I don’t know how this has not happened to me, but until Monday, I had never been to an ultra-Sephardi minyan. There is an Iranian guy who lives in the building next to me who unfortunately just lost his mother (in Iran, so he couldn’t even go to the levaya) and was therefore sitting shiva. My upstairs neighbor is in school with one of the Iranian’s neighbors and asked for guys to come for minyan. So on Monday morning, I showed up (was one of 11 guys), and got to experience my first Sephardi minyan.
While I have seen their sifrei torah before, it was always from afar. Now that I was able to see it up close, I can see just how beautiful and ornate a sefer torah can be. There were lots of things I wasn’t used to, like Birchas Kohanim during chazaras hashas, but it wasn’t too hard to follow along. Sephardim also seem to say a lot of extra stuff at the end of davening, so I managed to finish a good 5 minutes before someone else before I realized that they were saying other things.
Anyway, it was an interesting experience, although going to daven at a shiva minyan isn’t the most optimal reason to experience this.
