There will be a minyan for Maariv at __________ Synagogue (name deliberately omitted) at ten minutes after the beginning of the Super Bowl halftime. On the morning of the recent Super Bowl football game a shul in New Jersey sent out this e-mail to its membership.
How should one react to this? One could be benevolent in the spirit of the Berditchever Rebbe who paraphrasing himself might have said: “O L-rd how wondrous is Thy people. Even in the midst of the Super Bowl they think of Thee!”
Or one could be severe and paraphrase Isaiah 1:12: “Mi bikesh zos miyedchem — who asks this of you saith the Lo-d to trample on My holy ground and daven with trivialities in your heart!”
Or one could simply laugh in the spirit of Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream: “L-rd what fools these mortals be.”
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