Fielding Mellish, ladies and gentlemen

[sanpaku]

So I was in New York for the staff retreat, at the godforsaken Hudson Hotel, and I woke up early on Thursday thinking I should really find a place to say kaddish for my dad. (You're supposed to find a prayer service for this every day for a year after the death.) But the options, without prior planning, were not great: all the Conservative

Comments

[alsoname]

Awww! I was really hoping that this would be a story of people gracefully welcoming a relative outsider from another town in order to help him pay his respects to his father. Sorry it was a bit embarrassing instead. But I'm glad you did it!

[sanpaku]

Well, guilt and embarrassment had a fight, and guilt won. But as I get older, I'm willing to risk embarrassment more than I used to. At least I got a funny story out of it.

[gfrancie]

The guy yelling about the spare yarmulke did crack me up.
So while you melted into the ground, I appreciate the whole set-up.

[cellio]

Ow. Somebody does not understand hachnasat orchim... geez, talk about making the new guy feel uncomfortable. :-(

[sanpaku]

It's funny, because I've been to other Orthodox minyans in my life and never had anything other than a warm and welcoming response that amounted to "we're really glad you're here." So really, I just had bad luck.

[tapuz]

Dude. Did they not notice that you brought your own tfillin??? Sigh.

[gansje]

I know, right? Who else travels with their own tfillin?

[sanpaku]

With these guys, it's kind of worse to be a Yid who's obviously not Orthodox than a Goy.

[sanpaku]

Well, you know, having brought tfillin makes me Conservative, which scans as "only semi-clueless." It would kind of be like you coming in wearing pants. In other words, kind of worse.

But in general, I got the sense that they were not thrilled to see new people to begin with. All business.