Nooks and Crannies, Crooks and Nannies
Note: The above title has nothing to do with the below content.
So, it's Wednesday. Dig, man. We all know what Wednesday means:
- The laundromat downstairs is closed.
 is on tonight. In its final season (*symbol of a sad face*)
- "Law & Order" is on. This doesn't mean as much as it used to, now that we have cable and "Law & Order" is on constantly.
- Some time around noon, my cellphone will ring. Vibrate, actually. I will look at the number, recognize it, and, as I have been doing every Wednesday for over a year now, not pick it up. The caller will leave a message, which I will delete. Before deleting it I may or may not hear the first few words, which are always the same:
"Ray, this is Rabbi Stone, calling from the Mitzvah Tank...."
To anyone to whom this sounds a bit outlandish, I swear I am not making this up. The Mitzvah Tank is a bunch of Hasiddic Jews (I'm sure I misspelled Hassiddicc but I don't really care) who roam around NYC in an RV and try to recruit non-orthodox Jews, like myself, into a more rigorous form of Judaism. Around the holidays they are especially active:
- On Chanuka they hand out free crappy menorahs and ask you if you know the prayers.
- Around Passover they pass out crappy matzoh and ask if you know the prayers and the dietary rules.
- Around Sukkot they try to get you to say a couple prayers while you hold two produce items, one of which looks like a leek and another that's some kind of big lumpy lemon. I have no recollection as to what these things are called or what they mean, except that Sukkhot is somehow all about produce. We've also got a holiday about trees.
Up until the time I had the misfortune to run into Rabbi Stone, my experiences with the Mitzvah Tank had been mercifully brief. For one thing, I have no interest in beefing up my Judaism to appeal to ultra-conservative Jews, whose wives have to dress badly and wear bad wigs and do whatever their husbands tell them to. I see the young Hasiddick guys on the train sometimes, and they walk with a swagger and have their stupid stove-ipe hats cocked like a bunch of gangsters. And a bunch of gangsters a lot of them are. Furthermore - and maybe it's just me - but in a world full of religion-based violence and aggression and conflict, is it not a bit offputting to call your vehicle of religious deliverance a Tank? For those unfamiliar to Judaism, a mitzvah is a good deed; so presumably these guys see themselves as blasting good deeds all over the fucking city. I'm sure Bush would love an actual mitzvah tank to go along with all of his liberating forces and peacemaking bombs. He and PM Sharon could drive a mitzvah tank into the West Bank and spray teenagers with explosive good deeds. In an inspiring "Pay It Forward" kind of cycle, I'm sure some Palestinians would be inspired to return the favor by stupidly exploding themselves on an Israeli bus full of citizens.
Anyhoo, 'twas a fine autumn evening in Williamsburg, Brooklyn when I met Rabbi Stone, a man who I now know to be persistent to the point of stupidity and/or lunacy. In other words, a zealot. I was out with Rosie and couple of friends - I'll call them Doug and Allen - and we'd had a couple drinks, I think, and were probably on the way to have a couple more. The Mitzvah Tank, which I had previously only seen in Manhattan, was parked on Bedford Avenue, the main commercial stretch of the neighborhood. We were half a block away, soon to pass them, and I was preparing myself. As we approached, one of the 3 hassidz standing in front of the open RV - pardon me, tank - gave out his standard pickup line:
"Excuse me, are you Jewish?"
I don't know if they ask people who look vaguely Jewish, if they ask all white people, or what. But they always ask me. The first couple times I said "yes," and was subsequently forced to shake a lumpy lemon with a leek, and another time I took home a shitty menorah. But then I started saying "no." Which is not accurate. But if I say yes.... The right thing to say, I suppose, would be "Yes I am Jewish, and quite satisfied with my own Judaism, thank you very much." But that would take longer to say than "no" and would probably be less effective.
Back to Williamsburg: I said yes, even though I had geared myself up to say no. Next thing I knew, Rosie and I were inside the RV talking to Rabbi Stone. He asked if we lived together, whether we ate kosher, all sorts of annoying questions. Then he gave us some shitty matzoh to eat for passover. I noticed they had a cardboard box with big jugs of liquor; I asked if they were having a party later.
"We're having a party right now!," he said.
He poured me a shot of scotch, then had me say a liquor-drinking prayer before I knocked it back. Then, just before we got the hell out of there he asked for my number, and, like an idiot, I gave him my cellphone number. I figured if he called a couple times and I didn't call back, he would stop calling.
Clearly that is not the case.
Over a year later, at around noon today, I got the call. I didn't pick up.
One of these days I wanna pick up, and say, Look, Rabbi Stone, I am perfectly happy with my Judaism and why don't you just keep yours to yourself. I like living in sin with my perfectly Jewish girlfriend, and I'm very fond of her hair and her taste in clothes, and besides, I don't really feel like dressing like a jackass, or acting like one, either. In other words FUCK YOU Rabbi Stone, Fuck you and the tank you rode in on. I'm as Jewish as I wanna be beeeeeeeeeYOTCH!
Love
Monty
10:50:07 AM 
|
|
