“My whole vibe got wrecked. It’s like he expects people to pay attention to what he’s reciting.”
Jerusalem, November 19 – A worshiper complained today that during morning services, the start of the out-loud repetition of the core liturgy wrenched him out of his most pleasant daydream in months.
Daniel Shohat, 40, recalled to a reporter just before noon that the Shaharit service, the daily morning prayers, had proceeded more or less as it usually does: the main portion of the service, called the ‘Amidah, recited in silence by the congregation, an endeavor that takes several minutes, followed by the reader reciting most of the same passages out loud, with some responsive sections. However, today, during his silent recitation, the father of four slipped into an unusually compelling reverie, which occupied his mind even as his mouth habitually formed the words, and continued after he finished the ‘Amidah – only to be rudely interrupted when the shliah tzibbur, or shatz – the leader of the service “representing” the congregation in addressing God – started the repetition.
“That was not OK,” he recounted. “There I was, having the best middle-of-davening daydream I’ve ever had, and then boom – I hear the shatz, and my whole vibe got wrecked. It’s like he expects people to pay attention to what he’s reciting or something.”
Shohat painted a verbal picture of what he called the ideal mid-prayer reverie: a recitation of the nineteen benedictions in which, somewhere around the one discussing redemption, the words conjure up a heroic scenario in which he leads an assault on a terrorist stronghold in the Gaza Strip, rescuing dozens of hostages and eliminating more than two hundred Hamas fighters.
Today’s reverie represented at least the thirteenth time in the last year that Shohat has fallen into one during prayers, though this episode did not feature a prominent element of most previous occasions: his sudden development of one or more superpowers that he uses to locate, identify, and facilitate the rescue of hostages, as well as to deal humiliating defeat to Hamas, Hezbollah, and other Iranian proxy terrorists.
The nature of the fantasy superpower varies, but Shohat’s recurring favorite appears to be the ability to divine the precise location of any person or thing, which, in the mid-prayer daydreams, makes him a top-secret national hero whose powers lead to dramatic rescues, destruction of enemy stockpiles, and numerous reprisal and preventive operations impossible under normal circumstances.
Reality has intruded several times before, but not with the same intense disappointment as occurred today. Shohat has so far expressed no desire to concentrate more on the prayer service as such, though he still considers himself someone who prays with a minyan, a quorum of ten men, each day.
Please support our work through Patreon.
Buy In The Biblical Sense: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0B92QYWSL
Fabulous Facebook Comments!
Glorious Google+ Comments!
Wordpress Comments