This article first appeared on genaleph.org ♫ Oh, who are the people in your neighborhood? In your neighborhood? In your neighborhood? Say, who are the people in your neighborhood? Well, they’re the people that you meet When you’re walking down the street They’re the people that you meet each day ♫ Chuck Meisels. Harvey Oppenheimer. Morty Strauss. Yonah Yavneh. Sam Cenor. Leslie Ungar. These are the adults that sat near us as I was growing up in the various shuls that we davened in. The people that my father spoke with in a post davening kiddush. They were the people in my neighborhood. At the time their existence was normal to me. They were a part of our community. Looking back I now understand that they were a significant part of the adult attachment that raised me. It was not so much the words that they said to me. I can maybe remember a handful of conversations. But children are raised in a community and they made up an important part of the community that I was raised in. Let me say at the outset that I am not here to say that we should discontinue the practice of youth minyanim. They provide an invaluable service to our teenagers who may need a different type of minyan. Teen minyanim have a pace, a style, and a level of involvement that is perfectly geared towards giving our youth a meaningful davening experience. And yet, there is a negative impact as well. Teens who daven at a later minyan don’t walk to shul with their fathers. I don’t know if I can define the value o
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