Strange Visitor From Another Planet

I usually daven at the 6:30 minyan at my other shul. This is the quintessential commuter minyan. No fooling around. Quick and to the point. The Rabbis never daven there so they don't have to wait for them to finish Shemah or Shimonah Esrai. You get the point.

The other day, I walked in and saw that one of the stranger men from my main shul took the amud because he had yahrtzeit. I knew this was going to be entertaining.

Rather than the staccato cadence that we are used to hearing at this minyan, our friend was davening in a sing-song way. And he was s-l-o-w. V-e-r-y s-l-o-w.

It was amusing to see the reaction of the rest of the kehilah. They didn't know what hit them. The eye-rolling really hit a peak when our friend sang Tzur Yisrael right before the amidah as one would on Shabbos (but, not, interestingly, at our shul). Yikes!

Davening took ten minutes longer (approximately 30%) than usual. In spite of this, there was no effort to lynch the chazan and everyone behaved very calmly (those that stayed; many people were gone way before the end of davening).

After shul, a friend who had just recently started davening on weekends at my main shul came over to me and, with a twinkle in his eye said, "One of ours, huh?"