Black Jacket

Warning--This would probably be better understood with some Jewish knowledge.

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Devorah's message was that we were to spend that weekend in Jerusalem. Saturday would be spent in Maya Shirim. (Weekends in this country are Friday and Saturday.) It was Thursday, Purim, when I was told.

Purim, in Israel also goes on for two days. I decided that wearing the costume I wore on Thursday, in Peduel, would not be appropriate to wear in Jerusalem. A guy walking around the capitol of the Holy Land, as Jesus? They'd at least think I had Jerusalem Syndrome. I dressed up as a gangster, wore an all black suit and shirt, and looked like I was straight out of Reservoir Dogs. I felt it was a bit aprapo, wearing all black to Maya Shirim. (Actually going as Jesus would be a bit aprapo to, but the idea was not to be insulting.)

So, we went as guests of the man who had been the speaker of the Ultra Orthodox group, when we had the sessions with all the factions of Israel. I have to say, the whole thing disturbed me. After settling in at the various houses people offered, we went to the synagogue, for the Purim tish.

The sight of five hundred men, wearing black, and of course, dressed exactly the same, shuckling, was enough to...well, frighten isn't the right word, but it all looked odd, and out of place. But there was very little of "out of place stuff." It was weird having the women treated like servants on Friday night, them not even entering the dining room, except to give us the food. But what really bothered me the most was their need to be nice. I'm not talking curteous, which would have been a welcome change of pace up here, but missionairy, "Of course, anything you want, don't be afraid to ask, here are keys to a new car, oh, no problem, please, just a friendly gift" type thing, and you know it's an attempt to prosthelatize.

When we went to the tish, while five hundred Chabadniks (I think...) chuckled and watched, they allowed us guests to dance on the table. We were the only guests there, though. So, we got to dance with their Rebbe (who we were not the guest of. If we had been, perhaps this would have made more sense.) which I think is supposed to be a larger honor than we made it out to be.

It was as if we were famous interviewers, the walls were crumbled and we were shown everything. Or, rather we were shown what they showed us. It seemed a bit fake. The dvar torahs all seemed to be watered down, something that I knew would be under the level of these people, just to sink to the level they assumed we were at. Unfortunately, we have been over the assumed level for a good ten years.

They really wanted you to accept, and embrace the black hattedness. They're extremely eager to please. It was very difficult for me not to "accidentally" mention their belief in the Rebbe. Fortunately for me, others of us were not so hesitant. Naturally, they got the nonconfrontational answer. "OK, some people believe that he's the Mashiach. Some people don't. I don't know."

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OK, we now return...

Then, when they finish being exceedingly nice to you, reminiscent of...Oh, I don't know... a missionary, they try to hit you with the powers of Very Religious Judiasm. The latest way that people have been struck by the "awesome power of Torah" has been through the bible codes. For those of you who don't know what this is, they've put the Torah into computers, and look for modern day things by using skip letter patterns. For instance if you took every eightieth letter starting from a certain point, it will spell out "Titanic," and then go on to say "extremely overrated movie." OK, generally it's much more important subjects, (Though I think literally only God knows why that movie won all those awards.) but everywhere I 've been taught here, every Rabbi has said something along the lines of "cute...but meaningless." It's generally given little to no credence.

It's fantastic, however, to quickly "upgrade the observances" of the non-religeous. That is joke that's used to describe the Yeshiva Aish Hatorah. The kids, who have to fail a test to get in, sit at te computers most of the day, and leave the Yeshiva, after six weeks with payis down to their ankles. Torah codes are a form of mysticism that is very visible, and easily found, and thus easy to get followers.

They always say the same thing, too, when attempting to introduce you. "I'm not good at the mathimatics or anything, but these are impossible to be there by chance." ^Really.^ As part of their missionairiness, they gave me a very nice book on it for free. It gives you some nice examples of the torah codes, how it predicted various wars and such, but never goes into how "impossible" it is to find these codes.

(If math is not your forte, skip the next paragraph.)

Let's examine this for a sec. I did this by myself. There are 304,805 letters in the Torah. (I do get bored here, but that number was actually from the book.) Now, in Hebrew, there really aren't any 10 point scrabble letters, but lets err on the side of caution, and say that any of the twenty-two letters of the alphabet comprises one-twenty-fifth of the Torah. In that case, there are over 12192 of any letter then in the torah. To take any of the first letter followed by any of the second letter in the code, you square the number. (Codes go backwards and forwards, and circle back to the beginning when they run out of room in Devarim.) Any two letter combinations will make 148,649,741 two letter combinations. Divide by twenty-five (rounding down, of course), there should be 5,945,990 of any three letter combination, 237,840 for four letters, etc. Not until nine letters is it less than 1:2 odds. Then, of course it's really less then that, because of different names. If we were looking for the Prime Minister, and we couldn't find "Netanyahu," we could look for "Bibi," then "brother of Yoni," or "brother of Entebbe," or "disgrace," or whatever, until, ^miraculously^ you find what you need.

Of course, they don't mention this. They mention how miraculous it all is.

Commercial break:

OK, we now return...

Perhaps I'm being to harsh. Maybe they were just being nice, and I'm naturally slanted against them, due to the ^lovely specimen^ of Chabad we have back home. Still, they seemed so fake, so eager to please. Final example.

I did something really stupid. I mean, drinking soap, jumping off the balcony, getting called a terrorist, etc., those were all stupid on my part. But, I went on a Friday night to the largest Haredi synogague in Israel, took off my black jacket, and couldn't remember where I put it. It was mindboggling. I mean, at least if you have to find a needle in a haystack, you can just take a magnet to help you. Here, I had to look through hundreds of black jackets, scattered all over a synogague to find one I wasn't even that familiar with.

So, a couple of the Haredim, one at a time, notices that a kid with a pony tail is going through the jackets. This conversation went through over half a dozen times. "Did you lose something?"

"Yeah...I took off my jacket, and now I can't find it."

"Don't worry, I'm sure it'll turn up."

"Yeah, I know, but..."

"I'm sure nobody stole it."

"I hadn't really thought anybody had, but it's still not going to be that easy to find."

"Don't worry. You're Jewish. We love our fellow Jew. Oh, wait, well, hold on, if you're not Jewish, we love you too."

"...Actually, I am Jewish."

"Either way. I'm sure nobody took it. I'll go look over there. What does it look like?"

"It's black."

And they went over and looked. I have no idea what they looked for, but they searched. When I finally found it, (fallen under my seat) I went to find each of these guys who were looking for the jacket to stop.

Again, maybe it's just me...but doesn't this strike you as downright fake?
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Michael Kadish

"The next time I send a damn fool for something, I go myself." - Michael Curtiz
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