A protruding stomach covered in the smooth material of a bekishe bumped into me, and begged me to push the line a long. The Rabbi announced that everyone should push the tables against the bima so that people could make a complete circle, but all I could think about was the hilarity of the situation, I didn’t mind the stomach bumping so much, because the fatness meant that other things weren’t bumping into me.
Fact is that dancing at weddings and hoshanos just irk me a little bit because if we were all naked…well I won’t go there. Everyone is kind of stuck and the line backs up to the point of the Rabbi who then tells everyone to get a move on, to stop standing around, to which I think is similar to honking the car in front of you during stop and go traffic in rush hour.
I am trying to protect my lulav from poking the guy in front of me, not because I care about the pain that a straight and sharp palm branch will cause an unsuspecting hoshana doer, but because I don’t want some zealot coming up to me and telling me my lulav is possel, and that I could use his which is stored in a super cool modern case which always reminds me of the movie Desperado.
Happens to be that I try and keep my tip in tip top shape and can never even figure out how people manage to shake it so it slaps together at the end of the shake. My shakes are weak, they are done as fast as possible and I can never figure out who knows whats flying anyway. The Rabbi explained how to shake, but he was Lubavitch so I just assumed an ignorant token Snag role and did my own thing. Seemed like everyone else agreed, because no one looked the same.
During that same instructional speech we unfortunates who were cheap and purchased Israeli Esrogim learned that we couldn’t let them rot in our front seat until we would throw them out at a rest area garbage can, but would have to send them back to Israel and no they didn’t include a self addressed stamped envelope. Conspiracy theories popped into my brain about how the bais dins in Israel make money and this esrog scheme seemed to be one of them.
Then when he told me that Israeli esrogs were going for eighteen bucks I kind of went into shock and wondered if my lulav cost was really 62 bucks because it was 80 for the whole package- it just didn’t make sense, but what could I do? Sit and moan and try and figure out ways to get back at the evil esrog growers.
But really the best part of the whole event besides for random stomach rubbings was when the Rabbi picked up this dudes esrog box to tell everyone what the seals from Israel meant and then told the entire shul that the guys esrog was treife, I thing the Rabbi could have just punched the guy in the face. Should have bought the Italian one I guess.