Sermons of Rebuke III: Shemot

by Rivka Schwartz

Announcements
We are sorry for the handouts reading ‘5783’ until now. We’re glad our board finally caught onto the year 5784 with the New Year of 2024. A bunch of Apikorsim. Now that it’s New Years, maybe they’ll do Teshuva.

Shimon has taken off eight pounds over the past three months, thanks to Shacharit. He wants everybody to know how much he appreciates the aisle. To quote: ‘The space makes it more comfortable to get in my steps. While I’m pacing, I don’t bump into anybody bowing.’

The coffee and cookies are there for after services during the week. Not for a meal at your seat in shul. The rabbi has reported too many people bringing coffee and cake into services. The spills have cost the shul much in carpet repairs.

The rabbi wants to apologize for bringing up the Kashrut conversation. The pizza shop won’t have a Hashgacha. So there won’t be arguments.

The Botox is too much. Our congregants look scary. Children are crying.

Rabbi Mendelchem's Drasha Excerpts
Shabbat Shalom My People...
Moshe, the great prophet who H’ chose to be the catalyst for our redemption from slavery. Nothing to do with Moshe Yisraelav who’s just an annoying community member who likes to complain. No redemption. Just complaints...

The redemption starts with compassion. (Shemot 2:6) Paroh’s daughter went down to the river, and when she opened up the basket and saw the baby crying, ‘She took pity on him.’ She had compassion. Not like the sisterhood who sees kids taking extra cookies... You take it off their plates and they start crying. You cause the crying.

This leads to a life of Moshe growing up as her son... The movie shows he’s her son... Pasuk 10 says he’s her son....

It wasn’t just Paroh’s daughter’s compassion. It was Miriam, Moshe’s sister, who didn’t take her eyes off him (2:4) to see what would happen to him...
She didn't just watch like it was a movie. She didn't just stand there and say, 'That's it,' like when your kid is running in the halls with the pastry platter...
You see nothing. You can’t even keep your kids away from the Kiddish. We get no cookies. They take them all... Then watch your children.
You don’t watch your kids in the halls. Running around all of Davening. Yelling... We all hear it... Then watch your children.
Will somebody get this kid off the Bima?!!! Where are the parents. Does she have a parent?! Does this child have a parent?!...

Family has to take responsibility. Miriam took responsibility. Miriam would've never let Moshe take all of the Kichel.
The sisterhood should start their smack patrol... Because you don't parent.

And she saw to it that he was fed by a Jewish woman. Redemption is birthed in compassion. There was no board at the river. No Michael as president...

Why are you pacing? It’s a sermon... Shimon. The point in Shacharit isn’t to get in your steps. It’s an aisle. It’s not a track.
Does Shimon have a parent?!

Mrs. Feigelbaum. Why do you have cake with you... It's shul. It's Davening... I understand you're worried about the kids getting all of the bundt cake. But you have put on five dress sizes since you started coming to shul... It's the eating during services...
Shimon is annoying too. But he's taking off weight with his Shacharit walking group... You’re not going to take off weight eating cookies and cake during services... The chair is not a coffee table. And you spill... Because it’s not a table. Your stuff falls off...

We’re talking about catalysts. Catalysts for redemption. Not Botox...
No. The Botox does not make you look better. It is horrendous. Nobody. No face has ever been redeemed from Botox.

Let me repeat. Compassion takes involvement. His sister ensured Moshe drank the milk of a Jewish woman... This isn't a Kosher conversation. Your involvement in Kosher is annoying.
No more Kosher conversations. You guys go off on it, as if you’re running the OU.
You argue about Kosher. Do you keep it?!

Compassion and responsibility. Keeping Kosher and not arguing about it. Fear of Gd and not Botox.
(Shemot 1:21) And because they feared Gd, He made them houses. H' didn't commend them for wasting money on Botox with houses... Compassion on the children who are crying more from Botox than missing out Danish. Compassion brought about by fear of Gd is what houses are made from...

There is no compassion here. There's no fear of Gd. Just Botox... The midwives, Yocheved and Miriam, had compassion. They didn’t kill the Jewish baby boys... You're stopping them from taking platters of Danish and rugulach seems to be killing them, Mrs. Feigelbaum.
As we have seen, saving Jewish babies takes compassion in Middle Eastern culture. Because of that compassion (1:20) ‘the people increased and became very strong.’
May we be Zoyche to merit compassion in our world. It won't come from the board... They don't even know what year it is... No. It's not 2024. Fools. It's 5784.

Rivka's Rundown
The sisterhood takes the food off the kids' plates. They're right. The kids take too much. Sometimes it's just two kids who take the rugulach platters. They even take before Kiddish. And Mrs. Feigelbaum, with nothing to eat, is stuck trying to figure out what to do during the cantor's repetition of the Amidah.
I've given up on eating any of the Kiddish cakes. By the time I get there, it's empty. And I am not about to go to the kids' table to get my pastries. The kids are just disgusting. They're filthy. I don't even think the parents shower these kids. And then they probably rub their hands in the Danish. We should designate the kids table as the pastry table. All of the cakes, cookies and rugulach end up there.

The parents do nothing. MidSermon the kid was on the rabbi’s leg. One kid tackled Mrs. Feigelbaum for a chocolate chip cookie during Torah reading.
The sisterhood wants to start a smack patrol to parent the children. I’m all for it. Somebody has to parent the children for the parents, so I can start eating chocolate Danish again.

Shimon can’t stand still for a second. He was walking around the whole rabbi’s sermon. The rabbi had to make it clear that there was no need for anybody to be walking around, as it was not an appeal.
The only appeal was for Shimon to sit.
Shimon has signed up people for his morning walking group in shul. I show up and it feels like Simchat Torah. They just pace around the shul. One of the members insisted they carry the Torah, daily. He said, 'It is better than ankle weights. You get a great core workout as well.'

It's not right to blame Mrs. Feigelbaum for everything. The men's section is full of spills all over the carpet. These guys come to Davening to eat. It’s like their Dunkin Donuts break from work. The chairs at Dunkin Donuts are not comfortable enough for them.

They congregants think they look better with the injections. They look scarier with the Botox. Rafi, with his new lips is too much. My niece ran, screaming, ‘I’m being attacked by a rubber lips.'

You bring up Kosher and everybody has their stories. It is so annoying to sit there for hours listening to all the complaints. The only real story is the one about the guy getting killed for saying something wasn't Kosher. Our congregants have taken that lesson to heart. You say something isn't Kosher and you're risking death. Which is why most of them eat regularly at Wendy's.

People killing babies on purpose and chopping off heads is acceptable nowadays if it's against Israel. I think that was the rabbi's point at the end. That was the first time the rabbi didn't blame our shul for something.

The rabbi saying that compassion takes involvement was the worst idea ever. Now, the shul has twelve new committees. A lot of involvement by annoying people who want more pastry at Kiddish.
The rabbi was hoping they would start a committee to give him a raise. It turns out that none of the members of the shul are that compassionate.