The abuse of Shas went overboard this week. If, until recently, someone has been posing as the party's spiritual leader Rabbi Ovadia Yosef and uttering a series of crude expletives as if he were drunk, this week, someone attempted to pass himself off as Shalom Cohen, another member of the Council of Torah Sages [the body that holds the top rabbinic authority in Shas] and spewed -- not for the first time -- a slew of crass nonsense, the kind that would have any first-grade teacher give a student a time-out.
According to various reports, during Chief Sephardi Rabbi Yitzhak Yosef's swearing in ceremony, Cohen more or less compared the title of deputy minister of religious affairs, held by MK Rabbi Eliyahu Ben Dahan (Habayit Hayehudi), to a bedpan.
Seeing how this language seems to have come from a drug-addict on a higher-than-usual high, there is no doubt whatsoever that this was an imposter, whose sole purpose was to smear the members of the Council of Torah Sages. In any case, there's no doubt that the real Shalom Cohen, who is rumored to have the title of rabbi, did not make the statement. If he is indeed a rabbi, then he was surely not the one who made that foul remark.
That no one in Shas attempted to explain that "you have misunderstood the rabbi" in the two days following the nauseating statement attributed to Cohen, indicates that the comments were made by an imposter. Everyone is mum. They too know that explanations are unnecessary because it was not Shalom Cohen who blabbered, it was an imposter seeking only to make council members look loutish.
Which brings us to a significant moment in the history of the Jewish people:
A mother was working in the kitchen while her son was playing train conductor in the living room. "Dear passengers," the boy called, "You have arrived at the Netanya station. Now get the hell out of here, you idiot psychos." The language gets a little crasser, but this is not Shas, so we will skip it.
The mother heard the boy and ran to the living room, yelling: "What's going on here? What kind of language is that? You can't speak like that! Just you wait until your father gets home. Go stand in the corner until then."
The boy stood in the corner with his head down. After about an hour, the mother felt sorry for the boy, walked up to him and told him that if he promised to watch his language, he could play in the living room again.
The boy resumed his game and the mother went back to the kitchen. After a few minutes she heard the boy call, "Dear passengers, the management apologizes for the one-hour delay in the schedule caused by the lunatic in the kitchen."
Creativity
Who says the far far-right is devoid of creativity? Where do you think the creators of the movie World War Z got the idea that our separation fence was meant to stop the zombies.
Birds of a different feather
Years ago, I visited friends in Netanya the Shabbat before Sukkot. We went to a synagogue downtown and just before the Musaf prayers, the rabbi ascended the podium to give his sermon. He urged the people to buy several sets of the four species ahead of the holiday -- one for each child. "It costs less than a ticket to an Elitzur Netanya game," he said.
To clarify, Elitzur Netanya was at the height of its basketball glory in those days. An investor came in, brought in several black basketball players, paired them up with some quality local talent and for several seasons, the team took the league by storm. It became the home to names such as Willie Sims, Steve Malovic and Carl Neverson. Even David Blatt coached there. Basketball jugglers scorched the court, threatened Maccabi Tel Aviv's position in the league and even beat Real Madrid.
Back to the rabbi who said that a set of the four species costs less than a ticket to an Elitzur Netanya game -- right afterwards someone from the back benches raised his hand and said, "but rabbi, for the price of an Elitzur Netanya ticket you get five species."
Another clarification is needed here, for those who are not versed in the siddur: the terms "species" is sometimes used to describe those who are not Jewish. It appears in the Amidah prayer ("The Eighteen"), and it originally meant the early Christians. It did not wish them a blissful life, to put it mildly.
When the rabbi said "the four species" he meant the etrog, lulav, hadass and aravah, but when the man asked about the "five species" he meant the foreigners playing for Elitzur Netanya.
Which leads us back to Shalom Cohen and the excuses we are about to start hearing in his case. It is no simple task to come up with a Shas-style explanation, the likes of "you misunderstood the rabbi's intent." Party officials have had their noses buried in old books for days now, trying to find a different meaning for "bedpan" and what it may contain. These are dedicated people and soon one of them will leap up, as if he were Archimedes in his tub, and yell "Eureka!"
The need to get used to the crassness of the sages of Shas brings us to the story about a man who did not feel well and went to his doctor. The latter ran some tests, and after a few days called his patient back to his office. "I'm sorry, I have no choice but to tell you that you are terminally ill," he told him.
The stunned man remained silent for a few moments and then asked the doctor, "is there anything I can do about it-"
"Yes," the doctor said. "Go to the Dead Sea and have daily mud baths."
"Will it help-" the man asked-
"No," the doctor said. "But you'll get used to being in the dirt."
טעינו? נתקן! אם מצאתם טעות בכתבה, נשמח שתשתפו אותנו