Standing Guard

By Mordechai Schmutter

I’m considering being a security guard for my shul (synagogue).

“What shul do you pray in?” you’re asking. “I want to switch out of it.”

My community has gotten really into security recently. My kids’ school, for example, now has security guards, and I know this because they’re standing outside the building every morning when I drop off my kids. Also, the school sent a letter home to ask us to pay for it. Mail from your kids’ school is never good (expect from Lampligher, of course). Unless it’s report cards, but those are still not good. Or unless they’re school calendars, but those are also not good. What on earth is a “teacher in-service day”? My teachers never had in-services when I was growing up, that I know of, and I turned out fine.

Except that I have no concept of security, and my entire idea of a secure home is that I recently replaced my front door with one that has a peephole. The door we had before had a semicircle window on top, and the way I figured out who was knocking was I stood on my tiptoes and peeked out the window, and then people saw my yarmulke and knew that I was home. And if it was a tall guy, we had an awkward moment.

I see the guards every morning during carpool. Carpool takes forever, even once I pull up to the school, because I always end up behind some guy who’s apparently dropping off his kid for the first time ever, and his kid has no idea what school even is.

“What is school? Wait, you mean you’re not coming in with me?”

So I’m always there for a while. And every day, I see at least one guy with a yellow vest that says “security.” But from what I can tell, watching the watchmen, it’s a great job to have if what you want in a career is to tell kids your life story over and over. Every time I see one of the guards, all the students are gathered around him and schmoozing. It’s not his job to tell them to go back to class. And it actually works for him, because all the kids he’s supposed to be protecting are in one place. Near him.

The security guards, as far as I can tell, stand outside the school all day. I don’t know why they have to pay someone to do that when some of the students would do that for free. Just teach them how to be security guards. Though to be fair, those kids don’t come to school so they could learn stuff, so the training might not be so good.

So the security guards stand outside the school and they do… nothing really. It’s probably very boring. Thank G-d, it’s very safe, as far as I know. And if all goes well, security is a boring job, because you basically stand there all day hoping you don’t have to do what you were hired to do. But you also have no one to talk to when the students are in class… which presumably is some of the time. Sure, there’s another guard, but you’re not supposed to be standing next to him or her, because if you’re standing next to each other, why are there two of you? Unless you’re looking over each other’s shoulders. Or standing back to back.

But in the meantime, my shul is looking for volunteers to stand outside during services on Shabbos mornings. I’m not sure why the shul needs security on Shabbos specifically. I guess terrorists have a day job during the week. So as I ponder about being a security guard, the question is if I have what it takes. I probably don’t. On the one hand, I’m very good at standing in one place and not doing anything. My wife compliments me about this all the time. The bad news is that I amuse myself by spacing out and making up stories in my head, and I sometimes miss what’s going on around me.

So basically, I would stand outside the shul and pray that nothing bad should happen, which incidentally is what I’d be doing if I were in shul, but with a minyan. Though I’d probably have more concentration standing outside and knowing that if something went down, I’d be the first target.

I told a couple of people that I was thinking of becoming a security guard, and they said, “You?” That’s kind of insulting. But I do have some ideas. If I was in charge of shul security, I would start by installing a peephole.