Shalom! Rabbi Jonathan Ginsburg. This video is about Minion. So, what is a Minion? Well and Minion consist of ten people and where does this come from. There are several stories in the Torah which came to us that God considers the minimum size community to be ten. The first story is about the destruction of the cities of Sodom and Gomorra. And when God tells Abraham that he is going to do that, Abraham, starts to argue with God and says, if there are 50 righteous people in that city, would you not destroy it. And God agrees and they bargain until Abraham gets down to ten people and he stops his arguing. That gives us a sense that the minimum for a community is ten.
The second story occurs and much later in the fourth book at the Torah at Numbers when 12 spies go to spy out the land and they come back and ten of them report that they do not they can conquer the land of Israel even though God promised it because they were like quote grasshoppers on their own eyes. And God says, how long will I have to endure this evil congregation, meaning the ten guys. And that gives us another sense that ten is the minimum size of our community. Now, in orthodox believe that you have to have ten man, males above the age of 13, Bar Mitzvate. And 13 becomes the cutoff age because that is the age of Mitzvoth. That is when someone can caught in the Minion.
Now, the contributive rabbis, not all follow this rule, but we have an agreement that women can be counted in a prayer or aMinion. Many conservative Rabbis allow woman to be counted equally and therefore you simply need ten men or women 13 or above. The College of Jewish in Law, some suggest that if you have a minor holding a Torah or a Homa bible, printed volume, that counts as the tenth. In some shows cheat a little bit and if there is nine and they open up the arch and they count the Torah as the tenth, it is really not support for that, but some synagogues do that. In some synagogues do not care if there is a Minion. There is none in the ancient custom that was in Jerusalem where they counted six or seven. And then there is a question of course how many people have to be awake. I even heard the kids story about if you have a virtual Minion on the internet. Where if the other Minion going on as the camera that guys got a computer with a camera, and it is like a listen end to the minion and his hometown is on business and some of other place where the Minion cannot count.
All interesting questions, the bottomline is this notion that we should pray in a community. You can pray by yourself. Fro certain prayers, we do not say without a Minionn. We do not say any for m of Kaddish. Any prayers say beginning with Yid Kadov Yid Kaddosh. We read Torah but not the traditional way if there is no Minion. We traditionally read Torah on Monday morning, Thursday morning, Saturday morning and Saturday afternoon, but only if there is a minion. If there is no Minion, either skip the torah reading or you read it but not in a ritual way and you do not call anybody up for Alieut. We also do not say the call to pray the Borchu which is normally said in the morning and on the evening. Those are the differences and the final main differences in the morning and afternoon where we have the prayer Amidah, there is something called the Kiduhsa, say dedication prayer which is not recited if there is no Minion. So, you can see that the Minion is definitely desirable and hopefully that helps. Now, how do you count the ten is another interesting question. You can of course count1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, which people are prone to do but there is a bias against that and Judaism.
First of all there is Torah and Torah where people who took senses gone trouble. God did not like that. to do. But, there is a bias against that is Judaism. First of all their stories in the Torah where people who took senses got in trouble. God did not like that. And one reason maybe, spiritually that taking in senses is away of considering people numbers instead made in the image of God. So, another way to do it is to take a blessing which has ten words in it and count everyone associated with one word of the blessing and if you get to the end, you know you have a Minion, for example, you say Baruch Hata Hashen aluhienu melech halam hamotzi le che min aretz. The prayer for bread. And every person there is counted with one word or abracha and you get to the end of the blessing you have a Minion. Shalom.
Transcription by:
Scribe4you Transcription Services