Sermons of Rebuke V: VaYelech and Shabbat Shuva

by Rivka Schwartz

Announcements
We ask that congregants stop detailing their sins to the other members when asking for forgiveness. There have been way too many physical altercations since our community learned the idea of asking for forgiveness for specific sins you have done to others. Please stay away from exactly what you said that set off the divorce. 
 
They say you shouldn’t sleep first day of Rosh Hashana or during the rabbi’s sermon. Please stay awake during the sermon. The sleep apnea in this shul is very disturbing.
 
We thank security for keeping everybody out of Shul this Rosh Hashana. They did a great job of not recognizing people they know. We also ask you allow members into the shul for Yom Kippur.
We hope people show up for Yom Kippur. We don't want to have to refund seats.
 
Contemporary Halacha Classes: How to Not Speak Lashon Hara- Understanding Your Annoying Self. How to Not Speak Lashon Hara- Stay Away From the Annoying Members of Our Shul. When Falling Asleep Disturbs Everybody in Shul- Hy and How Loud He Snores. How to Keep A Safer Space- A Shul That Keeps Out Its Members Stays Together.

Rabbi Mendelchem's Drasha Excerpts
Shabbat Shalom My Pupils...
This is the Shabbat Shuva Drasha. Why do I have to hand out sources?! You guys need to see fifty sources and you're satisfied. You need it printed... The effort is there. I don’t need to write a whole Torah and hand it out. Moshe wrote it and handed it to the Kohanim (Devarim 31:9)... Because the Kohanim don’t lose everything. You still haven’t returned my rake... I let you borrow it last fall. I need it now. But you lost it... Point is Moshe didn't have to hand out sources. He gave us the Torah. The Torah is not a syllabus.

(Devarim 31:11) Moshe tells the elders and Leviim, “You shall read this Torah before Israel, in their ears...” "This Torah" is the Torah. There wasn’t another Torah, Simcha. Ever since you got involved in security you started questioning everything, even people you know. You don't have to question Torah now... They don't come to shul because you don’t let them in. You stopped letting them in...
You have to read it in your ears because you people don’t listen... Now do you understand. Now that I said the Dvar Torah in your ears...
Phil. You can't hear anything. Everything has to be said right in your ears. If it was for Phil, Moshe would've said to scream it in their ears...

At the end of Sukkot at the end of seven years. Hakhel... When you read it all the time you end up with Baal Korehs like we have at our shul. If you guys read faster, like Menachem, maybe we would read the whole thing every week...
(Devarim 31:12) Hakhel. "Gather the nation. The men, the women, and small children and your stranger... that they will hear...” We need everybody there to hear the Torah, because you don’t pass on anything. You don’t educate your kids. At least once every seven years they hear they have to shut up during Davening and clean their room...
Hakhel. Not heckle. Which is all you do Bernie. You heckle the rabbi. Hakhel is listening to me...

We read and we learn the Torah. The Kohanim, the tribe of Levi, guard it for us. But we have to know it. We have to hear it.
You have to listen. Everybody. Even the kids. Please listen already!!! Let me give a sermon!!!
These are things you have to do... We don’t trust you, because you're not Kohens. But you still have to do it.
Now listen. It is almost Sukkot. It’s time you finally listened to something. With your ears... The way you people listen with your... I don't even know what you're listening with. You hear nothing.
LISTEN!!!

Don’t detail the sins. To Gd, detail them... I don’t think Shlomo needs to hear how you told everybody how he steals everything from his job. He's been unemployed for six years, because you said he took a pen... We all know Faye is nasty and jealous. No need to let her know you said that. And we know her hat selection is quite disturbingly hideous.  
Just ask for forgiveness.
How do we stop Lashon Hara? That is the question... I have no idea. With annoying congregants that don't listen, it's hard...
Don't go into detail, Brian... Brian. You went out with his wife after they got divorced. And you were the one who... 

Everybody should do atonement for falling asleep during my sermons. Brilliant sermons... And you slept first day of Rosh Hashana. Didn’t even do Tashlich.
At Hakhel they didn’t fall asleep. If they would've heard Hy snoring at Hakhel, an ambulance would've been on top of that.
Hatzalah would've jumped up... There were a lot of hockers back then. A lot of Hatzlaha guys. But they all listened. They heard. 

We have to get Simcha off security.... Because he's not a Kohen and he has no Seichel. And he doesn’t listen... 
You kept them out and you know them... They didn’t have a ticket?! It was your daughter...
It’s a uncomfortable. You eat Kiddish with them every week and now the relationship is a ticket. And why call it a ticket??? Are they going to a High Holiday concert?!... That’s why it takes so long. The Chazin thinks he’s performing.
He was performing for very few people, because Simcha kept everybody out...
It's pathetic. You say, "We need your ticket. We have set seating." Look. Do we need set seating? Do we need set seating when there are 250 open seats?! Why did you say seats were reserved?!... Guy got inside. Snuck in. Sees 10 people...
No. I don’t think they had our congregants running security for Hakhel. Nobody would’ve gotten in if Simcha was running security...
You can't hear the Chazin's Davening when you're not allowed in shul... It is loud though... At Hakhel they let the Jews in.
The Kohens should’ve been trusted to watch over who gets in for Davening...

Stop listening to all the stuff the people are feeding you. Listen to the Torah in your ears... It rings. I know. Especially when Chaim is the one Layning...

The point is to listen. Our people are called together to listen to the Torah. Not to talk during the rabbi's sermon. He's still talking. Bernie! It's a sermon... "Hakhel." Not "heckle." You listen to the Torah...
It is Shabbat Shuva. The Shabbat of repentance. Where we return to the way of Torah...
You never do Teshuva, Bernie. What are you talking about?!... Still talking. Listen. If you listened, there would be Teshuva. The community would let in the members to shul... Why they pay membership to not be allowed in by members is very weird to me. But I guess that is security. We're safe, as long as Ethel isn't in shul... If we had Levites running security…
Not talking allows us to be better people. Not hearing you... Everything you say is Lashon Hara. 
We just need to listen to the Torah. And that means letting Jews into shul... You can't hear it if you're not hear, gathered with our people in Topeka.
Repent by being quiet. How you guys listen with your mouth...

Rivka's Rundown
The way the people usually listen is by looking at their phone. But they're not allowed to bring phones into shul on Shabbat. If securities job was to keep phones out, I would say that having Hymie and Bernie sitting outside is safe. If they're sitting outside checking phones, and the guy with the gun is checking people, our shul is in good hands.

The rabbi called him up and said the Shabbat Shuva Drasha in Melvins ears. Melvin is hard of hearing. Phil is 98. These people can't hear. I don't think the Jews entering Israel with Yehoshua were that old.
Then, the rabbi walked over to Bernie to finish the Drasha. He said the ending part in Bernie's ear.

The rabbi put no effort into his Shabbat Shuva Drasha. If I don’t see printouts with source numbers, it's not improvised. I need sources. You hand me a source packet, I respect you. What you say means nothing to me. I just like the feeling of knowing the rabbi went on Sefaria to cut and pasted the stuff. 

Our congregation would be happier if we didn't talk. If we just listened. Brian truly ruined that marriage. He shouldn't have said anything.
If people heard what I said about them, they would be egging my house.
I ask for forgiveness. They all know I spoke Lashon Hara about them. I talk, it's Lashon Hara. I can't help it. You see people like Brian ruining that marriage, and then you see the renovations committee making quilts because they ran out of money for a curtain, you have to talk. The only positive is knowing Melvin and Phil can't hear. I don't think Fran can hear either, which is why she's on the security force. Thanks to their inability to hear, my Lashon Hara sin count is sixty percent lower than it would've been. A hard of hearing congregation is good. 
The rabbi tried having a class on Lashon Hara. They just spoke more. It started with, “How do I not talk about Penina? She is so annoying.” And it went from there. They talked about Penina for half an hour. The rabbi then went into the annoyingness of each individual to get out the idea of Lashon Hara should not be spoken. Then somebody told the story of the Chafetz Chaim on the train. Where he said he deserved to get hit for talking bad about himself. So the rabbi called up Penina and had somebody hit here.
The idea of speaking good about people came up. But that turned out to be Avak Lashon Hara. Dust of Lashon Hara, which causes people to speak bad. Anything good said about anybody in our congregation turns bad. The kind thought of Bernie always showing to shul turned into a tirade of how the guy doesn't shut up.
So, final decision is that people in our community should not talk. Which I don't like, because every time I need salt now, I have to stand up at Kiddish and walk around the table. Then I have to go to the other side of the table for the dressing.

Rosh Hashana was hard. I couldn’t sleep. I tried falling asleep by counting my sins. It’s hard to fall asleep counting those.
I tried going with the regular way of falling asleep by counting sheep, but then I started thinking about all of those prayers where we’re Gd’s flock. And then I thought about passing under His staff and how I'm going to hell because of my sins. And I started counting those again. A lot of sins to count.

They do snore loud. For some reason, everybody can hear Melvin and Phil when they snore. Even Fran wakes up.
I thought snoring was fine. I don't believe it's part of the lexicon of COVID yet. Coughing isn't fine. You cough, you're accused of trying to land others in the hospital. You cough in our shul now and they attack you. They get security on you and throw you out for intent to kill. Somebody sneezed by accident, they got carried out of the shul.
I held in a sneeze out of fear of being tossed into the street for murder. The thought of somebody killing you will stop you from sneezing. It probably helps with hiccups too. Next time a hiccup is coming on, I'm going to think of the possibility that a member of my shul will see me and shoot me.
I do believe that the new reaction to sleep apnea was a bit much. Renouncing people's memberships was a bit much. The office said to my friend Sheindel, "Until you have health, the community doesn't want to see you." How that works with the blessing "you should have health" that everybody says, I do not know. We stopped saying that blessing. Nobody cares about sick people anymore. They just want sick people away from them. I think they changed the blessing to "all people who are not healthy should stay away from shul." 
And how it all works with the idea of visiting the sick?! I do not believe it does. The new idea is to leave them alone till they die. 
I checked with the Gabai. It turns out the Mishebeyrach blessing for sick people is only for people outside of the shul. If somebody is sick in shul, they are not part of the blessing, and we find a way for them to die. Unless if they are wearing a mask. The Gabai said it's fine if they sneeze into the mask. The fact that they're wearing a mask they blew their nose into is pain enough. They're thus allowed to stay in shul.

There was nothing about the Yizkur appeal cards to give money to the shul for family members who died. Nothing said on Yom Kippur. Nothing mentioned. No talk of monetary appeals. The shul finally gave up. They realize nobody pays them. They put out the cards and then said nothing. They just had the cards out there.
By the way. That was a Chutzpah. Right after Kol Nidrei, they hand out appeal cards. Right after we annulled all our vows and oaths, we are asked to flip a tab that says I'm going to give the shul $500. And now, they want another vow that I'm not going to keep.

Now with security nobody feels comfortable in the shul. Forget about the discomfort of flipping the $1,800 tab on the appeal card, getting into shul to pay it is too uncomfortable. You have Simcha on everybody's back for not being trusted as a member. And I agree with Simcha. I wouldn't trust any of the guys in our shul to do a decent job Layning the Torah.
The security is truly off. With questions like "where are you from?" It's awkward. I heard six people in a row say, "Topeka." And that makes sense. Our shul is in Topeka. Interrogation is done better by EL AL. If we had a guy at the door asking people who packed their Tallis bag, that would be legit.
And then after the interrogation of what address in Topeka they live at, which is the same one they've been at for fifty years, they have to show their seat number. They get inside and see 250 empty seats. 250 empty seats. Apparently, all reserved for not you. This all has you questioning if the shul wants you. And that is what makes the High Holidays meaningful.