79. Praying Alone

12:13 A person who feels weak and has difficulty waiting until after davening in shul to eat may pray earlier at home. He is only allowed to pray earlier at home for this reason; if he’s in shul with a minyan, he is not allowed to go ahead of them on his own. One is also not allowed to leave the minyan to go pray on his own. If the minyan is delayed and will miss the deadline for saying Shemoneh Esrei, then he may pray ahead on his own. He may also pray ahead of the minyan in shul if he is ill or because of some other emergency, though it would be better to go home to pray alone.

12:14 Some say that if a second minyan uses the shul after the first minyan finishes, the shaliach tzibbur (prayer leader) of the second minyan should not stand where the shaliach tzibbur of the first minyan stood unless the first minyan has already left. (Mishnah Brurah 69:16 says this matter is not problematic when it comes to multiple regularly-scheduled minyanim.) Similarly, the second minyan should not take out a Torah scroll to read in the same shul if the first minyan already did so (so that people shouldn’t think that something was wrong with the first reading – MB 69:18). Others are not strict on these matters and everyone should follow his own community’s practice.