Monday, June 02, 2008


Pritzes

Solomonia posted this story:

Aided by their allies, the staunch anti-Zionist goofballs of Neturei Karta -- the self-styled messianists who consider Israel a secular abomination -- verbally and physically assaulted entrants to the event.

Yesterday the Montreal Jewish community marked Jerusalem Day by its traditional annual ritual: The March to Jerusalem. Along the 10 km route which ambled among Cote St. Luc's and Hampstead's neat streets with their fine houses and well-tended flower beds, a group of Naturei Karta was standing in demonstration mode, holding signs that denounced Israel and Zionists as the great heretics against Hashem. These signs were punctuated by Palestinian flags.

Having grown in Israel, where the Jerusalem Naturei-Karta were in the habit of flying black flags on Israel's Independence Day, where they refuse to pay taxes and their lingua franca of choice is Yiddish , I am left quite unfazed by such demonstrations. I categorize them as the kinds of social or cultural manifestations which I will never be able to understand (something along the lines of Reverend Wright's "God Damn America" position). I mean, how can you possibly explain a sign that recommends: "Jews submit to the nations of the world, from Canada to Palestine"? Who, in their right minds, would choose dhimmitude over independence and freedom?

Well, they have a right to their opinion. In Israel, they are not half as docile as they are here. There they are not beyond throwing rocks on cars driving on Shabbat, vandalizing bus stops where an ad shows a woman's bare body in a bikini, or, as happened to someone I personally knew, empty a bucket of dirty water over a woman who dared to walk in the streets of Me'a Shearim holding her fiance's hand. So there might be something to be gained from Jewish independence after all, right? I can't imagine them behaving in this aggressive way in Montreal. So much, then, for their exhortation on behalf of Jewish subjecthood.

As my eight-year old daughter and I were walking by this pathetically ridiculous parade, I heard one of them yelling in our direction: Pritzes!

"Pritze" is a Yiddish corruption of the Hebrew word "Prutza" which means, a whore.

Need more be said?

0 Comments:

Post a Comment

<< Home