a heartwarming story about a porch minyan

By Rabbi Yechiel Spero
Let me tell you an absolutely beautiful Corona story.
There is a fellow in Toronto who asked Rav Shlomo Miller if he can make a porch minyan, and Rav Shlomo paskened for him that there was no problem with it. And so, he had a minyan every day on his porch and in his neighbor’s porch; together they had a minyan, and that’s what they did every day from Pesach and on.
Well, on Lag Ba’omer at night, at 9:00 at night, they decided they wanted to have a little bit of a kumzits. But before they played music at 9:00 at night, the father decided he wanted to ask two of the elderly women who lived near them, Jewish women, but completely not religious. And he knocked on one’s door and he says to her, “I don’t know if you know who I am…”
She cuts him off and says, “Oh, I know very well who you are! You’re the group that I pray with every morning.”
“Pray with?”
He says, “Yes. Ever since you’ve started praying on your porch, I lay in bed and I pray with you. It’s been decades, but it’s so beautiful. And not only that, but I called up my son and I said to him, ‘You find your tallit and your tefillin and you pray as well. These people are praying, even in the snow (in Toronto it snowed after Pesach) if they can pray, then you need to pray as well.’”
And of course, she was more than happy to allow them to play music and to sing.
We have to remember how important it is for us to be ‘living Kiddush Hashem’, every moment of this difficult and challenging situation. And Im Yirtzeh Hashem, as we continue to be Mekadesh Shem Shomayim, we will inch closer and closer to our return to our Batei Knesios and Batei Midrashos, Bekarov.
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