Mistaken Identity

During an impassioned sermon on reward and punishment and our inevitable death, Rabbi Goldstein said forcefully, "I hate to break it to you but every member of this shul is going to die and face judgment one day." Early on in the sermon he noticed a gentleman smiling on the front row, smiling.

Rabbi Goldstein kept pushing his theme, "We can’t escape judgement. Every member of this shul is going to die." The guy smiled even more while everyone else in the congregation had a very somber look.

In an effort to get through to the guy, the Rabbi repeated it several more times forcefully, "EACH MEMBER OF THIS SHUL IS GOING TO DIE."

Each time the phrase was repeated, the man smiled more. As a matter of fact, at the end of the service the man was smiling from ear to ear, while everyone else was looking pretty grim. After the service Rabbi Goldstein came down from the lectern and pulled the man aside and said, "I don't get it. Every time I said, 'Every member of this shul is going to die,' you were laughing. Why?"

The man looked the Rabbi square in the eye and said confidently, "I'm not a member of this shul."