I assumed I knew what it meant when Mr. Krauser’s palm struck the table with a slam. It meant it was time to pray.
Mr. Krauser — his formal name was Mr. Sidney Krauser — slammed that table often. Up to two or three times a day.
When Mr. Krauser’s palm rang out, it sounded like a truck hitting a wall. Yiddish chatter halted in the small sanctuary. And the person Mr. Krauser had chosen to lead that day’s morning, afternoon or evening service would begin to pray. The slam was his signal.
The sound meant more than that, too.
Sometimes it meant (roughly translated): Today we don’t say the tachunun prayer, because it’s a festival day.
Sometimes it meant: People have finished saying the shemoneh esrei to themselves; now it’s time for the shliach tzibor to recite the prayer out loud.
Everyone in the room understood what his palm was saying.
I’m not making this up. I was fortunate enough to see Mr. Krauser slam that table on countless occasions.
Seated at the back of the narrow anteroom where weekday services took place, Mr. Krauser had been overseeing daily prayer for so long, his authority so established, his knowledge so respected, that he didn’t need words. His impassive visage offered no accent or gloss. A slap to the table sufficed.
Mr. Krauser slammed the table most recently in a former church building, now a synagogue, on Marvel Road in Westville, the current home of a wandering New Haven congregation called Bikur Cholim Sheves Achim.
Mr. Krauser died April 18. He was born in 1915 in Dubno, Poland. Members of the New Haven congregation he assembled in prayer for more than five decades will gather Sunday at 2 p.m. at 112 Marvel Rd. to honor him, to reflect on the quiet deeds (and occasionally not-so-quiet gestures) that keep a spiritual community together.
Mr. Krauser died and was buried out of state in a Maryland family plot. Sunday’s event is a memorial for his friends here in New Haven.
For 55 years, until three years ago, when he could physically do the job no longer, Mr. Krauser made sure that at least 10 adult men (definition of adult: 13 years or older) were on hand and then praying at his synagogue.
That involved more than slamming a table. It meant placing last-minute phone calls to pull in an eighth, ninth, tenth person to make the morning or afternoon/ evening minyan. All ten participants are needed under Jewish law for all the daily prayers to be recited, including mourner’s kaddish, the memorial prayer family members recite for the dead.
For longtime congregants with no kin to pay tribute to them, Mr. Krauser said the kaddish prayer in their memory.
The job sometimes meant getting behind the wheel to transport elderly congregants to shul. It meant opening the building before others arrived at 7 a.m., putting on coffee.
It meant, for many years, teaching children the prayers, preparing them to become bar and bat mitzvah.
The job had a name. The name wasn’t “rabbi,” though Mr. Krauser did counsel people and he was learned. It wasn’t “cantor,” though he often led the congregation in chanting prayer. Not synagogue president. The job title was “shammes.” It’s a humble title, a humble job, one that receives little attention outside the confines of a synagogue. Few jobs, if any, make more of a difference to the continuity of a religious community, especially the way Mr. Krauser practiced it.
“I didn’t,” Mr. Krauser once told me, “go for the glory.” At least not on earth.
West From Factory Street
When Mr. Krauser began practicing that job day in and day out, Harry Truman was president. Urban renewal had yet to decimate swaths of downtown New Haven and the Hill neighborhood.
Downtown had a one-block road then called Factory Street. It stood where the Temple Medical Center now stands, between George and Oak streets.
At one end of Factory Street was a synagogue called Sheveth Achim Anshe Lubavitch. At the other end stood a synagogue called Bikur Cholim B’nai Abraham. The two congregations used different prayer books; they came from two different strands of Orthodox Jewish tradition.
Mr. Krauser was new to New Haven. He and his wife Bessie had fled their native Poland after World War II, after their relatives perished in the Holocaust.
In 1950, Mr. Krauser took on the shammes job at Sheveth Achim. He loved Jewish ritual. He loved his fellow Jews. He took to the job the way a shepherd tends his flock.
He followed his congregation through changes. Urban renewal wiped out Factory Street. Many New Haven Jews left the city for the suburbs. With declining memberships, congregations like the ones on Factory Street merged or perished; Sheveth Achim and Bikur Cholim united. Somehow they agreed on what prayer books to use, how to conduct each service. Mr. Krauser continued showing up each morning, each afternoon, to make sure it happened.
The congregation gradually moved west, to Winthrop Avenue, finally, in the mid-1990s, to Marvel Road. Mr. Krauser moved with the congregation, always walking to synagogue rather than driving on the Sabbath and on festival days, a fixture keeping the flame of group prayer and fellowship burning as steadily as the ner tamid above the ark.
New members joined; Mr. Krauser got to know them. Older members died. Mr. Krauser kept track of their passing, stood by their graves as they were buried, screwed on the light bulbs by their name plaques on the memorial board on the anniversaries of their deaths. Rabbis came and left, replaced by new rabbis. Daily prayer continued, thanks to Mr. Krauser.
I didn’t know Mr. Krauser well. I belong to a different synagogue in the neighborhood. But whenever I would walk around the block to daven at Bikur Cholim, Mr. Krauser would be there. He’d greet me warmly. He spoke with a heavy Yiddish accent. I don’t speak Yiddish, but I could tell by the way he conversed with the other old-timers that that remained his mama loshen. Still, I marveled at the way he communicated. I marveled at his devotion. I discovered how he could chant flawlessly from the Torah, from memory, down to the unwritten melodic trop marks.
Sometimes the phone would ring at home and a deep, gravelly voice would begin, “Mister Bass?” He didn’t need to say, “This is Mr. Krauser.” He did say, “Can you help mit the minyan?” I couldn’t always say yes, but I tried. Saying no felt like saying no to a more heavenly voice.
From 2000 – 2001 I saw him quite regularly. I was saying kaddish each day for the 11 months after my father died, as required by Jewish law. I knew Mr. Krauser could summon a minyan even when other shuls couldn’t, which meant I could recite kaddish in the prescribed group setting. During one blizzard, Mr. Krauser made it to shul from his home in Beaver Hill, on time, by 7. He made his calls. In the end, we were still three or four men short. There was nothing he could do. For a rare morning, Bikur Cholim would have no minyan.
I didn’t say anything to Mr. Krauser. He took a look at my face and sat beside me. He put his arm around me. He told me how important it was to my father’s memory that I came to pray each morning. He told me I was fulfilling an essential mitzvah. He told me my father would have been proud of me for waking up each morning and showing up in shul. Having shepherded so many people through the mourning process, for so many years, he knew the moment when someone needed to hear that.
There was no occasion for Mr. Krauser to slam the table that morning. He made an impact nonetheless. I understood how when he did have his minyan assembled, Mr. Krauser was doing more than announcing a prayer with his palm. He was keeping alive a tradition and a community.