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Jokes and Old Age 

02/03/2021 02:51:42 PM

Feb3

Rabbi Brent Spodek

There are two things I want to share with you - one light and easy, the other perhaps heavier and more complicated. 

The light one is that we are slowly making our way towards Purim, which will be celebrated with hamantaschen baking, megilah reading, a carnival and shlach manot. For the megillah reading, I am in the market for jokes to be part of our shpiel. This is where you come in - I’m hoping that you can send me a short (less than 20 seconds) video of you or someone in your life sharing their favorite joke. It can be a knock-knock, it can be a dad joke - it can even be funny! It can’t be too raunchy (think PG-13), it can’t traffic in ethnic stereotypes and it can’t be more than 20 seconds. Please do send them - this is how we will bring the community together when we can’t be together in person. 

The heavier one has to do with a question will all have to confront at some point - how do we tend to the elderly? For some of us, this is the question of our lives right now, as we ourselves contemplate retirement and beyond, for others of us, we are trying to figure out how - or if - to support our parents as they try to navigate this terrain. Rabbi Shai Held wrote about this issue for the Atlantic, and during our Shabbat learning at 5:00 PM this Friday afternoon, I’ll be exploring what it might mean to honor our parents. 

I hope you can join us for that conversation, and I hope you can send on some jokes - from you, your parents or your kids!
 

With blessings,

Rabbi Brent

Thu, March 28 2024 18 Adar II 5784