Emptying Synagogue Won’t Deter Rabbi From Lengthy Sermon

“The place was packed before that, easily eighty or ninety people.”

Jerusalem, May 26 – Friday evening services this past weekend saw a dramatic occurrence at a local house of worship, when manifest dissatisfaction evident in the steady stream of attendees leaving the premises as a speaker droned on failed to stop that speaker from holding forth far beyond the limits of normal human patience, witnesses reported.

Observers who managed to remain awake at Congregation Kol Yaakov between the Kabbalat Shabbat and Maariv liturgy recalled Rabbi Shalom Levine’s apparent obliviousness to the thinning crowd when his sermon extended beyond the eight-minute mark, putting the presence of a quorum for the evening services at risk.

“He just kept going,” recounted Tzadok Rahamim, a longtime attendee. “Most folks expected five, six minutes, tops, but ten minutes rolled around and he was just hitting his stride. I think the first couple of people left the men’s section about nine minutes in, and the trickle increased as time went on. By the time he finished up at just a shade over twenty minutes, we barely had a [quorum of ten men called a] minyan. And the place was packed before that, easily eighty or ninety people.”

Rahamim acknowledged his own desire to leave, but he remains confined to a wheelchair and his attendant had fallen asleep. “When we finally started Maariv it was Rabbi Levine, me, the guy who made the announcements, the cantor, two guys who’d drifted off, and various sons and guests. We had maybe eleven guys. I don’t know what happened in the women’s section.”

Rivka Weiss attested to the same dynamic on the other side of the partition. “It was an exodus,” she remarked. “I enjoy a good discourse on the weekly reading as much as the next faithful Jew, but this was… excessive. He normally takes maybe seven, eight minutes. I don’t know what happened this week. I think we had maybe six women left when he was done, and four of those were his family. I was invited to eat with the Rabbi’s family Friday night, so I couldn’t just leave, either.”

“I just had to share my insights this week,” Rabbi Levine gushed. “There was this exploration of the nuances of a grammatical anomaly that grabbed my attention. I could tell the congregation was really into it, as well, especially that guy who kept nodding at what I was saying.” The Rabbi apparently interpreted a congregant’s struggle to keep himself awake and looking ahead as enthusiastic engagement.

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