The Rabbi’s Stress Builds
Pesach is coming.
I know what you’re thinking: Of course Pesach is coming! What did you expect, when Purim is so last week!
But you don’t understand: Pesach is coming.
Five derashos - two for the first days of Pesach, one for Shabbos Chol haMoed, two for the last days. Not to mention another for Shabbos right after Pesach.
Divrei Torah for each night of Yom Tov, and Shabbos.
Shiurim for each afternoon of Yom Tov, and Shabbos, between Minchah and Maariv.
Krias haTorah for eight days, and a different one each day, including Chol haMoed.
Pesach is coming, I tell you.
And the shailos, oh, the shailos. How do I kasher my coffee-maker? What’s the latest on kashering microwave ovens? Does this need a special hechsher for Pesach? Why? Why not?
My grandmother used peanut oil and had no problem with it. My grandmother refused to use peanut oil, and would have spit on your Pesach kitchen.
What’s the story with mustard? Does meat need a special hechsher? What about fresh fish?
Rabbi, I’m away for Pesach; can I just do a bedikah on the front hallway of my house? How about just a bathroom?
Oh, yes, Pesach is coming, my friend.
The mass exodus of two-thirds of my shul to various relatives. We can't get anyone to come to our Seder. Maybe they go away just to avoid being invited to our Seder.
Somewhere, some community swells massively with the exflux of my congregants. And we don’t get nearly as many influxers as we have exfluxers; presumably the overflow is in the hotels.
Or worse: Maybe they all just say they're going away. They're hiding in their homes.
Pesach is coming to town.
“Yes, I know you’re busy playing Rabbi,” the rebbitzen will say to me one day very soon, “but how about playing husband a little, too? You know, cleaning up your study, the bedroom, the garage, the basement? Watching the kids for a while? Doing some of the shopping? And if you’re too busy to kasher our sink, why do you have the time to kasher everyone else’s?”
And my favorite: “You told Mrs. WACvillian she doesn’t need to cover that counter, and ours are the same - why are we covering ours?”
Pesach is coming; look on Pesach, ye mighty, and despair.
Yom HaAtzmaut will get short shrift.
As will Lag ba’Omer even though it’s a Sunday this year.
Yom Yerushalayim? Be happy we’ll say Hallel, pal.
Yom haShoah? I follow Rav Soloveichik that Tisha b'Av is the day for national avelus.
All of those dates will be ignored in the rush of PESACH, and by the time Yom Tov is over I’ll have not the slightest energy for planning more special events. We’ll be lucky if I get together an all-night program in time for Shavuos.
Pesach is coming.
And you know the worst part? It’s just five months from Rosh Chodesh Nisan to Rosh Chodesh Elul.
And then you wonder why I get drunk at the Seder.
Friday, March 09, 2007
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11 comments:
I can take care of this for you. Email all of the questions you receive to me.
I will gladly prepare answers to each of them using a format similar to this.
Many years ago when I was a simple yeshiva bochur my rav covered this very topic.
There is a little known Gemara that says......
See, problem solved. ;)
Do you have any bnai yeshiva (of any kind) tha come home for Pesach? They can usually fill the evening dvrei Torah spots.
KT
This is easy!
1) Farm out the half the drashes to lay leaders who want to be more active and can be concise. Get the other half from j-bloggers' archives.
2)Shailos too - boil everything for 10 minutes. If you can't boil it, put it to a blowtorch. If you can't torch it, cover it with a white cloth, put it in the back bathroom, and tell the kids not to go in there. If it comes from the New World, it's permissible. Unless a particular congregant likes it when you're makpid.
3)Treat Pesach as a kiruv event and invite some less observant friends/neighbors/random Hillel students you find at a local university. Show them how sweet and wonderful an observant celebration can be. Oh yeah, and let them do the dishes afterwards.
4)Do EVERYTHING the rebbetzin asks. Better yet, make a list of all the things you know she WANTS to ask for help with, and start doing them now, knowing that you will probably have to do them over to her standards when she sees how you've mucked them up. ;)
5) Another little glass to get you started on all of the above?
Jack:
Thanks! What would I do without you?
Joel:
I've tried this on occasion, with mixed results. The worst was the one who was supposed to do a 40-minute shiur between minchah and maariv and showed up empty-handed. But, yes, it's a thought.
Tzipporah:
We actually do #3, but we have to be careful; you don't want guests to feel like they're part of an odd lot. Even if they know it, it shouldn't be in their faces.
And the rebbitzen thanks you for #4!
OK, I'm done blogging. You're officially better at it than I am. And I'm not logging in because I don't feel like it, so you're just going to have to accept that it's me.
Hatzlacha, Rabbi! B'ezrat Hashem... :)
RWAC:
The British have a panacea:'Think of England!'. Well, it supposedly works for them. It may not be so simple for Yiddin.
-Schvach
Renreb:
Thanks, but you've got to be kidding; your blogging reveals mine to be the scribbling it is.
I wait with bated breath along with the rest of the blogosphere for the next RenReb post. I sit in committee meetings thinking, "What would RenReb say?" I insert odd RenReb lines in my derashos!
Okay, maybe not. But I would be more flattered were the praise more attached to reality...
tnspr569, schvach:
Thanks! Excalibur! Onward and upward! Caveat emptor!
We kind of like the relative quiet that the exflux brings, although this year more people are staying in town, leading Rabbi to get very excited and invite them all to our sedarim...
Do you distribute a WACville version of the OU's Pesach FAQs? We stick one in our shul bulletin. I don't know if anyone reads it, but if fifteen people are asking about kashering their coffee makers, you can refer them to the FAQs.
Our Rabbi uses a few tricks to manage a lot of these issues.
First, he only speaks on the first day of Yom Tov, treating the shul to a drash-free second day and eighth day. As you can imagine, for every member who complains about the lack of inspiration/education/napping, there are ten others who look forward to those days (and Shavuos 2, Sukkos 2 and Simchas Torah) all year long.
Second, he chooses a Shabbos shortly before Pesach to use his weekly drasha to "remind" everyone of how he holds on a whole variety of FAQs. This, of course, has a double benefit since it alleviates the need to write another drasha, in addition to fending off a number of shailos. Not that there won't be plenty, anyway...
And he always recruits someone else to speak between Mincha and Maariv. Usually he relies on his own kids or in-laws, but sometimes he'll approach the more erudite (read: learned and confident, or, some less complimentary terms) members of the shul to speak.
Finally, my wife would be eternally grateful if you invited us for the Sedarim. And, you know, the whole week of Pesach. And, I guess, my parents and in-laws too. We've made every Yom Tov in our home since we were married, three kids ago. She asked me recently if $4,000 seemed like too much to spend to go away for Pesach. Which it's not, if she hits the lottery this week.
Sabine613 and Anonymous 10:41:
I do the FAQ thing, yes. I also teach a class each year before Pesach on Cleaning/Kashering issues. Both of those seem to help.
Re: skipping derashos - I actually have quite a few people who would mind. I also would feel funny about missing the chance to teach Torah; I never cancel a class if I can at all avoid it, for that reason. Also: Some of the days you mention are Yizkor days, which bring in people who wouldn't regularly attend; that's too big a chance to miss.
Anonymous, we'd be glad to have you, but we're somewhere around a dozen for 1st and a few more than that for 2nd... how about next year in Yerushalayim?
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