So the Synagogue got really fed up with its Rabbi.
The Executive Committee of the Synagogue met and concluded that they'd have to let him go. Trouble was — who would want to take him — especially if it got out that he had been fired? So the Executive Committee decided to give him a glowing letter of recommendation, comparing the Rabbi to Shakespeare, to Moses, and even to G-d Himself(!)
The recommendation was so warm that within six weeks the Rabbi succeeded in securing himself a pulpit in a major upwardly-mobile Synagogue 500 miles away, at twice his original salary and with three junior Rabbis working under him. Needless to say, in a couple of months the Rabbi's new employers began to observe all of his gross imperfections.
The President of the Rabbi's new Pulpit angrily called the President of the old Synagogue charging: “We employed this man mostly on the basis of your recommendation. How could you possibly compare him to Shakespeare, to Moses and even to G-d Himself, when he can't string together a correct sentence in English, when his knowledge of Hebrew is worse than mine, and that on top of everything else, he's a liar, a cheat and an all-round low-life?”
“Simple,” answered his colleague. “Like Shakespeare your Rabbi has no Hebrew or Jewish knowledge. Like Moses, he can't speak English; and like G-d Himself - ‘Er is nisht kan mentch’ (Yiddish: He's not a human being!).**
NOTE: **In Yiddish, the work “mentch” is often used in reference to a decent, honest, kind, and generous human being. Hence, here, the play is on the difference between G-d (decidedly non-human but an all-embracing spirit of goodness and mercy) and the Rabbi (decidedly human but hardly decent, honest, kind, or generous in spirit).
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