Welcome back to “How Should I Know?”—the advice column that doesn’t have any fewer answers than anyone else at this point.

Dear Mordechai,

Some of the shuls in my neighborhood are finally opening up, but some of the outdoor minyanim are staying open. Any advice?

A.S.

Dear A.,

I personally like outdoor shul. It speaks to the child in me. It’s like those days in school when the teacher decided to give outdoor class. It’s the same lesson, plus truck noises, but there’s something exciting about it.

On top of that, most of the outdoor minyanim I’ve been to up to this point have been at amusement parks. Also, the Siyum HaShas was an outdoor minyan. And matan Torah was an outdoor minyan. (Well, more than a minyan. But I definitely picture people walking around afterwards, going, “Mincha? Did anyone not daven yet?”) And the Kotel is an outdoor minyan.

And because of all this, I guess, I always get excited when I’m out somewhere and I see an outdoor minyan I can join. I’ll join it even though I’d been planning on going to shul later. Whereas I never walk into shul and exclaim, “Wow! Yay! There’s a minyan in here!”

But that said, after a few weeks of davening in the side yard behind someone’s house, I’ve come up with a list of pros and cons for outdoor minyanim, besides for the truck-noise thing, which I’d count as a con. It’s all one list, though, because personal experience has shown me that basically every single item would be considered a pro by some people and a con by others.

With an outdoor minyan, there’s always an awkward, “What do you do with your tallis bag/tefillin bag situation?” Especially if someone’s already set up shop on the trampoline.

There are no fights about air conditioning, or whether to keep the window open or closed. That’s between you and the Ribbono Shel Olam.

A lot of davening Shacharit involves trying to keep the sun out of your eyes. Mincha/Maariv is all about the mosquitoes.

Ever since we’ve been davening outside, our house is full of grass clippings.

Every minyan has a cat that half of the mitpallelim are pretty sure is a gilgul.

The chazzan has to sometimes compete with the neighbor mowing his lawn at seven in the morning. It’s grass; it’s not going anywhere!

You don’t have to move to say Kiddush Levana.

If this goes into Tisha B’Av, we’re all going to bring blankets and sit on the grass.

The last person out doesn’t have to be responsible for figuring out how to turn off the lights.

Dear Mordechai,

We have a daughter who’s supposed to go to seminary in Eretz Yisrael next year, but we’re not sure if that’s actually happening for anybody, yet they still want a non-refundable deposit to hold a spot that might not actually exist. What should we do?

D.P.

Dear D.,

That’s a great question. The thing about seminary is that it’s not like you can show up and if you want to social distance, they give you a hat with a pool noodle on it. It’s about getting into a country. And no country trusts how any other country is handling the situation right now.

“They’re not doing it right. They got a second wave.”

“They’re not doing it right. They’re still on the first wave.”

“They’re not doing it right. What’s with all the protests all of a sudden?”

So nobody knows what’s happening. And they want money from you anyway.

On the one hand, you’re right. If they’re not providing a service, why should you pay? On the other hand, every school this year provided less of a service than you understood when you first signed up—at least as far as janitors, worksheet-printing costs and the babysitting factor—yet you paid them the regular amount. On the other hand, one can say, they have a building to maintain, and if they lose that because no one pays this year, there won’t be a school for your kids to come back to next year. But you don’t have to say that with seminaries. You don’t care if they’re not around next year. You daughter’s going for one year. You can’t afford for that to be your problem.

For boys it’s a little different, because it’s a window of more years, but even my brother who’s in beis midrash doesn’t know whether he’s going back to Israel next year. Right now, he’s in the States, in a yeshiva that’s up in the mountains. Not permanently; they just moved there. Because it’s a known fact that corona cannot climb mountains. We don’t know much about corona, but we know this.

And at the end of the day, they have you over a barrel, whatever that expression means. Is this an open barrel? I mean, you can ask your rav, but how’s that going to help?

“My rav said not to give you the money.”

“Okay, no problem. Then we’re giving away your spot.”

You have to ask their rav.

But anyway, to ease your concerns, my 100% uneducated guess is there’s no way there won’t be seminary at all. Maybe they’ll have some kind of phone seminary where your daughter calls into Israel for an hour, and someone at the other end of the line gives a shiur, and that way she gets the unique seminary experience. Or maybe the school year will just start late. There’s no halacha that school has to start in September. They’ll take her for half the year, but to make up for it, they’ll take a whole year’s worth of money. Who says school has to start on time?

Have a question for “How Should I Know”? Just send it to me, along with a non-refundable deposit of several thousand dollars.

Mordechai Schmutter is a freelance writer and a humor columnist for Hamodia and other magazines. He also has seven books out and does stand-up comedy. You can contact him at [email protected].