SMOKING APOLOGY

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OK, now I feel guilty. I don�t know if I should apologize, or not. Kinda like Eric and Mackey here. The ever elusive sponsor of the program I�m on, Gilad, came to visit us the other day. Some other people on the group were pissed at the program in general, basically due to the fact that they discovered 80% of what was told to us back home was an out and out lie, so the big guy had to be brought in to squelch the rebellion.

"OK, I understand you have problems?" We were ready for this. The rumor of his arrival had hit us, so we got together to make our list of grievances. I really didn�t have any of these problems, so I decided not to attend their meeting of premeeting bitching. It was decided that one of us would speak for all with the problems. Leeza stood up, and Gilad found himself pummeled with three sheets of dilemmas.

I imagine it was something like when the cathedral found those 96 theses nailed to the door.

Only in this case, instead of backing us into a corner over the matter of transubstantiation, Gilad passed the buck.

"I�m sorry, I�m not responsible for the money, I don�t know where it goes to."

"I�m sorry, I have no control over what they promised you in advance, back home...."

"I�m sorry the accommodations aren�t as good as we said, but this really wasn�t my department."

"I�m sorry we decided to break you up through the year, but that�s administration�s choice." Etc...

So, I was sitting quietly through this, until Gilad finally reached the end of the list. Relief enters his eyes. "OK, I�ll, uhm, see what I can do, ok, you all can go now. Oh wait, I have to talk to the Americans for a while. The rest of you can leave, have a nice day."

So, they leave, and we stay, and he gives some administration double talk that is way too boring to repeat here. He ends by saying, "Anything else?" At this point, everybody felt they had sufficiently grilled him, so they all appeared content. The one thing that really bothered me, nobody had mentioned.

"OK, one small question," I ask meekly. People are already giggling. "Uhm, how do I, well, ok, how do we know that we�re not going to see somebody smoking, and then being accused of accomplice to rape?" (In case you forgot\ I forgot to tell you, some British kids were in the same room as somebody else, as the somebody else smoked a cigarette on the Sabbath. The kids were kicked out, and the response was that staying with somebody who was smoking on Shabbas, was equivalent to witnessing a rape without doing anything about it.) More giggling.

"Easy, don�t do it." Wrong answer. The one thing that scares me, the one thing that gets me angry, is the idea of an impending doom.

"Are you kidding me? I have to be watching my back 24 hours a day, to make sure I�m not around anybody doing anything somewhat wrong?"

"Let me point out to you that the children in question agreed to leave after they were confronted with these problems."

"Yes, and if there�s a chance that I will be in the same room as somebody eating non-kosher food, and you will call me a sodomist, I would like to leave now also." I was supported, and the powers that be, left gruffly.

Thus the guilt.

I didn�t apologize during the ten days or repentance, though I really could have. My madricha came over to me later and told me later, and said I really shouldn�t be so scared. "They won�t do that to you, don�t worry. Those kids weren�t the angels you�ve made them out to be." So, in other words, they trumped up the sitting-in-the-same-room-as-a-smoker charge.

Well, no duh.

I�ve got enough adjectives stuck to me, that I don�t need B�nei Akiva sticking anything on me. The Brits didn�t care about it, but if anybody from my Hachshara gets kicked out, I�m going international with this.

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Get me outa here!!!

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Michael Kadish
"I know I don�t believe him. I don�t know much, but I know that there isn�t a single person in England named Tony." - Dave Barry
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