Now, that which got me back to my blog (I’ll be better I promise; I know you live to read about my neuroses) . . .
I have been trying to make it to as many minyanim as possible. I have enjoyed it and continue to try to make the next step to three daily prayers with a minyan if possible. As I mentioned in an earlier post, I am blessed to be near several synagogues. One minyan to which I have been going for Maariv is near my home. However, tonight a man made me nearly never want to go back. He told me I could not pray where I was standing because it was someone else’s spot. Now mind you, this was a kollel, not some suburban synagogue where everyone pays for everything. These are men who the community sponsor to have the joy of studying Torah all day, everyday. Yet me, a member of that community, is made to feel like an outsider.
Don’t get me wrong, I undestand there is merit in trying to pray in the same place and manner, but I have been at this kollel on a few other occasions and there was never anyone where I was standing. Once more, it is pretty obvious I am a Bal Tsuva (or at least an aspiring one), but yet this older gentleman felt it more important to make me move for someone who might want to daven in a certain place than it was to be mekarev me. I did feel like asking if he was crazy?
We are loosing thousands of Jews a year, and here you have someone who is trying his best to get on the right path and all this man was concerned with was that I was in someone else’s spot. Not once has he welcomed me, or asked me my name, or showed me one bit of kindness. Fine. I don’t need a welcome wagon, but to make me feel like I was an intruder. As someone who has dedicated thousands of dollars and hours to kiruv, it made me sick to me stomach.
We have been shown a great deal of warmth since moving to this community, and for that I feel truly blessed, but there has been an equal amount of coldness. Consider this past Shabbos when my sincere “good Shabbos” to a couple of young turk type black hatters was met with dead silence. And yes, they heard me. My frum friends, I beseech you to think about the number of times in history Hashem has punished us for the manner in which we treated our fellow Jews. And forget fear of Hashem’s wrath. Do we think we will hasten Mashiach’s coming by moving the riff raff out of the way so the holly (or should I say “holier than tho”) have an ideal place to pray?
