Only tough measures could save our shul's crumbling decorum

Levi: We need to maintain certain boundaries to safeguard our shul.

David: I’m here to daven; why are you looking at what I wear on my head?

Levi

You want to know what’s really going on in a shul, speak to the gabbai.

He’s the one who sees the way things are going, when a community is growing, shifting, changing. Trends start small, it’s hard to notice subtle changes, but when you’re looking at the crowd, week in and week out, you get a bigger picture, and often, it tells you a lot.

I’ve been the gabbai at Khal Beis Avrohom for a few years now, and I’ve watched the community grow, the core group of members turning into a respectable size kehillah. We started off as a group of guys in their thirties, though by now the founding members are beginning to marry off their kids, and we have a younger crowd as well — the older members’ sons, some young men from the neighborhood, the avreichim who learn in the kollel that uses our premises.

All in all, it’s a nice, cohesive crowd, serious bnei Torah who are committed to the shul and to the rav. And notably, it’s a shul that displays kavod for tefillah. Rabbi Eisenstein, the rav, has always stressed the importance of not speaking in shul during davening, and the kehillah really adheres to that. It’s a point of pride for the mispallelim that the shul is silent during davening and leining.

Which is why I wasn’t the only one who noticed when some newcomers began joining Friday nights, and — obviously unaware, or perhaps not really caring, about our shul’s careful standards in this area — held animated low-voiced conversations through Kabbalas Shabbos. Several of the mispallelim nearby turned around to shhh in their direction, but it didn’t seem to help at all.

It was hard to miss the newcomers; aside from their running conversation straight through davening, they were also dressed distinctly more casually than the avreichim who made up the shul’s membership; they didn’t wear hats and were dressed in snazzy, fitted suits in varying shades of gray and navy. I asked around a little, tried speaking to some of the guys who were joining the minyan, and pieced together what was happening.

We live in a very broad, diverse community, with Yidden of many streams and backgrounds. Our very serious kollel-style minyan was located on a main thoroughfare, right near a newly developed area with many young families. And although they didn’t belong to our shul, the convenience made it the shul of choice for many of these men to daven on Friday nights.

They seemed to be a chevreh of sorts, the kind my son Chesky called “chillers.” They liked to schmooze, didn’t seem to listen when the rav got up to speak, and were in and out the door without engaging with anyone from the community. They saw the shul as somewhere to daven, get their Minchah-Kabbalas Shabbos-Maariv, and that was all.

And this new development was only getting worse. As more families of that type moved into the area and the chevreh brought their friends, the chatter at the back crept toward the middle of the beis medrash.