"It's going to be harder now to institute the changes the younger people want, including limiting the Mi Shebeirachs."
Franklin Square, December 1 - The soporific effect of a snail's pace Torah reading combined with a droning Rabbi's address to spare a congregation from disaster this past past Saturday morning, when the would-be attacker drifted off instead of committing his intended atrocity, police disclosed today.
Nassau County Police Department spokesman Lieutenant Shea O'Donnell told reporters that the hundred-fifty people in attendance at Congregation Etz Chayim of Dogwood Park came perilously close to death and injury at about ten a.m. that day, when Muhammad Lulabi, an immigrant from North Africa, entered the Orthodox Jewish house of worship with the aim of shooting everyone he could, then, when his ammunition ran out, on stabbing people, and then, if disarmed, detonating a bomb vest. However, said' O'Donnell, a pervasive air of sleepiness overtook Mr. Lulabi, which forensic officials attribute to the unnecessarily-prolonged reading and the sermon that followed it.
"I believe the popular term for the pace of things is 'Bar Mitzvah speed,'" explained the lieutenant. "The plodding chanting, the inclusion by name of everyone and his dog's most distant relatives in the blessings that followed each passage, and a sermon that... well, let's just say I'm not surprised."
Congregants acknowledged feeling a sense of divine protection. "Rabbi [Efrem] Schwalb wasn't even supposed to speak this week," he noted. "He's retired, and was just filling in while Rabbi [Kenneth] Miller was away for the weekend for a family thing. If Rabbi Miller were speaking, no one would fall asleep, and the effects of Mr. [Stephen] Orenstein's reading wouldn't be enough."
"Well, for some of us, it's enough," he admitted. "Everyone prefers when the young guys read, because they go at a reasonable speed. Ironically, it's going to be harder now to institute the changes the younger people want, including limiting the Mi Shebeirachs, because the part of 'protect and deliver them from all their troubles' literally came true because of the recitations themselves."
Attendees alerted police to the presence of the suspicious-looking man who had fallen asleep in a back row of the sanctuary; police evacuated the building when they discovered his gun and explosives. Lulabi was arrested and charged with multiple offenses, and handed to the Department of Homeland Security for further interrogation and processing.
Eitz Chayim has hired a private security company to prevent further such incidents; Nassau County police officials have maintained increased vigilance and shorter response time since October 7, 2023, when the threats to Jewish institutions spiked.
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