It was a thin crowd that had showed up for the 2:00 Mincha that Sunday. A combination of a super-sized chasuna for the daughter of one of the shul's major gvirim, unseasonably warm temperatures, and a creditball playoff game left barely a minyan in the Beis Medrash.
First gabbai was absent. So was second, third, and fourth, all the way down to eighth, which was as deep as the shul's gabbai bench ran.
“Who's in charge here?” asked Myron Loghschmeer in his raspy voice.
“Nobody is,” Shloimie replied.
“Now you are,” said Myron. “You're gabbai for a day.”
“Oh, good. That means I can't daven from the amud.”
“Who says you can't?” asked Baruch.
“I'm tied up with my gabbai responsibilities,” Shloimie told him. “And tone it down, please, you're distracting me.”
“Well, if you're going to be that way, I ain't davening from the amud, neither.” Baruch folded his hands across his chest.
“That's okay, because we have plenty of other people who can do so. All right... “ He clapped his hands a few times. “Who wants to daven from the amud? Who's up?”
“Yahrzeits,” reminded Myron.
“Oh, do you have yahrzeits, Mr. Loghschmeer?” Shloimie inquired.
“No, I don't have any. Not today, at any rate. But you have to ask that first.”
“Oh, right.”
“You sure you can handle this gabbai thing, Shloimie?” Baruch asked.
“Yes, Baruch.” Shloimie looked around the room. “Any yahrzeits?” No one replied. “Well, then, is anyone an avel?” Still no reply. “Anyone have a yahrzeit this week?” Nada. “All right, let's have a volunteer.” Silence.
Maybe I should go up there, thought Dave. Then he decided, Nah.
Shloimie began walking around the beis medrash, looking for volunteers.
Baruch leaned over to softly ask Dave, “What date would you pick for your yahrzeit?”
Nothing like a question from Baruch to wake one out of one's reveries. “Baruch!” hissed Dave. “What kind of a thing is that to ask?”
“I don't mean the exact date. I meant more like, which month? I'd pick Iyar. Middle of Iyar. Shavuos is still a few weeks away, plenty of time to prepare for it. Nice weather usually, not too hot, not too cold. If your yahrzeit's in, say, Shevat, think what it does for the kids. When they're saying Tehillim at your kever, at the end they're spelling out your name in kapitel 119, and their hands are freezing! They're not thinking of the pesukim, they're thinking about their hands, and how they can't wait to get back into the car. Or if they're wearing gloves, they can barely flip the pages back and forth. I tell you, Iyar's the month.”
All Dave could think to say was, “Ad meia v'esrim shana.”
“Of course. Or as I prefer to think, Odd Meir and Egg Cream Summers. That would be the title of my memoirs, if only I had been named Meir.” Dave just stared at Baruch, really speechless this time. “What? Did I say something incongruous?”
Meanwhile, Shloimie still didn't have a baal tefilla. Compounding the difficulty was that it was considered chutzpahdik in Congregation Bnei Avos to signal one's willingness by jumping up and down, waving one's hands back and forth and wagging one's tongue from side to side, as the gabbai came around to look for a shaliach tzibbur.
“Dave,” asked Shloimie, “you want to daven?”
His feelings on the matter wavered once more. I do, but... He shook his head.
“How about you, Feivel?”
“Sorry, Shloimie, but I've got the makings of a sore throat.”
“Mal?”
No response from Mal. His eyes were darting back and forth, though, and he traced strange lines on the table top. Evidently he was in one of those frames of mind of his in which you wouldn't want him at the amud. For instance, a quadratic term might find its way into Kaddish.
“Forget it, Mal, then. Boris? Why don't you get up there?”
“There was yahrzeit this morning.”
“So?”
“So I drink l'chaim.”
“That must have been hours ago.”
“Yes.”
“So you couldn't possibly be feeling the drink's effect enough now to disqualify you.”
“My choosing is be on conservatives side.”
“OK, I don't want to argue. Yitzy, you go up.”
Yitzy turned up his nose. “I find that davening at the amud tarnishes the quality of my tefilla. Too many ancillary concerns. I can't afford that right now.”
Shloimie turned toward the back of the Beis Midrash. “Myron, will you honor us?”
“What are you, crazy?”
There weren't many candidates left. “Okay, then, Rod, can you help us?”
“Well, you're really scraping the bottom of the barrel now, aren't you? You know I've trouble getting the words out.”
There was Dr. Daizment. But everyone was always scared to ask anything of him, and this afternoon was no exception.
Shloimie analyzed the responses he had received to determine his next move. Then he turned to Dave. “Dave? Dave? Dave? There, I asked you three times, so now you've got to go up there.”
“I didn't move my legs to start going up there, so three times doesn't mean anything.” Then Dave's leg moved.
“Aha! Dave? Now, see, your leg moved, and I asked you one time after that, so you have to go up there.”
“I didn't move my leg.”
“I just saw it.”
“I mean, that wasn't me moving my leg myself. Baruch kicked it and it moved!”
“I did not!” Baruch claimed. “Not on purpose, at least. I was leaning over, trying to see whether that was a cave cricket wedging itself between Yevamos and Eruvin on the bottom shelf there.”
“Baruch, you've moved the most since I started trying to find a baal tefilla. You've got the momentum. Why don't you just go up there?”
“I'm not, because I'm still in a fit of pique, although the fit is almost over. Or maybe it hasn’t started yet. Maybe it’s some other kind of fit. But more to the point, don't you want someone whose voice is sonorous? Mine comes up a bit short. My colleague over here, though, Mr. Dave Geiss, has quite a tolerable voice, if you ask me.”
Dave shook his head.
“Come on, Dave,” pleaded Shloimie. “I've heard some form of excuse from everyone whom I wasn't afraid to ask, except you. Why don't you go up there?”
Yeah, why don't you? Are you trying to show how humble you are? If so, then simply tell everyone that, so they stop bothering you. No, wait, what kind of an idea is that?
“I'd prefer not to.”
“Come on, Dave. That's not a reason why you can't, when everyone else has reasons, however unusual or flimsy they may be.”
“I'd prefer not to.”
“Whoa,” said Baruch. “This sounds like we somehow ended up in Bartleby, the Scrivener by Herman Melville. And that story did not end well. I might eventually have to take matters into my own hands.”
Then a ray of hope pierced the gloom. Dr. Daizment arose from his seat and ambled towards the amud. All eyes closely followed the measured movement of his stately form. But it was not the salvation it was hoped to be, as he walked past the amud to take a Mishnayos sefer off the shelf and returned to his seat.
Shloimie glanced at each of the congregants again. Despair was the emotion most evident on his face. Then he looked towards the door, closed his eyes, and appeared to be uttering a prayer.
If it was a prayer, it was answered almost immediately in the person of Avrumie Vizovic, who burst through the door at that moment. He could be seen silently counting the left arms of those present in the Beis Midrash.
“Nu, you've got a minyan. What's going on?”
“No one wants to daven at the amud,” explained Shloimie.
Avrumie scowled. “Hey, I didn't purposely get here five minutes late only to be on time! Let's go! I've got to get back to some deals!”
“So do you want to be shaliach tzibur?” asked Shloimie.
“If it gets me out of here in five minutes, sure!” agreed Avrumie.
That time estimate triggered memories of recent clashes involving similar sets of people. Dave called out, “You know the policy, Avrumie. No heicha Kedusha.”
“What?? Well then, forget it. I don't have the time. I'll catch the later minyan.” And he scrambled out.
They were at an impasse. And to Dave, it was his own reluctance that was protracting the agony. It was no longer a time for humility, he decided. His hand started to rise.
Then again, neither was it a time for brazenness. The rising hand reversed direction before Shloimie noticed.
That left the middle road. The next time Shloimie looked his way, he would catch his eye and assume the mantle of shaliach tzibur. Yes, he would. Dave had finally made up his mind and now looked forward to the role.
But Shloimie was working on another approach, and not looking Dave's way. He had out a pad of paper and a pen. “All right, we're going to draw straws. I don't know where they keep the straws here, so we'll do it a slightly different way. Each of us will draw a straw on this pad. The man who draws the one that looks least like a straw will daven at the amud.”
The pad started to circulate. Given the direction of circulation and the way the men were positioned in the Beis Midrash, the pad was going to reach Dave last. That locked it in for him. All he had to do was draw something a little less straw-like than the worst of the pictures, and he would be the tzibur's designate.
At last the pad reached Dave's hand, and he prepared to put his plan into action. As he studied the other straw images, though, he discovered a potential flaw. There was no picture at all by Mal's name!
How do you judge that? Dave wondered. On the one hand, you could say that Mal's image depicted nothing, and straws were something – there couldn't be anything more un-straw-like than nothing. On the other hand, you could say that Mal had not drawn anything at all, which should violate the rules of the contest and disqualify him.
An analysis of Shloimie's psyche was in order, to try to gauge which way he would lean. But there wasn't the time. Already he sensed N pairs of eyes staring at him, N a number between 4 and 7.
Also draw nothing to stay even with Mal? His gut told him otherwise.
He had to find the worst drawn straw. That straw, in Dave's best judgment of how Shloimie would look at them, was Baruch's. It looked like a piece of ... popcorn. Well, that's not very straw-like at all, Dave observed to himself. How do you bottom that?
As he set pen to paper, the sensation of being stared at remained with him and grew even stronger and closer. Dave turned to his right. There was Baruch, peering over Dave's shoulder as he sketched.
“Hey, stop watching me! You're getting me nervous.”
“It's a good thing I was watching you. You're copying my picture!”
“No I'm not,” Dave retorted. “Why would I copy yours? Then it would be a tie and we'd have to have a second round.”
“Oh, but once you copied mine, you'd probably stick something like an eyeball on it to make it look even worse. Well, it's not going to work.” Baruch snapped his fingers a few times. “Hey, Shloimie, I've decided to let bygones be bygones and be your man at the amud.”
“Thank you, Baruch. Let's get going, then.”
So Baruch strode up to the amud as the shaliach tzibur, while Dave was left holding a pad of odd straw drawings. Undoubtedly H-shem was sending him a message, in all likelihood several. But it was going to take some work to figure it out. He only hoped that his mind would delay the work until after Mincha Shemonah Esrei.
A heavy klopp sounded on the top of the amud, and Baruch intoned, “V'hu rachum --”
“Ashrei!” shouted everyone else in unison.
“Right,” replied Baruch. “I was just getting to that part.”
