Reply To: Take a lesson from a taxi driver

Avram, you are correct. I wasn’t expecting to daven for the amud – in fact, it gets tiresome davening a lot! (Whenever I’d go to visit my parents for Shabbos or Yom Tov, the gabbai would ask me to daven for the amud. My father recently started davening at a new shul, so on Pesach I might not get asked – woohoo!) If nothing had been said, I would have been fine. I don’t mind not davening, but the reasoning was what bothered me. I would actually LIKE to daven for the amud in this shul now, just to show them that someone with a kippah srugah can daven nicely, with kavanah.

It reminds me of a time I davened at a yeshiva on Pesach. They asked me to daven for the amud. After davening, the Rosh Yeshiva came over to me, and asked, “Where did a Modern Orthodox man like you learn to daven such a davening? It sounded just like a yeshiva guy!”

I didn’t know whether to take that as a compliment or an insult!