You know, at mincha today there was a kid who was davening Shemoneh Esreh out loud. Not yelling, but out loud. All the while shuckeling this way and that. He is high school age. And I've seen him learning in shul in his free time so it's not like he's totally disconnected with proper halachic behavior (I hope, I really don't know).
So this was strange to me for a couple of reasons, firstly, the very fact that he didn't know that davening Shemoneh Esreh quietly is not just something people happen to do, you are supposed to do it. Otherwise you may be one of the קטני אמנה. Also, I thought it strange that even if he didn't know this halachah, if you found yourself in a room full of people davening silently, would you daven out loud? On top of that, I found it plain annoying that since I was right behind this fellow, I had trouble concentrating of the Shliach Tzibbur during Chazaras HaShatz.
But I didn't say anything to him, because in such situations I am unsure what an appropriate way to approach such a person would be, and I feared causing more harm than good. And then I saw an older man, a rav, approach this young fellow. I thought for sure he was going to give some sort of kind explanation to the boy as to his error. (I noticed a few people giving this boy looks during davening.) But instead he simply commented how nice it was to see one of the younger people davening with so much kavana.
This made me happy.
And the whole time I was just thinking of this story from Reb Shlomo Carlebach:
No comments:
Post a Comment