Thursday, June 18, 2020

The afternoon prayers start a little late. Usually, a guest from downstairs comes in and circles through the office. We call him “the alarm clock.” When he drifts past our desks,we know to get together. He’s late today. By the time he comes by, several of us have noticed that it's late and headed toward the hallway on our own. Just before he shows up, a dispute breaks out. One of our team questions whether we count as a group of ten when some of us are in one branch of the hallway, some are in the other, and the rest are still in the office, just inside the open door. There’s a mezuzah posted on the doorway. My coworker questions whether we can be counted as being in a single space if we are on both sides of the mezuzah. He has a point. I’m surprised that he raises the issue. He’s a very precise programmer, but not someone I would imagine to be all that interested in the fine points of rabbinic law. The conversation quickly gets beyond me. Some suggest, I think, that we’re OK as long as we can all hear whoever happens to be the prayer leader. I don’t know if there’s any resolution. There often isn’t. A lot of Jewish law seems to come down to both sides probably being right, and a consensus that we’ll only get a definitive answer at the end of time. The prayers start up as usual, with the group standing as we usually do. During the silent prayer, a woman emerges from the restroom and looks startled. It’s not unknown to see a group of men in a hallway, all facing southeast, most bobbing quietly back and forth, but it doesn’t happen everywhere. She stares for a moment, figures out what’s happening, nods, and walks quietly down the hall.