"I am not my father, but I’m also not embarrassed to cry and release genuine emotion in davening, even in public"
As a badchan for many a mitzvah tantz, I’m often standing before a chassan and kallah on their wedding day, which is like Yom Kippur, and have to be able to enter that serious zone. But what really gets me ready for Yamim Noraim is the sound of the children playing around with shofaros downstairs in the courtyards, which you hear from Erev Rosh Chodesh Elul here in Yerushalayim.
I always want people to join in, and I believe that people want to be drawn into the prayers. I think that most people sing along at such points as “Veye’esayu,” “Chamol,” “Unesaneh Tokef,” and the final Kaddish at the conclusion of davening. The Gerrer Rebbe related that Rav Yaakov Aryeh of Radzimin once took his baal tefillah along to visit his own rebbe. “This is my baal tefillah,” Reb Yaakov Aryeh said. But the baal tefillah said, “I am not the baal tefillah — the Rebbe himself is the baal tefillah. I am just the shreier [the one who yells it aloud].” The point is that I don’t view myself as a baal tefillah who “davens for” the tzibbur. I’m just the shreier.
I was planning to spend Yom Tov with the Rebbe in Yerushalayim — I’m a Gerrer chassid — when someone called me in to daven at a minyan for a patient who could not get to shul. The next year, a family from Canada visiting Yerushalayim invited me to daven at their private minyan.
You can see me opening the Machzor any time during the year if I hear or think of something new. One addition over the past few years has been the Ribnitzer Rebbe’s niggun [“Oy Rebbe” on MBD’s Yiddish Collection —Ed.], which I’ve started to sing sometimes before Kaddish.
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