Kroizer Versus the Rock Crusher

The shuls in my neighborhood, like many other neighborhoods around the world, are now open. The murmur of davening has returned to the prayer-soaked buildings. And along with my gratitude for this return to almost-routine, I’m left wondering at the sudden silence outside my window, the window that watched a daily showdown for months.

The back of our apartment building spills out into a wadi. During the lockdown, the wadi and the hill abutting it provided a generous space for an outdoor minyan. The minyan wasn’t big, but it was reasonable: A group of socially distanced men and boys spread up and down the hill, supplemented by scattered daveners standing on their porches or by their windows.

The organizer, leader, and de facto chazzan of our minyan was a man I’ll call Kroizer — a wiry father and grandfather with a long, grizzled beard and raspy voice. He doesn’t look strong or tough in the typical sense, but there’s a certain mettle in the way he pushes forward, a rigid persistence in the way he takes everyone’s suggestions and then announces his own.

Kroizer faced many obstacles over the months holding his outdoor minyan. The weather didn’t always cooperate. One rainy Pesach morning I watched the minyan’s two tall, elegant Kohanim with their neatly curled peyos gingerly position shopping bags under their stockinged feet so they wouldn’t get wet, as Kroizer shifted his ShayneCoat over his head and kept belting out his chazaras hashatz. And there was at least one merciless heatwave that would have kept even the most hardened Sabra indoors, but not Kroizer, and not anyone who took part in his minyan.