Congregant’s Noting Less Talking During Services Coincides With Forgetting Hearing Aid

“Maybe my shushing everyone through the years is finally having an effect.”

Jerusalem, July 10 – A regular attendee of a certain age at an area synagogue remarked today that conversations in the sanctuary while prayers or readings are underway has diminished over the years, a phenomenon he has yet to notice coincides with the occasions when he has neglected to charge his aural amplifying devices before the Sabbath.

Seymour Jacobson, 82, commented to his wife Sophia, 80, this morning that the amount of talking at Beit Knesset HaNasi in the capital’s central Rehavia neighborhood has gone down, on average, over the years, but not consistently, and he can never tell from week to week whether the Saturday morning services will continue or buck the trend. Observers note that so far, Jacobson has failed to register that the days on which he notices less talking around him are also the days on which he either forgot to charge his hearing aids before the Sabbath, rendering them useless by morning, or, if he did remember, usually with several gentle verbal prods from Sophia, he then forgets to put them in his ears when he gets out of bed in the morning.

“There’s certainly less talking in shul than I remember,” he mused. “Maybe my shushing everyone through the years is finally having an effect.”

The great-grandfather six times over has also failed to notice, at least at press time, that the less-talking-plagued Sabbath services are the same as the ones for which the sexton chooses someone to lead them who chants too quietly. “I think young people lack confidence,” he pronounced, diagnosing the situation. “I don’t want to say anything that might embarrass them, because they try so hard, and it can’t be easy for everyone, just standing up there, the center of attention. Ten years ago I might have yelled, ‘Why don’t you speak up?!’ but today, I think I’ve mellowed.”

The Rabbi’s sermon between the Torah reading and the Musaf service has proved useless as a clue to Jacobson as to the true nature of the situation, since he has not managed to stay awake during the Haftarah since 2013. As a result, he consistently misses the sermon, which, had he failed to hear it while awake, might provide him with incontrovertible evidence that the phenomenon does not dovetail with his assumptions.

Jacobson has, on a number occasions, exploited his difficulty hearing to avoid arguments with Sophia by pretending the batteries in his hearing aids have died after she has launched into a soliloquy of critique. Observers have yet to determine whether Sophia notices.

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