At Home With Minyan

One of my earliest posts was about my personal odyssey, over the period (Feb. 2004- Jan. 2005) that I was saying Kaddish for my father, towards being able to better tolerate and even somewhat appreciate going to daily minyan. Another outgrowth of this process was that, beginning after last Sukkos, I started a Friday night minyan in my house.

My family lives towards one geographic edge of a rather populous Jewish community, in a section of town affectionately/geometrically known as "the triangle". There are a few tens of Jewish families in our area, perhaps comprising 5-10% of the homes, in contrast to the more popular part of town - or "the fishbowl" as Debbie and I like to call it - where it seems like practically every house is "frum". The families in our section all sort of know each other. We get together for a group Sukkah visitation on the first day of Sukkos every year. In a way, we have certain small-town characteristics within a larger community. You could call us a "sub-town", I guess.

I'd been toying with the idea of starting my own Friday night minyan for a couple of years, but my need to say Kaddish gave me a new impetus. My track record over the previous couple of decades, in terms of making it to shul on Friday nights, could charitably be described as "poor". So I figured that if you can't bring the man to the minyan... well, you know the rest. In other words, I acted to eliminate the possibility that my innate laziness would prevail over my requirement for a minyan.

Thus, I started this minyan for almost purely selfish reasons. I figured those who attended - if it ever even got off the ground at all - would basically look upon it as doing me a favor. But something interesting happened. I discovered that some of my neighbors appreciated having this heimish (literally!) minyan as much, or more, than I did. In fact, a few weeks into it, some of the regular attendees confided in me that they had also rarely made it to shul on Friday nights - until now.

I was surprised to find out that I wasn't alone in my shul-avoidant foible, and was gratified that in setting out to do something for myself, I ended up helping others as well.

Which leads to this thought. I know it's considered risky to propose reasons for halachik rules, lest you come to think that the rule can be broken by people for whom the reason doesn't apply. But... perhaps the fact that specifically men were given the obligation to pray with a group of at least nine others, was intended to counteract our greater (inborn or learned) tendencies towards competitiveness, isolationism, and excessive self-reliance. In essence, several times a day, we are forced to be social - or at least civilized!

Could be. At least, that's how it worked for me and a couple of other guys in the good old Highland Park triangle!