The following is a KSCO commentary. Here is Kay Zwerling:
I wrote this eight years ago and it is relevant now. It is in my book. Also, we have many new listeners since KGO went kaput for which I am grateful. And, both listeners may now be able to listen to my Commentaries.
While sitting in a doctor’s waiting room recently, I reached for a magazine and four large words jumped out at me. They were “Live happily ever now.” I thought, wow – most of us tend to go through our allotted years thinking of the time when we can live happily ever after. Like, if I get a new job, or if I get to own a house, or a nice car, or if I get to travel a lot, or maybe get a windfall of money, then I will be happy. Not wise. After all, all we each have is now. And, now is all we will ever have. So, let’s try to be Happily Ever Now.
This is about Jewish humor, and Jewish inebriation – and that means getting drunk. Around the Middle Ages, Jews made sure to always remain sober and aware because they had been the hated scapegoats for being money lenders, and especially they were considered pariahs for rejecting Jesus as being divine and as being the Messiah.
The Old Testament states that when the Messiah finally arrives, the world and everyone will be good and peace will prevail. I still believe that Jesus was a special extraordinary human because He knew that love was the answer.
Jews have suffered all sorts of indignities and have learned early on that education was most important because knowledge is power, and secondly that the hate they endured allowed them to survive because of another most important ingredient in life and that is humor. If one can endure with humor, one can survive almost anything. The topic of humor is an excellent segway into a joke I am going to tell you right now:
A Rabbi and a Priest in the same town were friends. They met once a week to go bicycling together. One day the Priest was waiting in the usual place, and the Rabbi came but without his bicycle. He told his friend the Priest that it was not where he usually put it so it was probably stolen. The Priest paused a moment and then said to the Rabbi “I have an idea. This coming Friday night when you deliver your sermon, why don’t you make your subject the Ten Commandments, and when you get to the point where it says ‘Thou shalt not steal’, perhaps the thief will be listening and be remorseful and return your bike.”
So the following week when it was time for the buddies to meet, the Rabbi arrived with his bike. Elated, the Priest said “See, I told you that when you read the Ten Commandments that ‘Thou shalt not steal’ it would work and you would get your bicycle back, and you did.”
The Rabbi replied “Well, it was not exactly that way. I did give my sermon, but when I came to the part that says ‘Thou shalt not commit adultery’, I remembered where I left my bike.”
For KSCO, this is Kay Zwerling.
© copyright 2013
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