Sermons of Rebuke IV: Beshalach

by Rivka Schwartz

Announcements
The food drive for the homeless brought in some excellent steaks. Prime cuts. It is very kind and thoughtful of our community to think of the homeless, giving them due respect of having fridges and grills in their tents on the streets.
 
We will not be planting a tree in the middle of the sanctuary for Tu BShvat, as the board suggested. The rabbi says it feels like it's idol worship. He also said treating Mark kindly because he is a fool who has money is idol worship, even if he has an Olympic pool and pickleball court in the backyard. He’s also sure that the president of the shul is a heretic.
 
Shul Notice: Dried fruit will also make you fat.
 
We will host a Tu BShvat Seder for all the heretics.
 
Contemporary Halacha Classes: How to Not Help the Homeless Like our Sisterhood. How to Not Have a Shul Full of Idol worshipers or Congregants. How to Keep the Laws of Tu BShvat and Not Be A Religious Jew. How Our Congregants Find a Way to Put On Weight Even When There is No Holiday.

Rabbi Mendelchem's Drasha Excerpts
Shabbat Shalom My Pupils...
It’s Shabbat Shira, The Sabbath of Song, and we’re asking our congregants to not sing... Have you heard yourself sing? Bernie. You sound like a congregant...

(Shemot 14:15) At the sea, with the Egyptians right there and the Jews crying, H’ says to Moshe, “Why do you cry out to me, speak to the children of Israel and journey.”
Sometimes you have to do stuff. Stop talking. Stop praying and do stuff. Turn to Shimon and say, "Stop coughing already." Stop praying for Merv to stop telling you jokes. Tell him, "We've already heard the joke about the priest. We didn't like it. We're not going to like it now." Let the sisterhood know you don't want dried figs at Kiddish, just because Tu BShvat is coming up. Sometimes you have to do...
Your prayers aren’t answered because you sing bad. Your harmony is off.
Sometimes we have to depend on ourselves. Which is hard with our shul board...

First you have to do something and fire the board. Hishtadlus. Gd steps in when you don't have a shul board... Because they will ruin it. They ruin everything.

Rashi’s first teaching is that Moshe was praying at this moment. H’ is saying when Israel is in distress, it’s not the time for lengthy prayer.
Between us. It's easier to pray than to be out there fighting the war. It's also easier to pray than to be out there raising money and sending money and clothes to our brethren and sisteren in Israel... Shira. You do a great job praying. You've given nothing...
Prayer is important. But we must act... You say one Tehillim Shira. Then you're off to the salon. You have a lot more time. The point is what you do with the sisterhood isn't helpful. Raising money for Israel to host a falafel night for the sisterhood does not help Israel...

There are times for action. The food drive is not the kind of action we are talking about. We’re talking about helpful action...
I took the steak... Homeless people don’t have fridges. They’re homeless. What are they going to do with steak?... Invite them to your home and cook it for them. In the meantime, I took the steak...

Your actions are idol worship. A tree in the middle of the shul?! It’s like you want to turn our shul into Rockefeller Center. Last year you asked for an ice skating rink around the Bima...
Idol worship. Every one of you... Pickleball with a heretic is idol worship. Be it Mark or the shul president... Mark's dues make him a Tzadik. He pays dues. So, we like him. But you shouldn't look up to him... Dues are different. Dues are Teshuva. Repentance...

Actions affect us even if we don't know how. How the board can be so annoying. I don't know. It just is.
How does healthy food make you fat? I don’t know. I just know Shlomo and Hana put on thirty pounds last Tu BShvat. Dried fruit and nuts. The Tu BShvat Seder did it...
Dried fruit will make you fat. SO2 keeps it in you longer. The sulfur dioxide just keeps the fat there...
Other stuff also puts weight on you. Your Nishama Yeteira, the extra Shabbat soul, should not be there all week... Ms. Melsowitz. You have four Nishama Yeteiras. I suggest you get rid of three of them. You only need one extra soul.

It's action. We pray for positive action... Is Tu BShvat Seder positive? Good religious Jews don’t care about the environment. When you have fifteen kids, you use plastic...

I didn’t say to not pray. Sometimes action is needed. H’ will do His part. But you have to stop complaining. Shimon. You don't deserve an Aliyah this week...

Do something positive with your lives and Gd might help. Maybe pay your dues and the shul will have a better Kiddish and a fixed leak. You come and pray for it. How about you pay for it...

And you all complain about dried fruit hurting your stomachs. Always complaining, like the Jews being chased by the Egyptians...
(Shemot 14:12) “It’s better for us to serve Egypt than to die in the desert.” Well is it? Let's see. It's definitely not better to be the rabbi at Beis Knesses Anshei Emes uSefilah...
They were willing to go back to Egypt and be slaves. Is that really living?! Sometimes you have to take a stand and say, “No. There will not be a tree in this shul. And I can't stand the Chazin. The president. And now the sisterhood is having perishable food drives for homeless people...”

Are you really living if you’re not eating dried fruit?! If your fruit is fresh, is that living, or servitude?!
And why dried fruit in the food drive? Are you trying to kill homeless people's stomachs?!

This Shabbat Shira, before Tu BShvat, I just pray we can hear the beautiful sound of nature and not have to listen to congregants complaining.
May we not hear the sounds of our congregation, or witness any of their actions... I fear the actions of our board. You mess up stuff. 
Maybe our congregation should just pray. Pray with no song... Just say the "Az Yashir."

Rivka's Rundown
Thank Gd it was Shabbat. Otherwise, the women would've brought out their hand drums. 
“You sound like a congregant” is a hurtful statement. I've heard them sing.

The rabbi is sick of hearing the congregants complain. Yet, he says it's better than them singing. This is why he is also fine with them praying in spoken form.

It was the only good falafel night we've had. I commend the sisterhood on that. Israel got no money from it. But we did feel Israeli solidarity with good falafel. I like to think that our eating falafel touched the hearts of our brothers and sisters in Israel.

The rabbi took all perishable items. Including steak, salmon, and hamburgers somebody grilled and dropped off for the homeless. He took them home, put it in his freezer. As he said, "I haven't received a raise in five years. Two hundred dollars of ribeye is a start." 
It was the first time a food drive included cooked food in a home the homeless weren’t invited to. It was almost as helpful as our eating falafel was to Israel. It was the closest our shul ever came to a food kitchen. To quote the president of our sisterhood, “We don’t feed people in our food kitchen."

Anything that seems like something they would do in Manhattan for Xmas, the board feels is a good design for our shul. It’s that whole HGTV thing. It’s good the rabbi banned HGTV watching. I also couldn’t stand listening to them and their 200k home renovation concepts on their 125k homes. 
Since our congregants stopped watching HGTV, they've been focusing on their cars. One put turning gold rims on their Ford Fusion.

I believe the rabbi was teaching us that Mark's money is good if it is given for to the shul. Otherwise, forbidden.

The rabbi's main lesson of Tu BShvat this year is that natural foods that are full of SO2 and sugar can also make you fat.
The rabbi did make it clear that the Nishama Yetira can get heavy. That definitely helped bring down the amount of food consumption at Kiddish.

All the heretics will definitely show up for the Tu BSHvat Seder. To quote our rabbi, "Only heretics keep Jewish traditions that connect the earth to Gd. The rest of the good Jews eat deli."

"Come and pray for it. How about pay for it." That quote lost us half the membership.