Many of us were surprised to discover the joy of home davening
You’re a pretty ordinary shtender, a table-top model that I bought one day in Monsey when I drove by a sale outside the warehouse, all shtenders fifty dollars. It was an impulse buy, but one I never regretted.
You’re attractive enough, not a big mahogany-looking rosh yeshiva model, but also not an olive-wood foldable number with a name written in black marker. You hold my siddur, and inside, you reliably carry assorted tissues, the selichos I’ve been meaning to take home for a while now (but should probably leave there, it’s almost time), and a badly knotted-up gartel that would come in handy if there were no other gartels on earth.
Further down the table sits a small stack of Rav Meilech Biderman and Rav Avigdor Miller pamphlets spread out like a Chinese fan (now, with plenty of time, I’m visualizing a conversation between them — the gravelly, laid-back, chatting on the front porch tones of Reb Meilech merging with Rabbi Miller’s deep, rumbling sing-song… If you have imagination and are on quarantine-clock, it’s not a bad activity. It works with other gedolim too, by the way).
Many of us, exiled from the wood-paneled embrace of shul, were surprised to discover the joy of home davening, the luxury of lingering. With no carpools or traffic or rush to work, there’s something meaningful about sitting wrapped in a tallis as your pajama-clad toddler davens from their little paper-back booklet right next to you. For some of us, it was an opportunity to encounter the aroma of ketores and the scent of korbanos. (I always thought, a friend remarked, that the shnei ksuvim hamakchishim zeh es zeh thing was only on the Yomim Noraim. Who knew? )
Create a free account to keep reading.
