WANNA SUPERSIZE THAT MATZO BALL?

My life as a rabbi has been one of inversion, like looking at the world through the wrong end of a telescope. As a young man in my 20’s, I began my career in the teeming metropolis of Chicago.

Five years later, I moved on to a synagogue in the smaller but still substantial city of Atlanta. Now, 33 years have passed, and I find myself an unemployed rabbi and “culinary humorist” in the pimple-sized town of Greenville, South Carolina, the most backward place in the country.

Could it get any smaller than Greenville, you ask?

Well, I recently received a call from the president of a schule comprised of 20 families located in a hamlet among the Appalachian Mountains, 200 km from my home. They required a rabbi to preside over Shabbat services twice a month.
Would I be interested?

This, I said, would require some consideration.

A week passed, and I received a call from a sisterhood officer. “We understand that you are a caterer,” she said, “and we need someone to prepare our congregation’s Seder.”

“For 20 families?” I inquired.

“Oh no, for about 150 guests, mostly Christians, who want to see how the Seder compares to the Last Supper.”

“And who will conduct the Seder?” I asked. “You have certainly heard that I am being considered for the position of your rabbi.”

“Oh, didn’t you hear?” she responded. “We’ve already taken care of the rabbi situation. She will be conducting the Seder.”

“And I?” remembering all the meaningful and joyous Sedarim I used to conduct, “What would I be doing?”

“Well, naturally, you would be in the kitchen cooking, serving and cleaning up.”
It is too early to tell you my decision, because we have yet to celebrate Tu B’Shevat.

But I will tell you what instinctively came to mind. It was King David’s lament of Saul and Jonathan, “How the mighty have fallen!”

I envisioned my epitaph, however, carved on a slab of brisket reading, “How the mighty have fallen . . . into a pot of chicken soup!”