new building, it’s still my job to resolve seating conflicts. So it wasn’t out of the ordinary that a friend directed my attention to a quiet conflict in progress last Shabbos. No words were exchanged, but it was clear from the body language that two people were claiming the same seat.

After davening, I went over to the person who was assigned the seat and let him know I was aware of the situation and would try to resolve it. He said that he didn’t want to make waves and that the other person seemed to want the seat more, so he would take a different seat nearby. I offered again to try and resolve it, but he said it was ok, and he appreciated my involvement.

During the week, I daven regularly at a different weekday minyan. A number of months ago, the main gabbai clarified to me that regular daveners of the minyan could have a regular seat. Since I met the criteria, I said a regular seat would be great, and I was assigned one.

When I walked in last Sunday, I was told by a different gabbai to take a different seat on Sundays, because the person in my seat davens there on Sundays in the spring and summer months and he would be coming for the next 6 months. On the Emes (truth) scale, it would be hard to call a Sunday only spring-summer davener, a regular. But I didn’t say anything and I took the other seat. I thought that it was interesting that I was involved in resolving a seating issue on Shabbos and here I was on the other side of the table.

Reflecting upon the two events and seeing the Shabbos Shul member choose the route of Shalom over Emes, I decided to follow suit and not say anything to the Gabbai about the issue. The take away is that we do have rights, and there are times when we’re entitled to assert our rights. But perhaps our default position should be to relinquish or rights and choose Shalom over Emes.

Originally published Oct, 2017
His memory should be a blessing.

Pardon Me, But You’re In My Seat

Many of us have faced at least one of these problems on a Shabbos morning:
-We’re guests in a Shul and we want to avoid taking somebody else’s seat
-We walk into our own Shul and somebody is sitting in our seat or our friend’s seat.

A Person Should Have a Fixed Seat for Prayer
We learn the requirement for a fixed place for prayer from Avraham who went to the same place to pray on a regular basis. The Shulchan Aruch (Halachos of Prayer 90:19) says that one should have a fixed Shul and a fixed place within that Shul to pray where possible. Within 6-8 feet of your seat is considered your fixed place.

The Shul Guarantees The Seat
Most people who daven regularly at a Shul want a fixed seat for both practical reasons and to satisfy the halacha. If there’s a membership charge, paying that charge usually guarantees a regular seat. When there’s no charge there’s often an understanding between the Rabbi and the Shul-regulars, that they will get a seat. A person who supports his Shul with his money or his attendance should be able to count on the Shul to provide him with his seat. Some Shuls have a seating Gabbai to fulfill this function.

No Formal Shul Process
In many Shuls, there’s no seating Gabbai and the members deal with the seating conflicts themselves. It can get tricky because we don’t want to embarrass somebody by asking them to move to a different seat. Although most people don’t want to take somebody else’s seat, people often get embarrassed when you ask them to move, even if they don’t show it. When there are Simchas like Bar Mitzvahs, many Shuls wave the fixed seat right to accommodate the expected guests of the Baal Simcha.

What to Do
-The first suggestion is to try to get to shul early or on time so nobody takes your seat.
-If someone is in your seat for whatever reason, take a seat within eight feet of yours and don’t ask the person to move. One caveat is that people can sometimes detect during the course of davening, that they’re in someone else’s seat and this can also be a source of embarrassment.
-Even if you can’t find a close seat, foregoing this halacha for this davening is better then embarrassing someone.
-Sometimes friends will protect each other’s seats, but that doesn’t really solve the embarrassment issue.
-If it’s known that a person is insistent on his seat and he might really embarrass the person that is sitting in it, it might make sense for another person to find the guest a different seat to minimize or eliminate the embarrassment.
-Try to direct a guest to an unoccupied seat before they get comfortable to avoid this problem.

Summary
Members have rights to their regular seats, but not at the cost of embarrassing guests. Try to be sensitive to both parties when resolving seating conflicts.

Violating the “Aisle Rule” in the Holy Land

It was a Neitz (sunrise) minyan in the Old City. I was the second person to arrive in a Shul which had about 250 seats, for a weekday Neitz minyan of what would be 50 people. A random selection would give me about an 80% probability of not taking someone else’s regular seat. Unfortunately I made the decision to try to select a good seat and I violated one of the cardinal rules of seating in a strange place, the “Aisle Rule”.

The “Aisle Rule” says that you should not choose an aisle seat when you’re a guest in a Shul. I thought of the rule when I was a guest for Shabbos in the 5 Towns on Long Island. When walking into the Shul on Friday Night, my host said we can sit anywhere because there were no fixed seats on Friday Nights, except for the aisle seats, because the more involved members sat in the aisle seats. Having been involved in assigning seats in my Shul for many years, I could verify that people definitely preferred aisle seats and when you’re a guest, it makes sense not to take a more preferred seat.

So why did I violate the “aisle rule” on this Tuesday morning in the Old City? Because like most people who violate the rule, I wanted a more comfortable aisle seat. Right after putting on my Tallis and Tefillin a man walked in the Shul and as he got closer it became clear I was sitting in his seat. I asked “Is this your seat?”. He nodded yes. I asked “Where is an available seat?” and he pointed to the aisle seat in front of him. He was very nice about it and I was not in the least bit offended.

Then I made my second mistake and instead of taking the seat he pointed to, I moved back a few rows to a different aisle seat and sure enough, that turned out to be somebody else’s seat. So I moved again, this time to a mid-row seat and everything was fine. It wasn’t embarrassing, just a little disrupting having to move twice at an early Shacharis. I have no complaints about the Shul or it’s regular daveners, and I have only myself to blame for violating the “Aisle Rule”.

Getting Lost in My Seat

On one hand it’s inspiring that so many of us want a specific seat for Rosh Hoshana. Assumably, it’s because we want to pray like there’s no tomorrow on the Yom HaDin. To achieve that we need our regular seat, or the seat we sat in last year. It makes sense to want to maximimze our prayer in the optimal seat.

When my kids were younger, we used to go away for Rosh Hoshana. I remember how we would get to the hotel early and I would head straight for the Shul, scouting out a good seat. Not too close. Not too far. Away from the traffic flow. But not too far that it’s hard to get out. When my optimization algorithm stopped spinning, I would place my talis and seforim and mark my seat. Did it really matter? If I didn’t do some prep work beforehand, would my Kavanna be better because of the seat? Probably not.

When you daven in your own Shul, a different consideration comes it to play. There are many more guests and married children present, so it’s often not possible for everybody to sit in their preferred seat. I remember in the past being asked to change my seat. When I said yes, it was begrudgingly. After all, didn’t I have the first rights to the seat that I had sat in regularly for so many years.

I now see that I made a mistake. If I really wanted to show Hashem that I was getting more serious about my Divine Service, wouldn’t it make sense to give up my own rights, so somebody else could have the seats that they need. Wouldn’t that show Hashem that I was taking a step out of my self-centric world view and concerning myself with the needs of His children. What an amazing step that would be towards a more favorable judgement.

It may be too late for me. Now that I’m on the seating committee, it obligates me to give up my seat if it will help somebody else. So I won’t be able to do complete teshuva and give up my seat because it’s the right thing to do. Hey, maybe you could give up your seat and have me in my mind. It’s just a thought.

Transforming Seating Problems into Chesed Opportunities

Despite having a pretty good awareness of the issues involved in Shul seating on Shabbos, a few years ago we discovered we still had some issues. Not all guests were being accommodated in an optimal fashion. Instead of entering a denial phase, we embarked on a simple plan to deal with the issue.

The Shul now has three seating Gabbais, situated on both sides of the Shul. When a guest comes into a section, the Gabbai performs a quick visual check for an available seat and then welcomes and escorts the guest to the seat. When the proper attention is given during the first 30 minutes of davening it works beautifully. Those involved are willing to sacrifice some part of the first 30 minutes of davening to accommodate the guests.

On a past Shabbos, a simcha brought a higher number of guests to the Shul. The high level appreciation shown by the guests as they were escorted to their seats illustrates that this proactive seating process is superior to a passive, let the guests sit where they want approach. One of the Gabbais mentioned that this Chesed felt so right.

On one level, this was a small change which was enacted with little fanfare. But on another level it transformed the occasional seating problem into a situation with multiple Chesed opportunities every Shabbos. Shuls were built for these types of positive transformations.

The Wisdom of Guest Seating

The Ramchal in the introduction to Mesillas Yesharim states that only serving Hashem is considered true Wisdom. I usually explain this idea as follows: Wisdom is applied knowledge. Torah must be studied in depth to pick up its many nuances. Then, that Torah knowledge must be applied to each situation. Since every life situation is unique, and the Torah addresses each situation, we need to apply Torah to the our life, minute by minute. This is true wisdom.

We had an Aufruf in our Shul recently with many guests which illustrates the above principle. Some Shuls take a blanket approach of never asking a guest to take another seat. Other Shuls are not guest-friendly and have no qualms about asking anyone to move to another seat. Our Shul takes a balanced approach trying to accomodate both our guests and our members.

On this recent Aufruf Shabbos we began with an early assessment of what seats were available. As guests walked in, three people guided them to available seats. After about 10-15 minutes the clearly available seats were taken. We then made an assessment of which people probably weren’t coming, and which people are more easy going in terms of not having their regular seats. We guided the guests to those seats. If a guest took a seat before we could show them an available one, we made an assessment of whether they should be asked to move to a different seat. As more people came in, we had to decide the best places to add folding chairs. At Borechu, the supervised seating process was over, and we attended to our davening.

In every shul situation we should strive to properly apply the wisdom of the Torah. What a challenge! What an opportunity!

Beyond a Better Lifestyle

I’m not happy about my “Making Shabbos Morning Greating Again” post from last week. For starters the term, “halachically permitted discourse between aliyos”, was ambiguous and possibly misleading. To set the record straight the Shulchan Aruch, Rema and Mishna Berurah are pretty clear that you should not talk between aliyos. The Aruch HaShulchan, however, says you can talk about any subject. Our Shul has recently adopted a middle position in which only Divrei Torah are permitted.

The bigger problem is that I fell into a common trap of viewing Judaism as a good lifestyle choice. I like my Shul because it works for me. Great people, a great Rav, short-enough davening, decent kiddushes. There’s nothing inherently wrong with a person enjoying his Shul and his Torah lifestyle. The ways of Torah are pleasant and we should enjoy the lifestyle it presents. The problem is when we view a better lifestyle as the goal of our Judaism.

The goal of Judaism is for us to develop a deep connection with God, and that connection will last for eternity. We create that connection thought learning Torah, doing mitzvos, davening, helping others and improving our middos. God expects a lot because each one of us can reach high levels of connection. To move towards our potential we need to make continual improvement in the above mentioned areas our major focus in life.

When our Rabbi makes a decision to strengthen our halachic observance through some policy, “Not loving it” is a poor response. We should embrace the opportunity to get closer to Hashem through the new practice. Shabbos morning and the other times and places in our life are great for one simple reason, they present us with many opportunities to forge a stronger connection with Hashem. Let’s try to take advantage of these opportunities.

Changing Our Perspective

A year or two ago, a Shul member expressed his concern about a long term Rosh Hoshana issue. We talked for about 10 minutes and I explained why things were that way, what was attempted, and why there was no easy fix. After our short conversation he said that he didn’t realize these types of issues were so complicated.

I am working on the Yomin Noraim seating for our Shul. People will sometimes make seemingly unreasonable requests. When the implications of those requests are explained, they will usually come to a workable compromise.

These problems begin because Hashem designed us to see things from our unique perspective. Each of us lives inside our own head and that is the lens with which we see the world. When more information is revealed, most people can see the picture from a wider angle and come to a reasonable conclusion.

Seeing the bigger picture is an extremely important skill on Rosh Hashana. Our task is to focus on the King’s perspective and to clarify our role in His Master Plan. May we all reach some clarity on Rosh Hashana so we can reach the win-win situation of His Will becoming our will, so that our will becomes His Will.

Preventing a Shabbos of Brocha from Space and Time Overflow

Unlike the 700 member, 10-15 aliyos mega-service at the YI of Woodmere, our Shul typically has about 100 men, 7+1 aliyos, and a 8:30-10:45 davening, with a drasha, on Shabbos. So it was with a little trepidation that we prepared for what was coined the “Shabbos of Brocha”. It started with a graduation kiddush and Rabbi Avrohom Stulberger from LA as our Scholar-in-Residence. Then we added an Aufruf. Then a Shalom Zucker. And finally it was topped off by the brisim of twins.

We were filled with joy, but we were also concerned for an overflow into the space and time continuums. How crowded would it be with all the guests and how long would the davening be with the extra Scholar in Residence drasha, the Rav’s drasha for the aufruf, and the two brisim.

On the space frontier, we enlisted a few more seat gabbaim, prepared the hallways with extra folding chairs, and sent a heads up email to the membership, reiterating our no-makom-kavua policy for simchas. We also advised people to get their early, if possible. As it turned out, seating was not an issue. Some members davened elsewhere. In addition, the Bris guests did not realize the first bris would be before Mussaf and the second bris after davening, and many came after davening was over, unfortunately missing one of the brisim.

On the time continuum, Rabbi Stulberger made great use of the 8-10 minutes he was allotted for his drasha. The davening was sped up slightly. There were only 2 extra aliyos. The misheberachs were said quickly and the gabbaim were on there toes to preventing any unnecessary schlepping. And they succeeded! We were enjoying cholent and kugel at the kiddush by about 11:30 am.

As a member said afterwards, it was like preparing for Hurricane Gloria and it never came. Nonetheless everyone agreed that it’s always wise to make sure you have a big enough cup to handle all your brochos.

Dear Jack, I Was the One Who Said “You’re in My Seat”

Dear Jack,

I read your article on the OU’s website titled, You’re in My Seat, and I would like to apologize for being one of the five people who asked you to change your seat. I was one of the people who asked you nicely, but I should have immediately found you an available seat.

In a previous Shul where I davened, in which there were a lot of non-observant guests, we would never ask a person to move to an available seat, because of the possibility of causing offense. But here, we assume observant guests know that Shuls often have fixed seats and that our guests will ask someone for help in finding an available seat. Clearly, that was a mistake and I will try to make our members aware that they should be proactive and always help guests find an available seat.

Although you pointed to the halacha of Makom Kavua as a possible reason we asked you to move, it’s not the only reason we have fixed seats in our Shul. Most of us work pretty hard during the week and Shabbos morning is our refuge where we can sit peacefully, daven, learn, and listen to the drasha. As you’ve seen it can be quite disconcerting to have to find a seat each Shabbos, so we’ve contributed our time and money to keep our Shul running, enabling each of to have a seat we can call our own. From my experience, a regular Shabbos seat is close to a basic human need for observant Jews who daven with a minyan every Shabbos.

Although you suggest that we get there on time if we want our regular seat, our membership, in consideration of our individual situations, voted to give us the rights to our seats until Borechu. Even with that right, I would have gladly sat in another seat. However for various personal situations I usually can’t get to Shul earlier than Borechu, and because I have a desirable aisle seat, I would in fact never get to sit in my regular seat.

All the above notwithstanding, I want to apology on behalf of the Shul for this incident. If you can remember and publicize the good guest rule, “to ask for an available seat”, and we can remember the good host rule, “to immediately find an available seat for our guests”, we hopefully can both make our Shuls and communities, a better place.

With Apologies
Mike

Yom Tovim in Shul – Of Guests and Gabbaim

Yom Tovim are wonderful times for Shuls. In Eretz Yisroel, 3 of the 7 days were major davening days, while in Chutz L’Aretz 5 of the 8 days were major davening days this year.

The major issue is accommodating the many guests. Of course the always present seating issue arises. Most people will gladly give up there makom kavua for a given tefilla, and giving it up for a week presents an increased opportunity to display selflessness. In my observations, people are usually up to the challenge, and it can be made even easier if the host families strongly and sincerely express their thanks for the accommodation.

Watching the Gabbai try to accommodate kibbudim for all the guests is a sight to behold. Most people are happy when their father, brother, son and in-law variations get an aliyah or other honor, and it’s the Gabbai’s job to make as many people as happy as possible. In addition the Gabbai has to get many Baalei Tefillah, trying to match Shul member preferences with personal styles.

The Krias HaTorah line up has to be selected, and due to the shorter leining length, more younger members want to try their hand at kriah. Usually it works out, but when somebody is not so prepared, or a little nervous, it can be awkward for both the leiner and the listeners.

The last accommodation is for Shiurim. Sons and sons-in-laws learning in Yeshiva are home for the holiday and it’s a great opportunity for them to prepare and deliver a shiur to the Shul. It’s also an opportunity for members to hear different styles of shiurim and for fathers and father-in-laws to shep a little nachas.

Shuls are front and center during the Yom Tovim and it’s an added delight when our extended families can enhance the learning and davening.