My tremontstshul sendoff

This past Shabbat morning, August 6th, tremontstshul had a farewell kiddush in my honor.

I got to stand up and say a few words (it was Parshat Dvarim, get it??) -- although I wasn't sure if I felt more like the Israelites about to cross the Jordan (which, as I pointed out, in Italian is il Giordano), or like Moshe admonishing the Israelites by way of a historical overview of their sojourn. But it seemed to go okay.

And there was lox, and real whitefish (lovingly deboned by B"H Model), and black-and-whites.

There were also a couple of nice tribute parodies offered, which I found so delightful that I wanted to record them here for posterity and share with you all. One was written by father-of-hilaritea to the tune of the Major General's song from The Pirates of Penzance:

( I am the very model of egalitarian orthodox... )

Edited To Add, since someone asked: In fact, no, I don't consider myself Orthodox by any stretch. We noted that privately at the time of the dramatic reading. (But it does rhyme so beautifully with "paradox".)

The other was written by la_vie_en_rosie and her spouse, RLS formerly of the Menschen, in the vein of Eishet Chayil (A Woman of Valor), which is a passage from Proverbs traditionally sung on Friday nights to the woman of the household:

( Erica Chayil )

I was absolutely tickled.

A number of other people very dear to me were specially present, and we had lots of singing, and a fair quantity of Scotch, and it was a lovely sendoff. Thanks to all those of you who were there.

(And if you missed it, it looks like I'm still going to be in town after all for the Community Shabbat Dinner on August 19th, so you can sign up for that. There'll probably even still be some Scotch left.)