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W was away this shabbat, and when W is away, that means two things: DAIRY and CARBS! An adequate compensation, I think.
Shul was kind of depressing, containing as it did possibly the worst sermon ever. In a nutshell, it tried to say that Vayikra was relevant to us today because God always meant for people to be weaned off sacrifices and nowadays we have prayer instead. He brought the Rambam which says more or less that [but omitted to point out that Rambam doesn't let you stop there - philosophically he may have found a way to deal with not having a temple, but if there was the opportunity, he'd still make you do sacrifices].
He further proved his point by saying that before the destruction of the temple there were synagogues all over the place (therefore sacrifices were already insufficient in the minds of the people and were already being replaced by prayer) and after the destruction of the temple the rabbis 'put the final nail into the coffin of sacrifices' by ritualising individual prayer. This is wrong on SO many levels; it's historically inaccurate, and shows an absolutely shocking lack of knowledge of Bible and rabbinic literature. As well as being philosophically dubious.
So I had to leave before Musaf, because I wanted to drag him off the bima and argue with him (possibly using non-pacifist methods), and it's difficult to daven in that state of mind.
The other drasha was better; it talked about teaching Vayikra to little kiddies because there are no shades of grey in Vayikra; things are right and wrong, kosher and pasul, everything has a solution (usually on four legs). When you get older you learn the rest of Torah and see that actually life has shades of grey in it.
Shul was kind of depressing, containing as it did possibly the worst sermon ever. In a nutshell, it tried to say that Vayikra was relevant to us today because God always meant for people to be weaned off sacrifices and nowadays we have prayer instead. He brought the Rambam which says more or less that [but omitted to point out that Rambam doesn't let you stop there - philosophically he may have found a way to deal with not having a temple, but if there was the opportunity, he'd still make you do sacrifices].
He further proved his point by saying that before the destruction of the temple there were synagogues all over the place (therefore sacrifices were already insufficient in the minds of the people and were already being replaced by prayer) and after the destruction of the temple the rabbis 'put the final nail into the coffin of sacrifices' by ritualising individual prayer. This is wrong on SO many levels; it's historically inaccurate, and shows an absolutely shocking lack of knowledge of Bible and rabbinic literature. As well as being philosophically dubious.
So I had to leave before Musaf, because I wanted to drag him off the bima and argue with him (possibly using non-pacifist methods), and it's difficult to daven in that state of mind.
The other drasha was better; it talked about teaching Vayikra to little kiddies because there are no shades of grey in Vayikra; things are right and wrong, kosher and pasul, everything has a solution (usually on four legs). When you get older you learn the rest of Torah and see that actually life has shades of grey in it.