Hymie Cohen

The Minyan Hymie Cohen

The Minyan The blackest humour and darkest deeds in the formation of the ten. Religion was never meant to be easy, being Jewish especially so. Few realise, even Jews themselves, how impossibly difficult it is to be a devout follower of such an arduous faith in a modern day and age; for it takes a commitment and dedication that is almost impossible to conceive or believe for the mere mortal or the uninitiated. Benny Marks however, fast approaching his seventieth year, is such a holy man blessed with an almost unique spirituality who seems to accomplish such a dutiful task almost in his stride and has done all his life, but his dissipating community and synagogue is failing, fading fast or dying and his small, insular world is beginning to crumble or fall apart. Even forging the Minyan in the early morning has become a huge problem as no longer are there enough local, committed men of Judaic calling to form the obligatory ten needed for services and memorial prayers, especially and most personally now for Benny, with regard to saying Kaddish his recently departed wife. Occasionally a person is born with madness, sometimes it creeps upon you and consumes even the most enlightened soul and, as Benny marks discovers to his cost, now and then being Jewish can prove to be just... Murder!