Shul Announcements: Shemini to Metzora and Yom HaAtzmaut

by Rivka Schwartz

​Shemini
Shul Announcements
Pesach is over. The office can’t explain how everybody couldn’t afford food or find Pesach food, and put on an average of 12lbs. The rabbi asks people stop lying and start paying their dues.
 
Meryl’s stuffy nose is bothering everybody. We believe she is holding her nose to push out the extra stuff. She sounds like a rhinoceros. Please stop complaining to the board about it. They’re annoying too. Ruchel has an extremely annoying sneeze as well.
 
Chesed Opportunities: Susan Filstein has been crying all week. She was watching General Hospital and one of her favorite characters died. Please comfort her. A side note- the Lipkins lost their mother.
 
Contemporary Halacha Classes: How Our Shul Has the Worst Genes- People Who Ate Nothing Over Pesach and Still Put on Twelve Pounds. How to Bother the Cantor’s Repetition of The Amidah with a Stuffy Nose- The History of Disgusting People in Our Shul. General Hospital and People We Truly Love.
 
Rivka’s Community Rundown
They all bought Pesach food. A lot of it. They congregants were all complaining they couldn’t afford it. They were just mad that Kroger wasn’t offering half of on Manischewitz and Glick’s Kosher for Pesach macaroons. Somehow, they all blamed the rabbi for that.
Are macaroons now an expected mass-produced items that nonJews are begging for?!
 
The rabbi is right. They have enough money for Shmura Matzah, but they don’t pay their dues. Something is wrong.
 
People come to shul to clear their sinuses. The volume on sneezing, blowing and Chuching is crazy. If they’re not harmonizing to a tune that the Chazin is not singing, they’re Chuching out phlegm wads. It’s disgusting. Our weekday Minyin at our shul is even worse. That’s why no women show up to that. They don’t want to hear Bernie and Sal clearing their throats and phlegming into handkerchiefs.
Just seeing a handkerchief is disgusting. I stay away. I see anybody with a handkerchief, I consider that COVID. I don’t care how many times you washed that.
 
Nobody showed up to the Lipkin’s Shiva. The focus was General Hospital. Some stuff truly affects our membership. And that is not Shoshana Lipkin’s mother.
The rabbi’s class about people we truly love had nothing to do with any of our membership. He brought up some of the cast of General Hospital and other lover of Zion.
 
Tazria-Metzora and Yom HaAtzmaut
Shul Announcements
Table hitting during Lcha Dodi has to stop. Mark and Pinchas think they’re coming to shul for a Friday night djembe circle.
We ask that people who decide to use the Shtender as a drum keep a beat. The rabbi wants to remind everybody that it’s a table. Not a Darbuka.
 
The shul will host an Israeli Darbuka circle for Yom HaAtzmaut. And Falafel. You can bang on the Darbuka when we’re not Davening.
 
Chesed Opportunities: There are poor people who haven’t been to Israel. You can donate a flight for a homeless person.
 
Contemporary Halacha Classes: How to Throw Prayers Off- Our Membership’s Inability to Bang a Table to a Beat. Why It’s Asur to Play Music on Shabbat - Reasons You Ruin Judaism for Me, Your Rabbi. The History of All Israeli Independence Day Programs in America Consisting of Falafel. Why Your Chesed Makes No Sense & How Poor People Can’t Afford Anything in Israel- The Cost of Shwarma.
 
Rivka’s Community Rundown
They truly cannot keep a beat at our shul. They bang on stuff like they’re professionals. Never practiced a thing. They just come to shul and think they’re part of a djembe circle. Banging the Shtenders and moving their shoulders like they’re adding to the singing. And it is truly to a different song than Lecha Dodi.
The Chazin ended up stopping the Friday night service and confiscated all Shtenders. People started banging their chairs.
They think Topeka is an island somewhere where people are relaxed enough to enjoy music. Our congregants enjoy no singing. They enjoy getting out of shul. The only thing anybody in our shul has ever smoked is anger.
 
I like the Yom HaAtzmaut Darbuka drum compromise. They can bang at the Yom HaAtzmaut Israeli Independence Day party, where I will not be. Knowing that our members were going to be getting musical at the Israeli Independence Day celebration, half our congregants did not show up. They explained in an open letter to the Federation, “We love Israel. We just hate everybody that goes to our shul. If Michel was banging in Tel Aviv, we would not support Israel. We stayed away, because our members can’t keep a beat, and Bernie Chuching out phlegm on the Falafel balls makes it hard to celebrate our independence.”
 
They’re thinking of helping the poor travel to Israel. No hotel. Just the flight. So, the homeless go to Israel and sleep on the streets. Beg for dinner.
The charity committee figures that is the Israel experience they should have. They’re homeless in America. They should be homeless somewhere else too.
Are our congregants thinking the homeless experience in Israel is more enjoyable because it’s warmer weather there?! And the committee is doing this for Hasbara reasons. They want the homeless to be able to come back from Israel and to tell everybody how great it is.
I’m just worried they’re going to go on Tucker Carlson and say they were mistreated by the Israelis, who blew up their hotel. Which led to them having nowhere to stay.
What I'm trying to say is that our shul, Beit Knesses Anshei Emes uSefillah, is the reason for Jew hatred. I know. I go there, and I hate everybody.
 
Not going to lie. Shwarma has gone up. A trip to Israel on a Falafel budget is not fun. My last trip to Israel felt like a very long Yom HaAtzmaut celebration in Topeka.
To note. Macaroons did go on sale this week. It turns out, Pesach sales happen two weeks after Pesach. And I have messed up the Omer count again. I have not made it a season since I was sixteen. I am not very good at counting barley. You give me sheaves, I will mess it up. I’m better at counting with an abacus.
If I was counting from the beginning of Pesach to the time macaroons went on sale, I could fulfill that Mitzvah.