I have taken my fair share of buses over the years. But today was the first time I've ever seen anyone davening on a bus. Yet that is what a young Hasidic Jew was doing shortly after he boarded the bus in Framingham.
Later on he approached me and asked if I was Jewish. When I replied in the affirmative he asked me to lay tefillin with him. I hadn't done it in years but he walked me through it. I'm not sure what was more embarrassing - what I had forgotten or what I had never known. But there's a first time for everything and this was surely one of those times. And on this occasion despite my ignorance I found both his davening and my participation in laying the tefillin comforting.
He later introduced himself as Mandel, a Yeshiva student, who was traveling to Crown Heights in Brooklyn to celebrate the High Holidays before going to study in Britain. Crown Heights is the home of the Chabad-Lubavitch movement.
Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year, commences Friday at sundown.
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