So normally on a blog entitled "Trip to the Zoo", you would expect to find some pictures of the kids, maybe posing with some animals, you know, something like that. Actually, you can search for Elisheva in 'Where's Waldo' style in the above picture (She is wearing the pink outfit)Anyway, the above picture I snapped at the zoo was taken at 3:45 PM on the sixth day of Chanukah. It's a picture of a mincha minyan. I would say about thirty people (I couldn't fit everyone in the picture) at a random time, since sundown wasn't until 4:45 or so. The mincha was not announced on the loudspeaker or anything -- it just spontaneously generated.
And I'm sure this was not the only mincha minyan that day, in fact right after ours ended another one was trying to get started. There also could have been other locations in the zoo where mincha minyanim could have taken place. It's true that their were hundreds if not thousands of people at the zoo. It's not hard to find a minyan. But that is exactly the point.
Then there was IKEA. Fay and I took the kids to IKEA in Netanya over Pesach to buy some new furniture for our new apartment. IKEA built a special room just as a synagouge. It has all the furniture of a real shul (I'm sure IKEA didn't make any of this stuff) aron, parochet, bima, amud, sefarim in bookcases (maybe IKEA made the bookcases), pews with comfortable seats and with wooden boxes in front that fold out into shtenders. The 2:00 PM mincha I went to easily had 50 people including half a dozen employees wearing IKEA shirts.
The simple point is this is Eretz Yisrael and only in Eretz Yisrael. Yes, I have been to mincha at Eichlers in midtown Manhattan, but nothing compares to this -- not even close.
Okay, fine, I'll throw in one picture of the standing bears for you. Enjoy!
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