At least half-a-dozen regulars at the 8:00 AM service show similar enthusiasm for catching the reader in mistakes both substantial and insubstantial.
West Hempstead, October 11 – A synagogue attendee appears to have constructed his character around yelling when the man chanting from the Scriptures on Sabbath and Festival mornings makes the slightest error, local sources reported this week.
Fellow congregants noted after services this morning that Shai Ginsburg, 56, seems not to have any personality beyond correcting the Torah-reader. “No one knows anything else about him,” admitted Moshe Katz, who always sits in the row directly behind Ginsburg. “I’m not going to claim no one talks at our shul, but certainly no one talks with him. He doesn’t even stick around for kiddush after davening. No one I know seems to hang out with him, either.”
Ginsburg, an accountant by trade, interacts with others in the community solely through the medium of shouting corrections at the Torah-reader. Members emphasized that he is by far not the only attendee to engage in the practice with marked consistency; at least half-a-dozen regulars at the 8:00 AM service show similar enthusiasm for catching the reader in mistakes both substantial and insubstantial. Ginsburg, however, communicates nothing about himself other than that proclivity.
“It’s not like he’s more knowledgeable about it than the other guys,” mused a congregant who preferred not to be identified for this article. “There are mistakes that require correction, and there are mistakes that don’t change the meaning, so you’re supposed to let them go. He corrects even the insignificant ones with gusto worthy of a Major League Baseball home plate umpire. Honestly, it would be admirable if he brought that kind of enthusiasm to any other area of life, especially if it were Torah-related. But I don’t see him at any of the classes.”
“It could be a non-Torah area of life, too, and that would illuminate something about the man,” the congregant continued, “even something as anodyne as loyalty to a sports team. But nothing.”
What little the other members know about Ginsburg, they have gleaned from the embroidered name on his Tallit bag; membership records; the names he mentions for blessing after he gets his annual “aliyah,” when he stands next to the Torah-reader for one section of the day’s reading – and during which, because he is looking into the scroll and not a vowelized printed text, he does not issue any corrections.
Others acknowledged that Ginsburg nevertheless has a ways to go before he reaches the level of Kolatch, whose only discernible attribute is shushing even those not talking.
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