When I was a very young man, I davened on yom tov with my parents on the second floor of Chabad Headquarters on Eastern Parkway—the internationally renowned 770—where there was an older single man who, as I recall, stood throughout the entire davening on Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur.
I’m sure there are people who still do that even though the Machzor clearly indicates at what parts of the davening we should stand, implying that during the other segments of our tefillos, it is okay to sit.
{IMG Bagel – men davening – credit Teo K.jpg
{Photo Credit Teo K
One of the reasons why standing is so important on Rosh Hashanah is because that is when the Aron Kodesh is open, when it is imperative and appropriate to stand in reverence of the Torah scrolls housed within those ornamental and attractive chambers situated in the front of our shuls.
But as I’m sure I have enumerated and detailed in this space over the last quarter century, we davened in a room on the second floor of 770 in what was once either the office or library of the Friediker Rebbe, Rabbi Yosef Yitzchak Schneersohn, where my dad was one of the ba’al tefillos as well as the ba’al koreh.
It is now more than 40 years since those memorable days of davening there, but I can still see and even hear my dad’s smoothness and clarity with both his davening and leining that were his role and responsibility in that upstairs minyan. I think one of the things I learned from observing him all those years was how important it is to know what you are doing when you undertake a serious task or responsibility.
I have to also point out that one of the reasons why we didn’t do much standing was because there was no Aron Kodesh and no Torah scrolls in that room. In fact, when it came time to read from the Torah, two of the men from our minyan went down to one of the other minyanim that were taking place in the building and selected two Torahs or sometimes only one (depending on availability) so as to exercise that part of the yom tov service.
In fact, it is this past week’s Torah reading, Nitzavim, that alludes to Rosh Hashanah in that, “We are all standing today—all of us….” and then goes on to enumerate the various levels of personalities included in this allusion.
The key word in that first pasuk that made a particular impression on me was “kulchem,” which means all of us—every Jew just about everywhere. And that was accentuated just before Shabbos as news filtered out that Israeli Air Force jets were successful in eliminating one of the world’s most evil terrorists—Hezbollah’s Hassan Nasrallah. It was an act that Jews, all of us together (except maybe for Bernie Sanders) cheered wildly as a victory almost equivalent to the hanging of Haman in the story of Megillat Esther. I have some additional observations about Friday’s events in my other column that begins on the front cover.
And then, as yom tov approaches, there is also the important matter of seating in our shuls. It’s now all these years later and when yom tov comes around, one of the items I must attend to is arranging for seating.
This goes way back to my 770 Eastern Parkway days when on the first night of Rosh Hashanah, I had to get to shul at least a half hour prior to yom tov in order to make sure we were able to secure some chairs from the Friediker Rebbe’s dining room, which was just down the hall from the room we davened in.
I should add by the way, that every year there are a few people I run into in the course of the week at this time of year who say to me that they hope I will retell what it was like to slide chairs out of the apartment and into our makeshift shul. I think it’s a serious request, but on the other hand, I’m not really sure.
I can still visualize that room that was surrounded by glass enclosed bookshelves of the Rebbe’s seforim. It didn’t look like there was any practical way to open those glass covers, and during all my years there, I never saw anyone try. The books were tightly packed, and I’d bet with very minimal changes almost a half century later, it probably looks exactly the same.
Anyway, in some of those years, we managed to commandeer some pretty good chairs for ourselves. And even though we were teenagers and not a high seating priority at an exclusive minyan like this, because our dad was a key figure there, no one gave us a hard time about our premier seating. So, most of the time, as I can recall, the davening and the accommodations that went along with it were pretty smooth.
One of my most memorable yom tov seating stories took place in my second or third year here in the Five Towns. It was just me and my then 14-year-old son, Yochanan. As some of you with more efficient recall will know, it was a Sunday morning after Shacharis just a few days before Rosh Hashanah. I went over to the table where the gentleman who was in charge of yom tov seating was stationed.
I told him that I needed two seats for Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur. He looked down at his chart and then back up at me a few times while shaking his head as if to say that such a request was somewhere between hopeless and impossible.
I was probably grimacing, since my track record as a younger man did not include this type of bureaucratic dealing, facing the possibility of being shut out of shul on yom tov.
Finally, he looked at me again and pointed to a spot on the chart: “You see these two seats?” he asked. “This man and his son come very late to shul, probably around noon, so you can just sit there until he arrives. By then, some people will have already left, so you can just move over to wherever those seats are.”
Of course, I thought those were some of the oddest plans or arrangements I had ever heard of, but I took it. Lo and behold, a few days later on Rosh Hashanah, we were sitting in our seats following the chazzan and the davening when I suddenly felt someone standing over me. I looked up and he just said we were in his seats.
I was not shocked and just internalized the information nonchalantly since I had prepared for such a scenario. I looked to my right, then to my left just behind me and spotted a padded bench of seats that were vacant. My son and I picked up our Machzorim and moved over and everything continued unabated.
That was almost 30 years ago, and thinking back, it was a ridiculous situation that I agreed to, but thankfully it all worked out. Since then, seating in shuls at this time of year is just another perfunctory task I have to deal with one way or another since for the most part it’s just for my wife and me, yet I still have to utter those inevitable words: Where am I sitting?
But it occurred to me that even though I’m uttering these simplistic and practical words to some person in shul no matter where we are davening, the real question I am asking as we approach the Yom Hadin is where am I standing in view of my relationship with my very dear and close G-d Almighty?
So, at the end of this yearly process, I can look down or up at the wall where the list is posted and analyze the chart of how the shul is being designed for yom tov. But mostly it’s about where we stand in relation to Him. A good and sweet year to all.
