Tuesday, June 19, 2018

A Year of Mourning - Reflections on Minyan 3

One minyan morning the conversation turned to prayer - not the prayers we recite, but how are we kddash - how are we holy? How can we focus our thoughts to understand there is no greater love than that of the Kaddosh Baruch Hu, the Infinite? Yet I think of my father. I do not think of his love, though it was vast. Of all the things taken from him, I think the most frustratrating was his ability to pray. He couldn’t stand, but worse, he couldn’t focus. Daily prayer was something he came to late in life. It opened and focuesed his day. But in the last few years prayer became more and more of a chore.

One of the things people remembered aboutr Daddy was his willingness to make a minyan. Even before he prayed regularly, it was a value of his. One bad weather nights he’d pile us all into the car. With four, we were almost half a minyan. We could make the difference to someone saying Kaddish. Even that was taken from him. Travel was hard, even only to the shul. He couldn’t get out to talk to people, and he could no longer longer read our tefillot to speak to God.

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