The ultimate rejection: Failing to make a minyan

It was 1978. I was living in Boston and decided to take a hike from Back Bay to Brookline to check out a hip little continuing education school that was offering a class with Adrian Barber, a music engineer and producer who had worked with some big names in the '70s but was known mainly for having recorded the Beatles back in their Hamburg days.

I wasn't particularly musical, but I was in a rut and thought being a music producer might be cool. Never mind that I was all thumbs when it came to technical stuff. As I said, the operative word was "cool."

Boston had just experienced one of its worst blizzards in history, and the side streets were still pretty treacherous. As I trudged up one such street, I was approached by an elderly man who asked me, "Are you Jewish?"

Not knowing why he asked this question, I hesitated. The old man explained that he was looking for enough people for a minyan, the ten-person minimum necessary to conduct a Jewish religious service.

Rounding up ten Jews

Having grown up a few blocks from our synagogue in Williamsport, Pa., I knew all about filling the quorum for minyans. Just about anyone can qualify. You don't have to be religious. You just have to be an adult (or an adult male, in Orthodox synagogues).

(Jewish lore is replete with tales of the occasional congregation that hired a cab driver who kept his meter running while serving as the necessary tenth worshipper.)

Although Williamsport supposedly had more than 200 Jewish families back in the '50s when I lived there, the place was hardly a hotbed of Judaism. A minyan on shabbos was no problem. But rounding up ten Jews to interrupt a summer evening was a whole other matter entirely.

So out of a sense of duty as well as bemusement, I told the old man, "Sure."

As soon as we entered the room, a middle-aged man whom I assumed to be the rabbi called the old man over and spoke to him for perhaps half a minute. I don't know what they said, but I assumed it was about me. Then the middle-aged man approached me and said something to the effect of, "Hey, thanks for coming but we won't need your services." Rather than make a scene, I left.

Who spills the soup?

Full disclosure: At that period in my life I had long hair and looked pretty scruffy. I was probably sweaty as well, since I'd been trudging the streets for a while. I'm guessing that the guy who asked me to leave assumed the old man never asked whether I was Jewish. Or maybe he just didn't like my looks. I'll never know.

Goodness knows I've suffered worst slights in my life. Who hasn't? But for some reason, his particular rejection has stuck in my craw in a way that other incidents haven't.

I mean how objectionable must you be to be turned down for a minyan? It's something like a psychiatrist saying, "I don't want to hear it," to a kvetching patent.

Come to think of it, that once happened to me, too.

We Jews have an old saying about the difference between a schlemiel and a schlemazel: "A schlemazel is the one who spills the soup. A schlemiel is the one who gets the soup spilled on."

I've got a better definition: "The schlemiel is a Jew who fails to qualify for a minyan." Now, that's rejection.♦


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