Hello, you have reached the voice mail of Shloimie Sprintzer. I am currently davening. Please choose from one of the following options.
To leave a message, press 1.
To leave a message for me to call you back during kriyas haTorah, press 2.
To text-message me, so I can respond during Shmoneh Esrei, press 3.
To page me, so that I can ignore your call and allow the phone to ring, increasing in volume, and thereby disturb everyone else’s Shmoneh Esrei, press 4.
To page me, so that I can answer during Shmoneh Esrei and make inarticulate grunting noises, press 5.
If you have video — to page me, so that I can communicate through sign language or written notes during Shmoneh Esrei, press 6.
If you are davening yourself and wish to respond to Kaddish or Kedusha, press 7.
To choose from ring options that can be played during Hallel, press 8.
If you would like to hear a pre-recorded p’sak permitting tefillah b’tzibbur via cell phone from Rabbi Yisroel Meir Shmeril Tupenovsky (RIMSHOT), press 9.
To make a Kiddush HaShem, hang up, turn off your phone, and wait until you finish davening to worry about your calls.
LOL… i press #5.
Actually, growing up, me and my brother developed an understanding of each other’s grunting during davening as a signal to tell each other and other people that they’re disturbing our kavana and would they please be quiet.
Unfortunately, most people don’t understand our grunting signals and keep on talking to their neighbors or saying all of davening out loud right in back of me. Ohwell. Maybe i should make up a sign.
One thing that often happens in engineering is that an inherent, unavoidable defect in a product is found to have actual value in some application, so it even becomes a selling point. So let’s look at cell phones in shul.
Cell phone noises during weekday davening can be frequent, uncoordinated, and intrusive. The ring tunes are often poorly chosen. The victims of cell phone noise in shul would like to see these devices silenced, confiscated, or launched into deep space. But wait…
All these devices are synchronized to the same time and nearly all can be equipped with any ring tone at all. So why not coordinate the timing and ring tones of all the cell phones in a given shul to produce a pleasing and ruach-dik symphonic sound at appropriate times in the davening? A central station could call each phone at the right moment to set it off. Some phones could impersonate the strings, some the woodwinds, etc. The shaliach tzibbur would also have to time himself properly, which would keep him from going too quickly or slowly.
You heard it here.