Rabbi's Messages

Who Wants to Be A Minyanaire?

on Sunday, 30 October 2016.

Maybe 15 years ago, I wandered my way into a Shabbat dinner hosted by Chabad in Venice, Italy. It was a strange mix of people – North American students on vacation, Israeli backpackers decompressing from the army, and Yiddish speaking Chabadnicks who were the hosts of the evening.

Of all of the memorable events that evening (and there were many: food, singing, blessings), what sticks in my mind most is the diminutive ultra-Orthodox man who stood outside the door inviting pedestrians into the home: “Are you Jewish?” he would ask each passerby? “Wanna make a minyan?”

“Making a minyan” is a uniquely Jewish concept: It blends the responsibility to pray, our obligations to one another, and a little bit of Jewish guilt. As Jews, we can pray in any place and at any time, in a group or alone. But when we stand together – a group of ten – we transform private into public, and we transform a group into a community.

There are certain prayers that are traditionally only recited in a group of 10. All of them are call-and-response prayers:

• Barchu - the call to worship
• Kedushah – a conversation between angels about God’s holiness
• Kaddish – the opportunity for mourners to praise God and remember their departed loved ones, and for the community to speak words of comfort back.

So important is the obligation to recite Kaddish in the wake of a loss, that we have relocated that act to the mourner’s home. When we gather in a Shiva home, it is for the purpose of surrounding the mourners with comfort and support, AND also for the purpose of forming a congregation in which they can say Kaddish. Like those Jews walking the streets of Venice, we enter the building as individuals, but are transformed into a community.

This is, in fact, one of the most generous acts that we can perform. I can think of so many members of our congregation whose lives were transformed when they felt supported by the community in time of loss. When a loved one dies, we often feel as if we are in a haze – we may not remember what food was sent; we likely don’t remember who said what. But we remember that people showed up. We remember people were there. We remember that our friends and family made a minyan for us.

Our new initiative is called Minyanaires. It is a group of Kol Ami members who will attend Shiva for fellow congregants. Our goal is to ensure that all of our members feel supported in times of loss. There is no obligation to lead a service or read Hebrew, and you do not have to be available for every Shiva service. It is simply commitment to be there for one another whenever we can.

Minyanaires “training” will be held on Monday, November 21 at 7pm. See the Voice for more details, or feel free to email me. I look forward to participating in this mitzvah with you.

L’shalom,
Rabbi Micah Streiffer