Religious Jews can be real jerks

Yay for passover in Israel. In the states it can be tough to keep passover; our friends will break the rules, we will keep them but still struggle to avoid temptation, etc. But here, it's easy peasy. The grocery stores are only kosher for passover. I've been searching for bread in Herzliya with no success thus far. Too bad.

You may be wondering why I'm angry at Orthodox Judaism right now. Well, it stems from an event that occurred this past Saturday. Shaun, Courtney, Torey, Jules and I had been relaxing in a park, appreciating the nice Jerusalem weather on the calm sabbath afternoon. We thought, shit, its almost passover, lets go get some lunch with some bread before it's forbidden! So we went to the closest restaurant, sat outside, and ordered Sloppy Joes and Club sandwiches.

Well, supposedly you're not supposed to eat bread after 10am the day of the first seder if its on a saturday night. Even if we had known this, hey, I need a sloppy joe and the Big Guy upstairs will understand if I have one final sandwich before depriving myself for the rest of the week.

The Haredi Orthodox Jews didn't sympathize. Mid-sandwich we heard some screaming and chanting coming from around the corner, assuming it was some rally that would pass. As the group of 40 or so Black-hat men approached, we realized that they weren't on a parade around town: they were coming for us.

The group stood in front of our table screaming "Shabbat!" and "Hametz!" (levened bread), almost like a trained acappella group. THen they would go silent and one would scream something like "Assooora leechol hametz beyom Shabbas a kodesh leefney Hag Pesach!" (its forbidden to eat hametz on shabbat before the holiday of passover) or something like that, and the second he finished his sentence the rest of them would go off screaming again and pretending to cry to the Lord. Or maybe they weren't pretending. Maybe my sloppy joe brought tears to their eyes. Speaking of their eyes, they had to shut them because they aren't allowed to look at women. Can you imagine? Not looking at women? And I thought that my life was tough. Geez.

Anyway, I decided to do the right thing, which I thought they would be happy about: I told them they were right, I threw my sandwich down and said "Yah, It is forbidden! You are so right!I am not going to finish this sandwich!" They weren't amused. But the Cops came, and all was safe.

The whole thing, in my opinion, was embarrassing for religious Judaism. Even if it's forbidden to eat bread, its just as much of a sin to pass judgment on someone else. If Israel doesn't survive as a state, it won't be because of our battle with the arab nations- it will be our inability to coexist as Jews. Let's hope things change.

I'll be in Herzliya this week until Thursday, when I travel on my adventure to Eilat and Petra, Jordan. It will be One Man (me) and 5 Women (Team Canada). Should be some great great times. YAY ABROAD