The Chair and I

You never know what you might discover just by going to shul.

One recent Shabbos morning, I went to a shul I normally do not attend. When I arrived, the doors were locked and a small knot of people had gathered outside waiting for someone to appear and let us in. As we stood there, my normally aching back began aching even more. One of those waiting, a total stranger, must have noticed my discomfort, so he clambered up a flight of stairs at the rear of the shul, found a chair, and schlepped it down to me. A moment later someone arrived with the key, so my benefactor took my chair and dragged it  back up the stairs. However, even with the key, the doors still would not budge. We would have to wait for the late-coming gabbai. Without hesitation, my new helper hurried back up the stairs and once again, with a smile, brought the chair back down. Five minutes later the gabbai showed up, the doors finally opened, and as we all filed into shul my new friend again hauled my chair up the stairs. I have no idea who this person was, nor did he know me, but he definitely fulfilled the mitzvah of doing chesed, and I so told him.

The davening began, but it was not very uplifting. The davening leader, the baal tefillah, far from helping my kavanah and focus, was doing just the reverse. Instead of setting a reasonable pace, he paused and waited interminably between paragraphs. Instead of leading the congregation, the congregation waited endlessly for him to continue. Nor was he content simply to recite the words and move forward; he seemed reluctant to let any word go. All of which might have been a manifestation of deep kavanah, but it was kavanah at the expense of the congregation, because the entire rhythm and cadence of the davening was out of kilter. While the all-too common “speed davening” destroys kavanah, the ultra-slow opposite extreme can also have a negative kavanah effect. To add to my distress, whatever chants and melodies he tried to lead were all slightly off tune.

I tried very hard to focus on the words, to keep in mind to Whom I was davening, but my frustration lingered on. I was not a happy davener. Worse, I was unhappy with myself for being unhappy with a baal tefillah who took his time, did not rush, and was probably focused intently on the text. This davening was a challenge, and I was failing the challenge.