daven

The Wednesday-night concert resembled any other summer show in New York, only more, you know, Jewish: The smartphones came out when a capella icons The Maccabeats took the stage; a young man landed front-flips in the aisles as the Klezmatics summoned their whirlwind of clarinet and violins, his tzitzit turning in midair along with him; Chabadniks wrapped tefillin on the edges of the crowd; people davened Maariv during the (thankfully!) brief pauses between acts; and a man in the front row sat with a sefer on his lap, which turned out to be a volume of the Art Scroll edition of the Talmud (music shouldn't come at the expense of Gemara study, after all).

When my father wore the tefillin, closed his eyes, and davened, he was doing what he could to protect himself and those he loved."

Without that sensitivity, he didn't even know what the service was, even though as a boy he had davened it every morning of his life.

For years, I worked above a kosher grocery store, and the men there davened in a large meat freezer in the back.

Not everyone was able to get into the garden." Back then, there were just a dozen or so pilgrims, and men and women davened together, on either side of the grave.

Led by a rabbinic intern, a chazzan, and a few others, and with no electronic amplificationthe group relied, instead, on the old protest trick of forming concentric circles and having the outer layers repeat what the inner layers have saidthe group davened the Kol Nidrei service.