Thinking of the lists that Heshy and other contributors are making, I thought of another one — things that piss of frum people, but the items themselves might not really be all that bad. And these are fun to orchestrate if you can.
Sure the gays piss off frum people and so do people who insist on paying with the credit card, send their frum kids to public school, or vote for liberals. But those are too easy and no fun to poke at. I was thinking of the more peculiar annoyances.
- Bad Good Shabboses. There are many variations of this theme. e.g. when Conservative Jews yell out “Gut Shabbos” while I’m walking to shul, but while they’re driving to their shul. When people who are dressed all weekday-ish pass by and say “Gut shabbos” to a group of people clearly dressed for shabbos. When non-Jews say “happy sabbath”. When people say good shabbos on yom tov. When the zealously bnei-akiva guy insists on “ShaBAAT ShaLOOOM” to everyones’ “gut SHAAbes”.
- Women acting empowered. Many examples of this one too — everything from women wearing kippot, tallit, tefilin, insisting on carrying a Torah, answering “Amen Yehei Shmei Rabbah” really loudly and with a yeshivish whine, bowing down all the way on Yom Kippur, dancing on Sinchat Torah, making the Hamotzie because they can, telling the men to leave the table so that they can have a women’s mezuman. Even just walking around the shul with a gemara will get people pissed off.
- Baali Teshuvas when they are right. They have this uncanny ability to remember the easily forgotten halachot that they just learned. Pisses me off when they carefully say “I don’t think you are allowed to squeeze the tea bag on shabbos”, “My rabbi says you cannot use that kind of sponge.” Doh — the’re right. damn.
- Non-Jews who know Torah. This one give frummies the total creepies. There are non-Jews who can read the Torah, learned gemara, and know enough yeshivish to be the building manager of the entire borough of Queens. Scary. Especially when they are 99% on target with their cultural understanding of our society but then blow it on a detail (like thinking we actually drink Manachevitz).
- Comments on blogs. Seems like the worst thing you can do is comment on a post on VIN or YWN in support of the person they are trying to trash in their “objective” news story. Any hint that you are on the wrong side of their haskafa, and you can attract an army of comments back. Fun on a lazy Sunday.
- Non-Frum Spiritualism. Like those guys who wear ponytails and tcheiles tzisis on their heavy Mexican Baja ponchos and totally know all of kabalah and all the most esoteric gemaras that make absolutely no sense, but they never show up at minyan, never shower, and occasionally show up at a shiva minyan with a wacky pot-inspired dvar torah that is full of sources that you can’t shulg-up.
- Vegetarian and sushi places located right in middle of the Jewish Community. Obvious safe-treif opportunities — lost.
How else can you piss off frummies?
– When you daven for the amud and sing differently the parts that are supposed to be sang.
– Add a yerushalayim shel zahav tune to the Musaf kedusha
– When you say brochos with a messed up israeli accent.
Or, sing the Rosh Chodesh/Yom Tov tune for a regular shabbos Musaf. Most of the shul will just play along, but there is always one hocker who will insist on booming amen, modim, ect in the shabbos tune.
hahah, I think it is worst the opposite way, when you are supposed to do a Yom tif tune and keep on going with the regular shabbos one….
> Women acting empowered. Many examples of this one too — everything from women wearing kippot
That’s not being empowered, it’s cross-dressing. There’s no mitzvah to wear a yarmulke, it’s just a peculiar custom Jewish men picked up sometime in the last couple of hundred years.
The rest of your list is right on.
You are unfortunately right about women being empowered. However, you claim that wearing a head covering is a peculiar custom picked up in the last couple hundred years.
I believe this to be untrue. In kiddushin 31a, it says that Rabbi Yehoshua ben Levi never walked 4 amos bemakom zekufah without his head uncovered.
The Taz, Rif, and Rosh write that having a head covering should not be only a custom but a law, and this goes into the shulchan aruch as well. So, your statement that wearing a yarmulke is a 200 year old custom is untrue.
It’s a minhag d’yisroel, so it’s much stronger than a normal minhag (it’s actually on a stronger level than waiting 1/3/6 hours from milk to meat!)
-When asked if you wanna learn, answer with any of the following “Learn what? PHP, HTML, Sql? Linear Equations? Integrals?”
-Say tefilah leshalom hamedinah after torah reading
Is it me, or do Frummies use “learn” where regular English speakers would say “study”?
In college, I never had a roommate who said “I’m going to the coffeeshop/library to learn.”
we do say “learn”, but it only refers to torah
My point exactly.
If a Goy were to walk into a Bet Midrash and describe what the people there were doing, he/she would say “studying”.
Gentiles/non-observant Jews say “learn” as well. But they attach it to something more specific. “They are learning to be rabbis.”
Probably we say it because the yiddish word is lernen.
I asked a classmate while we were writing a paper where she “was holding”.
I found out that we don’t say that in English. I assume the phraseology comes from yiddish.
ha! good story, I always screw the yiddish/english grammar up
There’s no separate word in Yiddish for “to study”? (In German it’s studieren.)
I otherwise would have thought that the Yiddish (and English) phraseology would have been based on consistent translation of the root “l-m-d” as “learn” even where contextually “study” would probably be equally suitable, perhaps to distinguish it in translation from “d-r-sh”.
“was holding”?
WTF does that mean?
Yeshivish people say that. ie)
2 people learning together and one says to the other after losing their place “where were we holding” as in, where are we up to.
one rabbi holds that the halacha is….and the other rabbi holds… Holds, referring to, believes, is of the opinion, says.
love #6.
oh, thats funny
Just thought of this one: cellphones or pagers going off during davenning — even worse a flashbulb during shabbos — and when you have no clue who slipped in a camera.
I don’t know where to complain about “frum” hypocrites, but I guess this is as good a place as any. What I mean about “frum” hypocrites is people who run crooked businesses and use the profits to have yeshivas, etc. named for deceased members of their family, or people who feel that they don’t need to pay taxes. I wish that we could take sanctions against the “frum” hypocrites that run crooked businesses by denying them the possibility of having an aliyah. Instead, we honor them at banquets and describe them as major philanthropists. Sometimes, we even raise them to the level of tzadikim. To me, it is evidence that we live in a warped society.
When the zealously bnei-akiva guy insists on “ShaBAAT ShaLOOOM” to everyones’ “gut SHAAbes”.
They don’t have to be BA or even RZ… just Sephardi. (Without the long vowels, of course.)
That’s right, I don’t want to hear any Germanic in my Semitic greetings.