The Right Team

I’ve never written a how-to guide before, mainly because I don’t know how to do very many useful things other than writing. My 15-year-old son put up our succah, and I’m proud of it. (Also, I drove him to Home Depot and waited in the car, and it’s not as easy as you might think.)

But I want to try to start this conversation. It’s called How to Behave in Times of Crisis if You’re Frum and in Galus.

I grew up davening in a large, bustling shul with a very distinguished rav. Shalosh Seudos each week was held in an upstairs room, and when it was over, after bentshing, there was a Maariv minyan in that room. But the Rav himself made his way downstairs back to the main shul for his Maariv minyan. My father always directed me to the join him at the Rav’s minyan. It started several minutes after the first minyan, and it took longer as well. By the time the Rav was finishing Shema, the upstairs people were holding car keys. It was rough. There were Pirchei Melaveh Malkahs and ice-skating and hockey games beckoning, and I was trapped. I complained and asked my father why I couldn’t daven upstairs, in that perfectly fine minyan.

In fewer words than it will take me to write this, he basically said that in life, there are always going to be choices, and a person has to pick where they want to put themselves. “Your place should always be with the Rav,” my father said. “Check where he is, and be right there.”