Devar Torah

A couple of weeks ago, actually, by the time you read this, it will be closer to months, I was asked to give a devar torah. To those unaware, that's more or less a quick sermon. No problem, I felt, because see, there is this great Bill Cosby routine about Noah, that is incredibly funny. I figured I would go to the front of the group, and say, "look, I could give you a nice little speech, but I'm going to let it go to somebody much better than I." Then I press play, and walk away. (If you've never heard this routine before, I suggest, if you are familiar with the story of Noah, to hear it from somebody's collection.)

So, I bring my tape player, and I'm all ready to give it, when I discover the glitch. The French will be there. This has nothing to do with my personal dislikes; I can tolerate French up to the level that I can tolerate most people. The problem here lies in that the French pretend not to know how to speak English. So, I had to make up a five minute speech in ten minutes. All about the story of Noah. In Hebrew.

Ten minutes.

OK, actually, there is an easy way out. See, in the story of Noah, is the story of the Tower of Babel. What better? A bunch of foreign languages working together.. How apropos. But I have to make a moral out of this stupid story. Not easy, since we appear to be on the latter end of the story, post language barrier. Seventy percent of the group speaks English, while seventy also speaks Hebrew. By the way, this speech has to be positive. SO I have to find a difference between the two situations. Why are we now, better than them, then? I think we're worse now... they were at least trying to work together. OK, so now it's time to lie.

"{At the end of the story of Noah, right before the story of Abraham, almost tacked in, is the story of Babel. I'm sure you've all heard it before. The people of the world all come together to build a tower to reach the heavens. God stops them by making them all speak in different languages.

"Now, we are here from nine countries, and have six different tongues as our first languages. (America, Canada, England, France, Israel, Mexico, Norway, Scotland (He insists it's its own country), and Switzerland, speaking English, Spanish, French, Norwegian, Hebrew, and Swiss German.) Yet, still, we can, for the most part, communicate amongst each other. So, the question is, why did God not allow the people to communicate, by inflicting them with different languages, whereas we, with the aforementioned nine nationalities, and six languages can communicate, and get along together so well? (My nose grew about a foot, at this point.)

"The answer lies in front of us. These people wanted to build a tower that would reach the heavens. But the distance to the Lord's Heaven, as science has pointed out, can not be measured in meters, miles, or light years. The people would be building the tower to this very day, without being any closer to their goal. God actually did them a favor by giving the different languages. He stopped them from an impossible goal.

"This is the difference. They had a futile goal, it could never be reached, and therefore God stopped them at the quick. On the other hand, we know what our job is, we know how to achieve our goal, it can be done, and that my friends is why we can communicate.}" Huge applause, all appreciative, They tell me I'm a great orator, Hebrew speaker, etc., but later a woman walks up to me.

"��� ����, �����. ���, �� ����� ����?" (tov meod, Michael, aval ma ha mitrah shelanu?) {Very good, Michael, but what is our goal?}

"I have no bloody idea. I was only given ten minutes to write this."

It's B'nei Akiva. It has no point.

Get me outa here!!!

Wanna read the last one?

Wanna read the next one?

Take me back to the list

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Michael Kadish

"OK, I think we're all agreed here, I have no life, right?" -- City Slickers

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