Gabbai Trying To Convince Sixth Man He Actually Tenth

“It’ll only take five minutes,” Rosenberg added, bringing the number of falsehoods up to two.

Jerusalem, October 11 – A synagogue functionary has mustered all of his powers of persuasion to convey to a passerby the foregone conclusion that a quorum will assemble any moment now for purposes of conducting the daily afternoon service, to the point of assuring said passerby that the latter completes the quorum when in fact four others must still show for such a quorum to occur.

Menachem Rosenberg, sexton of a small shul in the Rehavia neighborhood, invited several passing pedestrians to participate in the Mincha service today, deploying in each case the designation of “tenth” to the target of his effort, aiming to convince the man to join the minyan required to conduct the communal ritual, and that commencement of the service will take place imminently because only the arrival of the tenth man stands between them and the stated purpose. Rosenberg chose that designation for each man despite the presence of only five others in the synagogue sanctuary at the time.

“Come, complete the minyan, you’re the tenth,” urged Rosenberg. “One of us has to say Kaddish,” one of the components of a prayer service that requires the presence of ten adult Jewish men.

“It’ll only take five minutes,” Rosenberg added, bringing the number of falsehoods up to two. The sexton spoke those words with the awareness that the man who aims to lead the services so as to recite the Kaddish customarily includes numerous passages before and after the main elements of the service that the invitees will not assume to form part of the ritual, and thus will find themselves forced to stay significantly longer than they judged necessary when they agreed to participate.

“Of course,” Rosenberg replied to a skeptical invitee who wondered whether the synagogue always gets a minyan for a regular weekday Mincha, thereby adding one more prevarication. In fact the shul has struggled to cobble together a quorum for the afternoon prayers for years, especially as sunset creeps earlier this time of year and most of the regular attendees have yet to return from work.

Around the corner, the sexton at a different synagogue engaged in much the same effort, with similar tactics. The total number of attendees at the two houses of worship surpassed the required ten, but the leaderships of both institutions have voiced steadfast refusal to overcome the attendance problem by merging, citing the importance of maintaining the discrete identity of each community as expressed in nuances of the service that no one but the long-dead founders of each shul would notice.

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