On the rails

The sight of Jewish men, clad in full ritual garb, davening, or praying, in public is not new to me or, for that matter, to anyone who has flown to Israel via El Al. But in my all years of shuttling back and forth between New York and D.C., I’ve never, ever, seen anyone daven on Amtrak.

Until today, that is. I looked up from my laptop and there he was -- on the 8:10 to Washington. His tefillin bag plopped on the seat beside him, a male passenger on the right side of 40 was holding on to his siddur (prayerbook) with one hand and to his ticket with the other, trying all the while to stand upright and still as the train swayed to and fro.

The prayerful passenger also seemed to be coordinating his devotions with those of the conductor, timing the first with the second so that he wouldn’t be interrupted.

As I (surreptitiously) looked on, I couldn’t help wonder what Sholem Aleichem would have made of the scene. The author, among other things, of the droll and amusing Railroad Stories, which situated East European Jewry’s encounters with modernity aboard a series of train trips, he would have relished the seeming incongruity of it all.

Sholom Aleichem is currently the subject of a warmhearted and incisive documentary, Sholom Aleichem: Laughing in the Darkness. Be sure to see the film, even if it entails getting on a train.