Jewish history (comical) part 1

Foreword by Rabbi Gazlan Shlomo

tap tap

Gevalt, is this thing on?

tap tap

I told the shmendriks in logistics to make sure everything is prepared before I start this part.

HELLO? CAN ANYONE HEAR ME?

waves of feedback from the speakers, the congregation cringes

Tekiah Gedolah!

feedback sounds like a shofar until everyone is sick of it, congregation laughs

Ah! so those shlimazels can actually do something for once. Since they didn't manage to block the credit crunch, I lost faith in them.

Congregation giggles

So, chevralach, thank you all for coming for this pre-Shabbat get together of the congregation. I especially like to thank Mrs. Rubinstein for preparing all the lovely krepalach for the meeting. Thank you Rebecca, much appreciated.

General murmurs of agreement

I wanted to gather you all together because lately I've been seeing a lot of new faces. It's like we've got Jews coming out of the woodwork. What, is somebody giving away coupons?

Congregation laughs

Well, as you all know, I like to give a little talk on occasions such as this. Some of you have probably heard this one before; I like to call it "What it Means to be a Jew".

Congregation groans

What, you got something else you'd rather be doing? Maybe enjoying some bacon or chasing some shiksa around? I'll be brief, I'll be brief.

Congregation prepare themselves for a long speech

To be a Jew means you are one of God's Chosen; A Child of Israel. That should be worth something; yes? Well, a very long time ago, back before we left Egypt, we noticed that we weren't pulling in a good price at the slave markets.

"40 acres and a mule?" calls a voice from the back. Congregation bursts into laughter

HA! We should be so lucky! No, we were expected to haul boulders for their pyramids until we were kaput, and for what? A palmful of salt and a slice of unleavened bread! We realized that if we were ever going to be able to quit with the hard labor and move to something a little more white collar, we'd have to raise our asking price. After all, who will care if poor Berechiah gets pinned under a stone if we're literally a dime a dozen? It all started with one bright young economist: Robert Nathan Noah Naomi Neriah Immanuel Moses. His friends called him Nate, but they're all kaput, so he's Moses now. But let me tell you more about this whole slavery history.

Cana'an, the land of the belly dancers

In the very beginning, there was this guy named Abraham. He came from Babylon, where he had smashed idols with a club and an axe, and he then rode Barny the Bronco through Brooklyn and then Manhattan (going through Jamaica, of course), until he came upon a frontier town called Hebron. This was in a mysterious land full of beautiful belly dancers, and he was entranced. He fell in love with a belly dancer named Sarai, and so she became his cowgirl. That led to a cowbaby, Yitzhak (named after the sound he made when he first got sick). Abraham (particularly as far as his nose was concerned) was overwhelmed by having to take care of the baby, so he handed the kid off to his wife. He then set up a cowboy shop and started a decent ranch goin'. One fine day, God comes out of nowhar and started asking Abraham to sacrifice his sonny on some mountain or other. So he saddled his hoss and took his boy, and out came the axe when some animal rudely interrupted him. A woman name of Judy owned the animal, a nice looking ram. She haggled with God, and ultimately the latter went, "Okay, fine. Go with the ram. If you ladies like people, then you might as well keep the people!". In Judy's honor, her idea that people were better off alive rather than sacrificed was called "Judy-ism". And so Abe had kids, Abe's sonny had kids, and those kids had kids, and eventually the kids of kids of kids of kids got into trouble with the wonderful politicians running Egypt, particularly the more kinky of the bunch. This led to 400 years of bondage, sadism, masochism, and otherwise strange-ish sex. We Were Slaves in Egypt

Slavery in antebellum Egypt was the way of things until Moses, egged on by Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn, had his revelation. Until about 950 years before that con-man Jesus Christ was born (what we did to him was a stroke of pure genius, but that's for another story), Jews were most likely to be found contentedly toiling away building monuments and highways for the Egyptians, while the Egyptians themselves busied themselves with cat preservation and walking in a silly way. Jews were plentiful and breeding like rabbits, happy in the knowledge that their abundant offspring would be assured gainful employment, plenty of spicy Egyptian food, and at least three beatings per week. While this suited most fine, there were a few uppity Jews that thought they might be entitled to something more. These rabble rousers were organized by Moses and his brother Aaron Enter Moses

Moses was a chipper young lad, all bright and full of ideas, so it was only natural that he would be a terrible, useless slave. His owners frequently told him this, mostly through the medium of interpretive beatings. Moses was unfazed, and the numerous concussions only sharpened his economic intellect. He had always been good with numbers, as a lost text containing teachings of Moses' mother, Jochebed, discovered in the early 18th century shows:

~ Jochebed on Moses' gift with numbers ^[1]

Before long, he had his theory: The Egyptians treated the Jews so poorly because they were so cheap. If the Jews only cost more money, it would be fiscally impossible for the Egyptians to mistreat them. Therefore, Moses reasoned through his concussed haze, he needed only to reduce the Jew supply, thus upping the demand and increasing Jewish value.