(Allison Joyce)
THE TALMUD TRAIN TROOP
Back in 1991, Rabbi Pesach Lerner, 56, was approached by Aryeh Markovich on the LIRR. He wanted to know if the Orthodox rabbi would be willing to teach the Talmud on the 7:51 a.m. train from Far Rockaway to Manhattan. (The Talmud is one of Judaism’s main texts, and it takes about 7½ years to complete one’s studies of it, Lerner says.) “I used to see a lot of people playing cards on the train,” says Markovich, 51, president of EyeMark Media. “And it really bothered me. I said, ‘Why don’t we do something for people to utilize their time productively and learn something, too?’ ”
Lerner agreed, and Markovich went up and down the train platform handing out flyers to publicize their class-on-wheels. The next morning, nearly 30 people showed up for their mobile tutorial in the train’s last car.
It’s been going strong ever since, even sparking an additional Talmud group on the 8:15 a.m. train. “It certainly makes [the commute] more enjoyable,” says Eliezer Cohen, 55, who takes the LIRR from Cedarhurst to Manhattan, where he works at Town House Management. He joined the Talmud train group more than 10 years ago. “The Talmud discusses all aspects of life. Therefore there are issues that come up, from the mundane to the very powerful. The political issues of the day, sexual [topics] . . . sometimes there are issues that are hard to discuss on the train,” he admits. “But it gives vibrancy to the commute.”
Students range from lawyers and bankers to people who work at the B&H electronics shop and for the MTA. And you don’t have to be Jewish! “There is a woman who gets on at Jamaica who is Pakistani and likes to listen to the group,” says Cohen.
When it reaches a milestone in its studies, the group celebrates by noshing on cookies, doughnuts and juice, and “sometimes someone will bring herring or a small bottle of vodka to add to the grape juice,” says Lerner, an executive vice president of the National Council of Young Israel. “We have a lot of guys who are into herring.”
So far, they’ve run through the Talmud twice, and to commemorate these two achievements, the train troop tracked down some of the group’s old conductors for two 200-strong parties — held in the LIRR car.
But Lerner says it isn’t always easy teaching the Talmud on the train. “It’s distracting, trust me. You have to keep your voice low. You have to keep monotone and you can’t get excited, and you don’t have a blackboard. It’s difficult to do. Some people are four rows behind me, and I can’t even see them. It’s very easy to take a nap,” he admits.
THE BRIDGE BRIGADE
Every day at about 4:30 p.m., an e-mail goes out to an eight-person list to see who’s in for that evening’s 6:15 bridge game on the Metro-North train leaving Grand Central.
Since only groups of four can deal in at a time, “one of the unspoken rules is that the person who gets there to save the seats is guaranteed to play . . . because sometimes we end up having five or six players, and we have to draw cards,” says Jeff Schon, president of Manhattan-based kids-media company Massizerse.
The bridge brigade is a cross-section of CFOs, bankers and creative professionals who live in Norwalk, Fairfield and Westport, Conn. The players first discovered the bridge group through friends or by chancing upon the card car during their regular commute.
You can find them in the second car from the back, preferably in the five-seat nook — the better for sprawling out — where they take down the advertising posters from the walls to use as makeshift tables. More than half the players carry a deck of cards with them at all times. They’ve only once been reprimanded by a fellow passenger for shuffling too loudly.
“Going home, it’s a long ride if you don’t have something to do,” says Donna Krystal, 55, a tax attorney for American Express. She first joined in on the fun during her one-hour commute home to Westport in 1996, when she played in the 5:23 game (which still exists). She later moved to the 6:15 game.
No one knows how the 6:15 game started, but a current player says he’s seen train games going on as far back as the ’70s. Even though most of the players have changed over time, the premise remains the same.
“Mainly we play for the honor of winning and the company,” says Schon, 58, who also lives in Westport. He’s been part of the 6:15 card squad for more than 10 years. But despite the accidental meeting in the supermarket and one or two players who have forged outside bonds, in general, “we’re not social friends,” explains Krystal.
That’s not to say alliances aren’t strong.
When one of Schon’s fellow players found out that he used to work at Scholastic, and asked if Schon would read his wife’s book, he said yes. “All of a sudden, I’m sending her book to someone I know at Random House,” Schon laughs. “So there’s a camaraderie that exists.”
And what’s more telling about a friendship than fortitude in the face of disaster? “Once, years ago, the train got stuck at the bridge right before Norwalk. And someone I know on the train got her husband to pick her up, and she offered me a ride,” says Krystal. “I didn’t take it because I was in the middle of a game. I thought it’d be rude to leave them stranded.”
THE BIKE BUDDIES
‘It’s amazing the difference it makes riding in to work in the morning,” says Corey Pagnotta, 27, who has been biking to and from work at Ogilvy & Mather, an international p.r. agency based on 11th Avenue between 46th and 47th streets, for the past eight months.
But Pagnotta didn’t meet her collective pedaling posse until September.
“One day [in July], when I was leaving work, I went down to pick up my bike and I saw the guy who had the Cervelo, and I was like, ‘Oh, you’re the one with the fancy bike,’ ” Pagnotta says of fellow Ogilvy worker Michael Hartman, 36. The two rode home together to Astoria that evening.
Pagnotta and Hartman met their two other cycle pals, Kumiko Ando, 28, of Manhattan, and Nim Parangan, 30, at an Ogilvy charity ride, and decided to commute home in the future. Most evenings after work, the quartet cycles up the Westside Highway, looping into Central Park for a 40-minute pedal before breaking off to their respective destinations.
“You forget how long you’ve been riding or you forget the cold or whatever other elements are out there. You have someone else to talk to when you’re riding or someone else to encourage you,” says Parangan, who lives in Brooklyn. Hartman adds that cycling with a group “makes you push yourself a lot harder.”
The co-workers have certainly bonded through biking. “We don’t directly work with each other, but we have this in common. We’re linked by our bike rides,” Hartman says.
Plus, as Parangan puts it, “It beats smelly people on the train.”
THE CHRISTMAS CARD CONDUCTOR
Patty Greene Maher, 56, first met David six years ago on the Metro-North train during her daily one-hour commute to Manhattan from Norwalk, Conn., where she lives.
“It was just a night of bad commuting. A hot train, a bad situation, people holding seats with bags,” Maher recounts. “David sat next to me. I looked at him. He looked at me. And I said, ‘I hate everyone on here.’ And he said, ‘So do I. We’ll be fine.’ ” They’ve been exchanging Christmas cards ever since, but outside of the train, they never talk.
“It’s very strange, the train community,” Maher admits.
David, a Westport, Conn., resident who didn’t want his last name published, is one of three train people Maher has befriended, Hallmark-style. “There’s another woman I started exchanging cards with three years ago,” says Maher, who works for AOL. “She was just in the hospital. I sent her flowers.”
She met her third friend, John, three years ago, when they were stranded on the train between Stamford and Rowayton. She learned his wife was having a child and wanted to send a congratulatory note. “The next Christmas, I had a picture of the baby,” Maher says. She sent a Christmas card in return, and a tradition was sealed.
Of her commuter pals, Maher says: “We just chat about how you feel, what’s going on, how’s work. When the economy was so bad, everybody was like, ‘Glad to see you’re still commuting!’ ”
dschuster@nypost.com