The morning minyan
Prayer service brings Jewish congregations together
Joe Charny stood in front of the chapel at Congregation Beth Shalom, wearing a yarmulke and prayer shawl, and faced the small group gathered Wednesday morning.
As he led, the worshipers prayed and chanted, in unison or separately, in English at times and in Hebrew at others. Later, they listened to readings from the Torah scroll. Then, because of this week’s holiday of Sukkot, they processed around the small chapel, bearing fruits of the harvest and giving thanks for God’s provisions.
When the service was done, they moved into the next room and sat for a breakfast of omelets, bagels, fruit and conversation.
This is the morning minyan, a group prayer held every day, requiring a minimum attendance of 10 to do all the prescribed prayers under Jewish tradition.
Mr. Charny has frequently led such daily services for about 20 years, since his retirement. Most of those years were at the synagogue home of his congregation, Tree of Life / Or L’Simcha. He and others who regularly attended — mostly retirees who had the time, and others who made the time — gave themselves the whimsical name, “minyanaires.”
Not everyone would attend every day — but as a group, their gatherings for prayer and table talk formed a daily spiritual pulse at the historic synagogue.
“It becomes like a family,” said one of the regulars, Audrey Glickman. “It’s what a congregation is supposed to be.”
Last Oct. 27, this close-knit group was violently decimated when an anti-Semitic gunman invaded the sacred space and killed seven members of Tree of Life and four other worshipers from two other congregations sharing its building. In one of the many achingly poignant moments of the ensuing griefsoaked days, the minyanaires paid tribute to one of their regulars, Joyce Fienberg, at the end of her funeral, slowly processing