Sermons of Rebuke V: Tetzaveh and Purim

by Rivka Schwartz

Announcements
There will be Mishloach Manot restrictions. Do not give anybody Mrs. Felsenblum Hamentashen. Other people also don’t like them. We do not care if they ended up by you. Be fair to other people and don't throw that nutmeg poppy Hamentashen onto anybody else. And no wicker baskets. We have had many members who have no idea how to throw wicker out. Thus, leading to the shul’s wicker piles. Let us not call them "gift baskets." Let's call them "gift ziploc bags." This will save a lot of trash.
 
Megillah reading will start on time. Which means, come to shul and don’t talk. Shlomo will have a hissy. He comes to shul to Daven. It’s annoying. We’ve tried dealing with the issue of members who don’t talk in shul.
Also, we ask that people do not get excited when they hear the name “Haman.” Over the years we’ve realized that it sounds like you’re cheering the guy on.
 
We will be giving children a lot of candy. Our shul understands the importance of Jewish education, Jewish holidays and diabetes.
 
Contemporary Halacha Classes: Mordechai and How He Didn't Have Hershey Kisses in Mind When He Was Thinking Gift Baskets on Purim. What to do with Wicker- A Jewish Response to a Pile of Baskets. How to Ruin Shul by Davening & Not Talking Like the Back Left of the Congregation and Mark. Haman Banging Techniques that Don't Sound Like You Love the Guy. How You Can Tell a Thin Jew is a Bad Jew.

Rabbi Mendelchem's Drasha Excerpts
Shabbat Shalom My Pupils...
Purim is Monday evening. And we shall celebrate... We celebrate. Purim is a holiday. That's what we do on holidays. We celebrate... We get drunk properly.
There’s a ritual.

When the Kohens were inaugurated, there was a ritual. You take unleavened bread... Not Hamentashen. They didn’t have Oznei Haman in the Tabernacle. And nobody likes Mrs. Felsenblum's poppyseed Hamentashen... We don’t call them Haman’s ears in English, because people would be more disgusted by that than Mrs. Felsenblum’s Tashen… No leavening. Anything you leaven, you mess up. Our congregation is very bad with leavening. None of you have any idea what to do with sourdough. And then with Pesach coming and the way you clean. Unleavened loaves...
Rituals. You dress the Kohanim. As part of the service, you show up with clothes. The first time Tim showed up in his bathing suit. He thought he was going to Davening at a pool... It’s a shul. Not a pool...

(Shemot 29:5) “And you shall take the clothes and dress Aharon...” You’re making the Ephod and the tunic... You use it to dress people... You have a suit. You wear it.
Even the Kohen Gadol has to get dressed. You serve H’. You get dressed... I am not supporting that huge black thing on our Chazin’s head. I have no idea where that was in the Beit Hamikdash. There is nothing that says you have to take a huge piece of satin and throw it on your head, in the Torah. Purim did not exist yet...
If it didn't say to dress Aharon, the Kohens of this shul would Duchening in tank tops. You would be doing the priestly blessings in undershirts...
You dress properly. You consecrate... That's how you consecrate. You dress properly.
Purim is coming. We have to consecrate the shul... Dress nicely. Dressing like a Han Dynasty Asian in not proper Jewish dress. Unless if you were living in China twenty-two-hundred years ago. If you were a Jew living in China in the times of the Second Beit HaMikdash, fine. But you're living in Topeka... Let's consecrate with a suit. How about this Purim you dress like a Mensch. That's a costume... A costume is something you wear that is different than what you usually wear. Hence, the suit is a costume for our male congregants...
When anointing Aharon there was correct dress. Not like Raizel, who's wearing an evening gown like she's getting married at Kiddish...

If there is anything we learn. Ceremony is important. And our shul needs to get things right. At the Berkman wedding, the flower girl. She was throwing roses everywhere. Petals all over. The bride walked on carpet. Straight carpet. No flowers. My wife got hit in the face with a rose...
Like the inauguration of the Kohanim, did we cook right? Did we dress right? Did we make the right food? Did we make the right clothes?...

Mrs. Felsenblum definitely messed up the Hamentashen... You can leaven Hamentashen. That's one thing you can leaven.
The Mrs. Felsenblum Hamentashen. Is she using chickpea flaxseed husk???
Healthy Hamentashen. Again. An issue. You're consecrating the Hamentashen wrong. Dough. Use dough...
You make Mishloach Manot, you do it it right. You don't give Halloween candy... I don't care if people are dressing up like Asians. Which I find offensive. It's sacrilege. Orange candies are not allowed... 
It's not an event. It's a ritual, and there is a process to rituals. One that takes very long with our Chazin reading the Megillah. He likes to make things painful. And we are supposed to celebrate... Because we didn't die. That's reason for celebrating Bernie is that we didn't die. You're almost ninety. You should at least be able to connect with this.
Mishloach Manot is about spreading Simcha. Not Mrs. Felsenblum's Hamentashen... 
It's not about celebrating wicker. Every hoarder in our shul has wicker. Not one person knows how to throw out wicker...

Shlomo is right. We should be Davening in shul, on time. He's annoying, but right. 
You prepare the clothes, you shower, you prepare the sacrifice. And you sacrifice the sacrifice on time. You don't give the day's sacrifice tomorrow... Because it's today's sacrifice.
On time means on time... You read Megillah on time, and you finish on time when you don't have our Chazin. The guy is so painful... Even hearing people cheer at Haman is not as painful as you annunciating every word. People would've left the Kohens' inauguration service if you were leading it... It would've taken two weeks if you were leading it. They would've left before the Kohen got dressed...

It's our new thing. Our shul is now going to be on time... After Shacharit. Nobody showed up on time today. But. We’re now starting everything on time... That means when it’s announced for, Bernie.
Sometimes we have to change traditions. We're going to start Davening on time. No more talking in the middle of Layning. It's Torah reading. Not Torah talking. We're going to give people Mishloach Manot that are enjoyable. Haman screams are going to be against Haman...
Seriously, you have to make sure that you don’t sound like you’re not rooting for Haman. "Woooh" is not a show of anger. It's a show of somebody getting drunk.
Let's consecrate Megillah reading and not cheer for Haman...

If your children are not eating the candy and Hamentashen, they're probably not learning Torah.
For children to be religious they need to have the right food. And that is food made by Paskesz... Hamentashen are fine for the Jewish child as well. Just not Mrs. Felsenblum's. We want the children to love their tradition.
Point is you have to prepare right. You need to first purchase the Paskesz. You need to practice the Megillah reading, so you can read it faster, without somebody dictating everything. Because you're getting paid to read it, when most people do it for free. You buy a suit, so you look like a Mensch... Tzachi has an excuse. He's from Israel. They wear jeans to weddings...
You prepare, you consecrate, then you serve H' with a Chazin who doesn't kill your holiday. Taking forever.

After Aharon is properly dressed, once we've prepared right, we bring the Karban Chatat, the sin offering (Shemot 29:14). First come right, dress not like Bluma, who's wearing a jean skirt, thinking it's 1986. Prepare yourself. Then you can start the service. You can start bringing sacrifices... It's a sacrifice to deal with our Chazin.
The first sacrifice is the sin offering. For all the messed-up rituals you guys do. You need atonement before celebration. Only after atonement are the other offerings appreciated... Because you guys get everything wrong. You don't prepare to celebrate by binge drinking. They didn't tailgate the Tabernacle.
Before Purim, I ask you all ask me for Mechilah. For forgiveness. With all your mess-ups... Yom Kippur. Yom KiPurim. A day like Purim. Apologize for messing up my holidays...
After all of this, we can celebrate. 

Some costumes you shouldn't wear in celebration. They're a sin. The strawberry shortcake outfit. Fred Flintstone. Extremely out of shape Shrek and Fiona...
There is no Mitzvah to dress like an idiot.

Let us consecrate Purim and our Hamentashen, and purchase the Stern's Hamentashen. Those are good. Those aren't made by Mrs. Felsenblum.
If we just had Torah rules for how Mishloach Manot should be made. Maybe I would get a young he bull. I would enjoy that...
Maybe you can use wicker to make the fire for a sin offering. I don't know. But that chair is broken. Throw it out...
Now that we have prepared and the Chazin knows to go faster, let us celebrate. Oh no. They're coming in from Kiddish Club now. Already drunk. Purim is just another day for these...

Rivka's Rundown
The rabbi just turned Purim into Yom Kippur with a pun.
I think the rabbi doesn't fully understand the word "consecrate." Either that, or he believes in his congregants.
Main points that I caught in the sermon. The rabbi is proposing we get rid of the Chazin and Mrs. Felsenblum's Hamentashen. They are a sin offering.

Was the rabbi suggesting we wear tunics to shul. It is clear he doesn't like the Chazin hat.
Maybe it's a Purim costume thing. It seems the rabbi is against Purim costumes. I know he’s against the Chazin hat. We definitely have to get dressed. He made that clear. Get dressed and make better Hamentashen than Mrs. Felsenblum.
I am just thinking that if it's not a suit, the rabbi would probably suggest to dress in samurai for Maariv. 

Bernie connects to nothing about Yiddishkeit. He comes to shul to not connect. He Davens to say, "I didn't feel anything." He listens to the rabbi's sermon to say, "I don't like the rabbi." He goes to Kiddish to say, "It wasn't that good." I think he's the most spiritual person in our shul.

I can’t believe the rabbi put down the sourdough. Our membership and their commitment to sourdough. They take care of it more than their children. They’re very protective of their sourdough. Avia even has a sourdough carrier sling. She wraps her sourdough in front, so she can see it.

Announcements were just Purim announcements. All other announcements were forgotten. Nobody showed up to Minyin. Sima’s Shiva house had nobody coming. Nobody even knew her mother passed. They forgot to announce that. And the Purim bake sale had no sales. Nobody knew it was happening. Shul security was happy about that. As it's always safer to have an event that people don't know about.

I have no idea what leavening Hamentashen means. I like Matzah myself. I will stick to Matzah. I can rub jelly on a triangle of Matzah too. Matzahtashen. I started making it last Pesach. Mrs. Grubmen came up with the Matzahtashen. She spends Pesach making everything out of Matzah. Turns everything into Matzah. Pizza. Pizza already sounds a bit like Matzah. I think she calls it Matzah Pizza. Then there is Matzdish. A Matzah Danish. Similar to Matzahtashen, just that it's not a triangle. Lasagntza. It's hard to say, but it tastes great. And then there's Matzah Blintzes. I believe you can take any dish, preface it with Matzah, and you have a Pesach recipe. 

I feel like people are unloading stuff on me with their Mishloach Manot.
Those flaxseed Hamentashen are messed up.

The rabbi should've never taken Shlomo's side. If people have to show up on time to services, they're not coming. More people would come to shul if the rabbi told them to come after services.
All people could talk about during Megillah reading was the rabbi and Shlomo ruining shul for them, telling them not to talk.
​
They started Megillah reading late. Again. Which the rabbi considered on time, because it was only twenty minutes late.
It’s long-standing shul tradition to be there when it doesn’t say to be there. I’ve been to events a day late, and other people showed up too.

They really do sound like they love Haman. I’ve even heard “Wooh!!!” Like they’re cheering for a team. Hate and fandom sound very similar. Our ice hockey team lost because they were rooting against the other team.

The fact we have to announce that kids will be doing unhealthy stuff on a holiday is messed up. The fact that they think there should be a candy limit. The fact that they think it's wrong for children to smoke on Purim. It shows how disconnected our congregation is from the Torah and Yiddishkeit. We're a shul full of a bunch of heretics.

We had a prePurim wicker sale. The shul felt bad throwing out the wicker. People have a very hard time figuring out what to do with wicker baskets. 
The rabbi's Psak to throw out wicker was revolutionary. Not one of our congregants has ever had any idea what to do with it. You can't throw it out. You can't recycle it. You can't burn it. You can't reuse it. You can't buy used wicker. They don't even know how to resell it.
So. For Purim, everybody bought new wicker. Instead of not using wicker, they bought more baskets. Point is, we have a storage room in the shul that is full of wicker.
​The only thing wicker is good for is Kiddish.

The Haman banging techniques seminar turned into an educational intensive on how to bang a table loud enough on Rosh Chodesh to scare everybody.