“People” and Being Needed at Minyan

“We just need three more people and then we’re good to go. Reuven– will you lead Mincha? No? Shimon? Great. Oh and Levi, Yehuda and Yissochar just walked in!” Most people who attend a daily minyan knows what the count to ten is like. And most female regulars have become jaded enough not even to notice the slip. We didn’t need three more people. We needed three more men.

Alan Krinsky, in an article posted recently on the Jewish Ideas and Ideals site, raises one objection to this phenomenon.

what message does this send, particularly to our daughters? Is it not suggesting that girls and women are not really people–because if the minyan requires people but only men are eligible to be counted, then it would be a quite logical inference to conclude that girls and women are not really people, or at least are not fully persons or humans, as men are.

Avigayil Halpern responded, writing:

The problem with saying “We need two more people to make this minyan!” is not that it ignores the presence of women in the room. The problem is that in that prayer community, women are not people, and that is what enables the wording in the first place. The issue at hand is not the assumption that men are the default; it is that men are the default.

As a regular minyan attendee and an Orthodox woman, it happens that neither of these issues particularly trouble me. Minyanim provide me with the opportunity to stand before God in community and in prayer– which itself is a uniquely personhood-affirming activity. My community, this quorum of Jews gathered here, enables me to give thanks and register complaints before my creator. To experience and give voice to a holiness that I could not have achieved on my own. Every day I am grateful for a tradition that asks me to structure my life around a communal conversation with the Divine.

I just wish that the “ask” were stronger. That’s why I wish I were needed. I wish I were the one that everyone was waiting for, because being needed feels great. When a meeting can’t start without you there, it feels good. If people are waiting for you, you matter to them. You’ll hustle a little bit, so as not to let them down.

As mornings get darker and darker, it’s hard to get out of bed for minyan. If I were needed, I would hustle. There’s a big difference between being needed and being noticed. It’s nice that people notice when I’m there, but nobody’s experience depends on me.

I know it has its drawbacks. Some of my college friends hated being dragged out of bed by minyan phonecalls. There’s a certain shame in being the tenth man to walk in when everyone is waiting at yishtabach. But that shame is a sign of communal expectation– if nobody expected anything from you, you would never feel the shame of letting them down. Perhaps shame, or the threat of it, can sometimes be helpful. Communal expectations and the threat of shame hold us accountable to do things that are difficult or inconvenient, but that we really wish we could do. This same philosophy of accountability is what lays behind Weight Watchers meetings, for just one example.

It wouldn’t take much to make women feel needed at minyan. Stay tuned for my next post, which will have some practical suggestions. If you’re worried that you’ll miss the post (seeing as I post kind of irregularly, sorry), feel free to subscribe to this blog by putting your email address into the box on the right.