The experience of joining the Mishpacha team has been many things for me: exciting motivating edifying a true privilege. But it’s also been — or more accurately is about to become — downright cathartic even therapeutic. How so you ask? Well some time ago I wrote a confessional piece in which I owned up to a problem I have one that I share with of all people Joe Biden.
I explained that Joe and I share an excessive fondness for the spoken word; we’re given to garrulousness. In plain English we’ve got a problem knowing when to conclude a speech and gracefully take a seat. As I put in then:
My wife still reminds me occasionally of one particular sheva brachos we hosted for a family member many years back at which there were eight speeches which when supplemented by the multi-minute euphemistically termed “introductions” I provided for most of the speakers — which I felt obliged to do in conscientious performance of my duties as master of ceremonies — resulted in a final tally of orations in the mid-teens and a total word count of … I’d just rather not “go there.”
And I know it’s an issue that lots of readers can relate to as well because many of you are regularly subjected to sitting through speeches of the many others in our community who struggle with this disorder. Awhile back I attended a simchah at which after several speakers had honed their already considerable homiletic skills on the ears of the assembled an uncle of the bar mitzvah bochur rose to “say a few words.” He proceeded to deliver brief but heartfelt words of brachah in under two minutes and sat down.
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