VaYelech Excerpts

וילך

Shabbat Shalom

You gather, at the end of the Shemitah year. This is happening right now. Sukkot time. Everybody comes to hear the Torah...They don't come in for Esther's cheese cake and some talk about the size of Sadie's hat. You don't gather to play Canasta. You gather for Torah. I know Bernie likes to say he is speaking Torah. That is not Torah. That is Bernie's opinion. They gathered to hear the Torah and it was read. It was not not like the angry mob of Dr. Kornberger who likes to get angry at the reader for reading it wrong. Why? Because the reader prepared. Not like Shmulie and his Bar Mitzvah, where he was reading something out of a Harry Potter book...It had nothing to do with the Torah. And the Hebrew sounded like an incantation. It is wrong to speak in tongues. That is forbidden...But we do not reject people. Even if they cannot read.

(31:12) 'Gather everybody.' Everybody showed up. And it was not Rosh Hashana or Yom Kippur. It was not like Mr. Bergstein, who had no seat, because people didn't pay their dues. Mr. Fergenthal....

The kids, the men, women, converts. Even employees that were not paid by the Kirshnebaum family....

This is not like Shmulie's Bar Mitzvah, where they invited the hairdresser and the other kids from the Christian Youth Organization Basketball League...If they were your friends...

The bodega guy is a good man. He is always invited....

In order that they will 'listen and learn,and fear...and guard to do all the words of this Torah.'...I do not know about the other Torahs. Maybe that is what Bernie is quoting....To 'learn.' This is not Topoka Institute of Jewish Kinderlach.

You don't just listen to the Torah, in a language you do not understand. It wasn't written in Yiddish. 

You have to practice it. We all know Shmulie did not practice for his Bar Mitzvah...You sit hear every week, Bernie. You understand not one word.

 

'Gather them.' And everybody wants to know why I always ask the men to huddle up, in the middle of the cantor's repetition...

(31:13) The children that don't know will 'hear and learn to fear H'.' This means that even the youth of our shule have a chance. Shmulie has a chance.

If they hear it, they will want to follow it. That simple. Even if they don't understand a word. It is much more pleasent to follow rules that are not understood...We need to huddle up more. Max can't hear a thing. Bernie still needs to be yelled at. Fran has been trying to get out shule to be a team...