'Serenity'
Off-topic discussion. Wanna talk about corsets, duct tape, butt kicking, or physics? This is the place. Detailed discussion of any current-season TV must be whitefonted.
There are certain prayers and services that can only be said as a community, rather than as individual people, and ten men is what's considered necessary to count as doing it as a community. (Or, it was then. Non-Orthodox Jewish groups now will count women in the ten.)
Ah, okay. So it's something that can only be done with ten men, not something that has to be done when you get to ten.
Somebody explain this to me? Ten Jewish men in the same area triggers the Apocalypse unless they do a service? (Probably not, but that's the first thing I thought of.)
Would still be a really fun Supernatural episode, with the right approach. "No, Dean, no, that's not what it is." "Are you sure, Sammy? Because, you know, weird shit happens." "No."
Ah, okay. So it's something that can only be done with ten men, not something that has to be done when you get to ten.
Right. But it's stuff that you're supposed to do whenever you have the opportunity, so if you usually have nine men, and a tenth is visiting, you're going to get him to be your tenth. (In NYC, outside some of the synagogues in areas that are mostly offices, where there are men who gather each morning to say the prayers, if they're short a couple people, you'll sometimes see one of them out on the sidewalk, trying to guess which of the guys in suits walking by might be Jewish, and trying to get them to come in so they'll have ten. Similar things happen in houses when people are mourning -- you're supposed to say the prayers each night for a week after the funeral, and there are usually lots of people visiting the first few days, but by the time you get to the last day or two, there will sometimes be frantic phone calls made to try to get enough people. For one of my grandfathers, on the last day, one of the men there called home to get his 14-year-old son and one of his friends to come (boys start counting for this when they turn 13) to be the ninth and tenth, and then, after the prayers, the boys were talking to my sister and me, and the father forgot that he'd called them and left without them, so they had to call their mothers to come pick them up.)
Ugh Laura. I am so sorry.
Similar things happen in houses when people are mourning -- you're supposed to say the prayers each night for a week after the funeral, and there are usually lots of people visiting the first few days, but by the time you get to the last day or two, there will sometimes be frantic phone calls made to try to get enough people.
Just like on Mad Men!
After DH's father died he did the year of saying Kaddish every day and the Orthodox guys loved him for showing up to make a minyan all the time. Heck, sometimes he was the tenth man at the weekly Conservative minyan, and those were thriving congregations.
Many years ago I came across a long article about Jewish life in Alaska, where minyan-gathering involves plane flight logistics, and the nearest rabbi is a chaplain at an Air Force base.
Like on Northern Exposure!
Dear Big Boss, if you would read the emails I send you before looking at the attached files, all your questions about what I'm sending you would be answered.
That is classic, Matt. Although I more often have the opposite problem. Don't just respond to the email -- you have to actually look at the attachments!
Like on Northern Exposure!
TV really is like real life.