This Shabbos, known as Shabbos Hagadol was another special Shabbos at Teleki, Gadol (great) not just by name. The Shtiebel was bristling with people, and the atmosphere was festive yet serene.
Among the guests was Komoroczy Szonja who came as usual with a mini entourage, and in return merited to experience Zmirois during the kidush, and to come away with a true understanding as to why we don’t do it more often.
As usual we like to mix it up a bit, and as such Kornel Batcsi was the Chazon for Shacharis and Horowitz ur for Musaf. The rabbi was substituted for the Torah reading by junior members of the Hurwitz household and was able to catch up on some of the interesting kibitzing taking place during this time, which was something of a surprise, since as we all know the Rabbi is usually oblivious to all that.
The Drasha was not on the Parsha as usual, but on the Ma nishtana, the excuse being that we read the Magid on Shabbos Hagadol, and although the Ma nishtana is not actually said on Shabbos Hagadol, this sufficed as a valid excuse to focus on the stereotypical Jewish past time, of questioning, and what better way than to focus on 4 of Judaism’s most famous question – why eat this and not that, maror or other vegetables, dipping etc.
The tempo of prayers was punctual and we started Kiddush on time which was somewhere between 12:30 and 16:00. The Kiddush entailed the usual shmuzing (chatting) and prodding guests for the purpose of extra entertainment. As already mentioned, there was Shabbos zmirois, but needless to say that was accompanied by competions between the Breslover community with songs or odes to Rav Nachman and members of another Chassidic group looking for songs of a slightly more vibrant nature.
We merited to hear from Horvath Irma a story relating to Pesach as to what is true bravery, which for the sake of extending this article I will quote here,
“I have a story of four animals, a bird, a snail, a frog and a mouse. They had a contest to determine the bravest of them all. The mouse showed his courage by swimming to and fro a lake with one breath. The frog said, “that’s easy, to which the others answered, that for the mouse it is hard. The frog said, “I will eat an entire lilly pod”, to which the snail said, that if I could reach it I could eat it the whole day. Fair enough said the others, but for a frog it is brave. The snail said that he would leave his house and do a little jig and return, to which the bird protested, big deal, I fly all day out of my nest. So they all asked the bird, ok, so what will you do? “I shall not play”, said the bird to which they all responded in unison, “Wow that is brave”! ” – and with this Irma successfully evaded her responsibility to speak to the community, compensated by the fact that I now have a ready made drasha for next week.
Good Shabbos and see you next week.
