Of Minions And Minyans

So, there we were, walking along the East Cliff in Bournemouth, after our trip to the Museum, and I said “There’s a minion, bobbing about in the sea!” We stopped and looked more closely.

It wasn’t a minion – it was one of the yellow buoys that mark off the swimming area, and warn jet skis and boats that the maximum speed is 8 knots. But you can understand my initial mistake. We had a conversation about the difference between a minion and a minyan.

Minion; Evolving from single-celled yellow organisms at the dawn of time, a minion lives to serve, but finds himself working for a continual series of unsuccessful masters, from T. Rex to Napoleon. Without a master to grovel for, a minion will fall into a deep depression.

These little yellow people are not to be confused with Minyan; a properly constituted group for a public Jewish prayer service, made up of at least ten Jewish males over the age of thirteen.

I have known about both minions and minyans for quite some time. But what I hadn’t really thought about until quite recently was what the minyan rule means for the Jews – basically it says

unless there are TEN adult males present, you CANNOT have a public prayer service

and so smaller groups, and groups of women don’t count. Which makes it even more wonderful to reflect on the words of Jesus in Matthew 18, where he says to his disciples

For where TWO or THREE gather in my name, I AM there with them.

Isn’t that an encouragement to us to pray, even if we are only few in number?