Sermons of Rebuke: Lech Lecha

by Rivka Schwartz

Announcements
No taking breaks to get water when you have a Yahrzeit. This is not a production. It’s a Yahrzeit, and you are repeating the Amida. That’s it. 
Yahrzeit Rule: Lead Davening and get it over with. People have jobs to get to.
 
We found the cat. You can now Daven.
 
The shul is getting new Yads. It appears as though the Torah pointer fingers on the Yads have been getting caught in too many Tallises.
 
Tehillim will be every day. Until this war is over, we will say Tehillim every day. Please stop calling the office. We are sorry if you have to miss a minute and forty-five seconds of work, because our soldiers are in Gaza trying to rid the world of evil and saving our hostages.
 
Class on volunteering will take place this Tuesday, as nobody volunteers. If anybody would like to volunteer to put out phone calls for people to show up to the class, please let the office know.
The class next Tuesday on volunteering has been cancelled, due to lack of volunteers.

Rabbi Mendelchem's Drasha Excerpts
Shabbat Shalom My Pupils...
Avraham tells Sarah to tell the Egyptians she's his sister, so they don’t kill him... Yes. It makes sense. You do things to save someone’s life. You didn’t even call 911... It was a hit and run. And you just kept on walking... You do stuff to help. Like maybe lifting a hand a Kiddish. You help clean... You eat, but you do nothing else. You even leave your plate on the table...

(Bereishit 12:14-16) They see she is beautiful and they ‘praise her to Paroh... And he treated Avraham well because of her, and he got sheep, cattle, donkeys...’ He even got servants. What have you done for your husband, Vicky?! You gave him an ulcer... Forget about the fact that Paroh took her to his house. That's besides the point. At least Avraham got something out of it...
Avraham is kicked out of Egypt for lying to Paroh. Not all plans are necessarily good ones. But they lived. That's the point... I find it hard to live through Davening here. So painful. If my wife would tell people I wasn’t a rabbi, I wouldn’t have to come to shul and listen to Shmuli's drawn out prayers. Or groaning... Well you're not singing.
You make everything painful. Everything takes longer with you.
You went to get a sucking candy. Why did you have to get a sucking candy... You’re not an opera singer. You lead one prayer for twenty minutes... Your mother would’ve never been that pretentious. How many candies do you need to repeat the Amida?! Now the Amida is a production. That's a riddle. Here. A ruddle for the congregation. How many sucking candies does it take for Shmuli to repeat the silent prayer?!... You should've brought an orchestra for your Modim.
And water? You had to get a drink of water?! Your throat was parched... It was parched because you never show up for Davening. If you were used to Davening, you would’ve been able to go without candy and water for an hour and a half... I am used to it, because I have been here when Shimon leads Davening... It's almost as painful as listening to Shmuli.

You are all just a burden.
This is about praise for Sarah. She was willing to do what was needed to protect them. Not one person volunteered for the class on how to volunteer. Not one person protected the shul and told Shmuli how much they hated his Davening...
The one thing the community gets behind, a stray cat that eats Kiddish leftovers...

What about a new Yad. You know how many Tallises I have destroyed due to Torah Yads...
Yes. We are still saying Tehillim... Not for my Tallises.
We are going to say Tehillim for our brethren and sistren in Israel... Every day. Yes. Every day. It's about thinking about other people. Just as Sarah did for Avraham...

So selfish. Can’t miss a minute of work for Tehillim.
And you can lie to H' and pretend you're a good Jew for this...

Rivka's Rundown
All of Kiddish, people were asking what's wrong with the cisterns in Israel.

Yahrzeits shouldn’t be painful for the rest of the shul. It seems like the only one who is enjoying these Yahrzeits is the person whose parent died.
So pretentious. They need to get water. Have a cup of coffee up there like it's a production. They're repeating Shacharit. That's it.
These Yahrzeit guys think it's their day to perform. As if their parents passed away so their son can have a yearly Hebrew reading recital.
They don't get it. People want to get out of shul. They come to get out. It's not a show. If it was a show, people would be willing to pay. Our members don't even pay dues. 
And their voices are awful. It’s like seeing a guy up there with a microphone, holding it all professionally, to only find out that Bernie is the singer.

And the selfishness shows itself when it comes to Israel. We have congregants doing the loud breath because they have to say Tehillim. One did a loud breath and a head shake.
Our congregants feel that there is a cap on how much Tehillim one should say. And they don't even visit the sick. So it has nothing to do with thinking about people in our community who are sick. If you get sick in our community, the only prayer you'll get from the other members is that you shouldn't come back.
The rabbi made it clear that the women in the congregation are not helpful.
I think he was just trying to get the women to blame Shmuli for the slow Davening, and to kick Shmuli off the Bima. He is trying to garner support.

The rabbi should’ve known nobody would volunteer for the class on volunteering. The class got cancelled before they advertised it. I believe they put out the announcement to let the membership know how useless they are.

The congregation was looking for that cat for a good two weeks. That's all they did. We had no weekday Minyin because of that cat.
Once we found the cat people were cheering that now evil has been eliminated from this world. Then we saw the cat, attack a mouse.

The rabbi always gets the Yad stuck in his Tallis. They’re getting a Yad that has no finger. It’s a new fist Yad the rabbi has insisted on creating. It's like a Jewish power Yad. We have the setting for it. The JDL wants to fund it.

At Kiddish, the rabbi used the message of Lech Lecha, where H' tells Avraham to go for himself, to get Bernie to renounce his shul membership and join another congregation.