Several years ago, I was invited for a Friday night meal by a mutual friend of Ted D. Ted was a CNBC financial anchor and a reporter / anchor for a CBS affiliate station during his career in broadcasting. Ted admitted that he hadn’t been inside a shul for services in quite some time. My friend and I convinced Ted to join us at a local Chabad shul Friday night before we had our Shabbos meal. During davening, I noticed Ted paid very close attention to the people around him and made sure he was on the right page during services. He never whispered or said a word to us during the entire davening.
Later that evening, in the middle of our meal, someone asked Ted how it felt being in a shul after such a long time. I will never forget his response: “It was like being in a TV studio with lots of chatter until the floor producer says ’Quiet on the set!’ and motions with his fingers 5, 4, 3, 2, 1 and then points to the news anchor, indicating we are live, and there is instant silence in the studio.” What Ted was referring to were groups of people talking in shul until Shemoneh Esrei started. Ted continued by saying it felt like the noise and chatter started all over again afterwards, just like when the TV program would go to a TV commercial break.
Another observation of how some are amazed at the synchronized silence during davening was the Siyum Hashas I attended, which I can also never forget. MetLife Stadium had close to 93,000 people in attendance. During Mincha, after they said Ashrei and Kaddish, the entire stadium was so quiet, I could literally hear the echo of birds chirping in this massive arena. I briefly looked at the ushers and guards near where I was seated and I could see they were amazed as they looked around. One guard later commented that he has worked in the stadium for several years and has never witnessed so many people being so quiet with the entire stadium at full capacity. That quiet was Shemoneh Esrei.
This past Rosh Hashanah I witnessed pockets of talking in my shul and was thinking back at what Ted and the guard at the stadium told me. As I continued to observe people talking, I noticed some whispering or motioning to their children with a finger touching their lips to indicate being silent. In some cases, the same parents who motioned to their children to be quiet, turned their backs to the Aron Hakodesh and while someone was saying Kaddish, they proceeded to have a conversation. What bothered me in this scenario was that while someone was pouring his heart out saying Kaddish and another shul member was concentrating while speaking to God, this parent had no idea what impression he was making on his son sitting right next to him.
During slichot we say עננו – answer us Hashem, as we plead with Him to respond favorably to our prayers. The thought that kept on racing through my mind was how can Hashem answer our requests when we can’t even respect the house of God, the shul. Let us all resolve this new year to act with respect to where we are, respect for others who wish to concentrate during their davening, and most importantly to set an example for our precious children, the next generation. In the merit of davening properly, may Hashem grant all of us much health, prosperity, many simchas in our lives and nachas from our
children.
Leslie Srolovits is a retired banking and technology officer of JPMorgan Chase and Capital One. He can be reached at [email protected]
