Man Pleads To Be Airlifted Out From High Holiday Seat Between Sniffer, Throat-Clearer

Bothersome habits of the attendees around him prevented him from concentrating on anything important.

Brookline, September 9 – A worshiper at Temple Shalom in this affluent Boston suburb spent most of the Rosh HaShanah service sending desperate, surreptitious text messages to anyone he thought might help extricate him from the reserved place he had arranged for the festival and upcoming Yom Kippur, after he found himself stranded with a man to his right who kept making noise with his nose, one to his left who apparently has a chronic phlegm problem, and behind him someone with a habit of incessantly tapping fingernails against any available hard surface.

Casey Dubner, 50, disclosed Wednesday evening that he got little out of the Temple Shalom (Reform) Rosh HaShanah prayers, homilies, or shofar-sounding this year because the tics, noises, and other bothersome habits of the attendees around him prevented him from concentrating on anything important, forcing him instead to find ways to extract himself without making a scene.

“I paid good money for those seats,” he lamented. “I didn’t want to just up and leave, because that would offend the Rabbi or cantor, whose stewardship of the services I really wanted to experience. I just couldn’t find an opportune moment to get out of there on my own. I finally hit on the idea of insinuating my iPhone far enough out of my inside breast pocket to send some WhatsApps and ask for help, but none of the people I tried to contact were available. I think they all had their phones off, or on silent, and my messages didn’t get through in time.”

Dubner declined to disclose the identities of the offenders, fearing the unpleasantness that might result, and concerned that he would look petty. “I guess I can volunteer for the High Holiday Seating Committee for next year,” he acknowledged. “This year’s services are a wash, but maybe I can place somebody I don’t like in exactly the same position.” Dubner’s gaze kept darting to the house of a neighbor and fellow Temple Shalom member with whom the investment advisor has had words over Homeowner Association rule violations.

Assistant Rabbi Cheryl Coleman told reporters that the congregation has long struggled with disturbances during services, and even instituted a telephone ban in 1996 that it has never lifted. “We even banned pagers in the eighties because folks were arranging to get beeped, either to make themselves look important, or to have a respectable excuse to leave before the sermon. I think we might have to issue some new guidelines, because texting during services goes squarely against the spirit of the endeavor.”

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