A couple of weeks ago Joe (chess master/president Holocaust Survivors of Arad) informed me that the city was giving a box of matzah and a bottle of wine to each survivor for Pesach (Passover). The catch was, if someone would come and get it!
I was still reeling from what had happened last night at Polly’s when Joe told me “Today! Today! Right now! Right now!” and off we went.
When we finally found this warehouse, its loading dock was stocked with boxes. Instead of one box of matzah and one bottle of wine, each box was packed with all kinds of stuff Kosher for Pesach, 3 bottles of wine, and weighing around 50 lbs.
Well there was just the 3 of us. Joe at his age and having a bad heart, I don’t let him do any lifting, thus we were down to us 2.
Thinking fast, I said, “let’s store all the boxes in the storefront until tomorrow”, which took 3 trips.
While approaching the storefront on the 3rd trip my phone began to ring, it was Lura saying that a couple of Dati (ultra orthodox Jews) were outside our house.
I picked up Viorel who is a faithful volunteer at the storefront. He has a bad heart but doesn’t want to miss a thing. He was complaining about not being at Polly’s last night.
When the 2 Dati saw the 4 of us pull up, one quickly grabbed his cell phone. Joe asked them a few questions in Yiddish. Susan, my sister-in-law, assured us that she’d be okay, so we left, made 8 deliveries and called it quits till tomorrow.
After dropping the guys off, I just wanted to kick back and watch 2 hrs of American Idol. Before I could kick off my shoes there appeared 18 Dati in front of our house.
We began playing praise music, they wouldn’t budge. I decided to make a quick run to the storefront and get our shofar, planning on blowing it for immediate help from above. When I returned, 3 guys were blocking our front gate, the other 15 were ready and waiting. I asked them nicely about 3 times to move so that I could get into my house. Then I started telling them to move. Then I started yelling at them to move and let me enter my house.
One of the three put a sign right up in my face. I slapped the sign to one side with my forearm. The sign ripped, knocking one of the guy’s glasses off, which he managed to catch. The 3 lunged toward me. I went into a stance holding the shofar like a baseball bat, when a newspaper reporter’s camera snapped.
After they had the picture, the path was cleared and I entered the gate feeling that I was set up.
All these guys in front of our house, not letting me in, made me worry about Lura and Susan. Had something gone terribly wrong? Perhaps I overreacted. Some say I should have called the cops. Anyhow, when I got in the house I began blowing the shofar and they immediately left.
We later found out that 20 Dati were at Yakim’s as well as Polly’s while we were having our ordeal.
Edwin Beckford
(4/04)