I don’t know what goes on under other people’s talleisim during Birchas Kohanim, but I know I have to do something about what’s going on under mine. Definitely before I have grandchildren.
I don’t look around the shul during duchaning, but I assume my situation looks like a bag of cats.
It’s a balagan under there. You have all these different heads tent-poling the tallis, pulling it in different directions, and at any point someone’s yarmulke is falling off. Usually the father’s. It’s like being in a car where the ceiling cloth is coming down.
And there’s always one kid trying to get out. Someone has to hold him. And there’s always one kid in there with a lollypop. That’s a very delicate situation. You have to make sure he touches no one and nothing. Give him as wide a berth as you can.
“Stop taking it out of your mouth!”
Meanwhile, you’re hunched over, bending over the lollypop kid so he doesn’t touch the tallis itself, and also to lower the front of the tallis so the shorter kids stop peeking out.
They think it’s hilarious.
“No peeking!” you want to say, but you can’t talk. And also the kid doesn’t even know that there’s something he wasn’t supposed to be peeking at; and now he’s looking around at random things:
“Look, my friend is under his totty’s tallis!... That man doesn’t have a tallis!... Those totties aren’t wearing shoes!”
And then you realize your youngest has taken off his shoes…
And then you all watch your yarmulke topple down in slow motion onto the machzor. Right over the words you need to read.
You try to herd your smallest kids onto the chair in front of you so their eye level is not below the tallis. But even so, the tallis doesn’t go all the way down to the table. So right at the beginning of Birchas Kohanim, you throw the front of your tallis forward as far as you can, and your atarah hits the table with a SLAM! and your whole tallis sails off, just as they’re starting the bracha.
And then one kid gets overexcited and falls off the chair.
And it’s not just the kids who were already with you for davening; your wife is sending kids in from the women’s section. Some of them infants. A new totty is always excited to bring his first baby under there with him – when all the talleisim come off, you can see him kissing the kid’s cheek… But at some point, you have a ton of kids in there and your wife is still sending them in, plus your daughters, and it’s like, “You know, the bracha reaches the women’s section too.”
“Well, we can see straight in. I can’t have them all stand behind me.”
There are way too many kids under here.
Who is this kid? I don’t even know him.
“I can’t find my father. I started looking too late, and I had to take shelter somewhere.”
Sometimes you feel like you should bring a second tallis, like maybe draft your weekday tallis for this. Put about half the kids under that, and they can hand it back afterward with lollypop stickiness on it.
How quickly can you yank the tablecloth off the table for this, and then get it back on afterward before anyone sees? Do it like a magician, so everything stays on the table. Arbah minim included.
This is why you try to have some girls in between your boys. And also one of the reasons they say that people with seven boys back-to-back go straight to Gan Eden.
This isn’t forever, though. At least in my family. Once you have teenagers, you’re like, “Somebody smells like 3rd day yom tov in here. And it’s the first day. We’re going to add teenage smells into the mix?”
“No, it’s okay; I’ll wear too much cologne.”
“Goodbye. I’m buying you a hat.”
Once he’s bar mitzvah, he doesn’t have to come under the tallis for duchaning anymore. That was the “Baruch Shepatrani.” He can use his hat, and if the brim isn’t big enough, he can hold the siddur in front of his face like a seminary girl.
But the rest of you still have to share a tallis.
“Wait, are we missing a kid, or is he with Mommy?”
“He’s been standing behind you.”
There’s always some kid looking around the shul, calling, “Totty?” with no idea what his father’s bag of cats looks like, and then the 6 of you have to shuffle your tallis across the shul to go incorporate him.
And in middle of all this, you’re trying to zip through the Ribbono Shel Olam paragraphs in enough time to finish before the singing of Kohanim who have never said it in their lives, and do not know how long this song has to go for. And who you think should maybe say the tefillos once in their spare time just to get a sense of how long it takes. They are tearing through that niggun at several different paces so they can get to “Shalom” on as many different keys are there are Kohanim. The Yehi Ratzon in particular is such a packed tefillah full of all kinds of bakashos, and the Kohanim give you maybe 15 seconds more than they give for the Ribbono Shel Olams.
And you have to teach your kids to say it fast enough too, while parenting without talking, despite this being the fastest tefillah your shul has said all year. And also teach them which words they have to scan with their eyes, including your child who can’t read without his lips moving. Plus you have six machzorim under there on an area of table that can hold maybe two, and you’re trying to read yours but there are several heads in the way.
You can share one Machzor, you figure, except that one of the paragraphs continues onto the next page, and no one has time to wait for the slower readers. Two machzorim -- that’s how many you need. Keep one on each page.
And those words you’re supposed to scan with your eyes? I scan them too slow, I think, because I never finish the Yehi Ratzon in time. I feel like we’re always the last ones to come up for air afterwards, and I’m not a slow davener. Maybe it’s because I’m still trying to figure out which relatives to daven for in the parentheses at the end and how to conjugate them. And most of those relatives are under there with me.
And then halfway through the Yehi Ratzon, you hear half the tzibbur start singing with the Kohanim. How are they done? Do they like the tune that much that they’re opting to do that instead? Did they just scan the entire Yehi Ratzon? Did they assign each kid one line?
I don’t know what’s going on under anyone else’s tallis, and I’m never going to find out because I’m not supposed to look around. The way I do it is the way my father did it when I was growing up, and my kids will probably do the same. For all I know other families stand around in a circle, looking down at one machzor. Or they stand back-to-back. I don’t know. Whatever you do here is passed down strictly father to son, to random neighbor kid who can’t find his father.
The only way you’re finding out other families’ minhagim is if you’re a kid whose father is at a different minyan, or he’s home with a cold, so you go under with someone else’s family, and the whole time you feel like you’re intruding, sniffling in their ears.
“Which line is mine?”
This kind of thing is most likely to happen on Shavuos, when you stay up all night but one of your sons does not, and he walks to shul with your wife and davens in the men’s section like a big boy, until some point during Mussaf when it occurs to your wife that he has nowhere to go for duchaning, and she’s trying to get his attention through the mechitzah and signal to him to go under some neighbor’s tallis with the other 12 random kids he has in there.
“Wait, everyone has a lolly under here? What’s your secret?”
“It’s a shul tallis.”
Maybe I should start going under other people’s talleisim in middle of duchaning to see what’s going on and get some ideas. I can try a different family every time. If I get in there just as the bracha is ending, they can’t say anything.
I can leave my tallis with my kids.
Mordechai Schmutter is a weekly humor columnist for Hamodia, a monthly humor columnist, and has written six books, all published by Israel Book Shop. He also does freelance writing for hire. You can send any questions, comments, or ideas to This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.