While driving around in the city this past Friday afternoon with my good friend whom you know from the comments as Ultracrepidarian, we pulled up alongside a white Econoline van that bore a NY license plate which read ‘ALEPH’, as well as kabbalistic symbols and -ahem- forbidden names of G-d scrawled across its side. As we sat at a traffic light somewhere on 2nd Ave., just shy of the driver’s side window, we asked each other—what the hell could that possibly be for? Some creepy pop kabbalah cult? Some whacky kabbalistic missionaries? Did Philip Berg get a van? No… not quite.

As the light changed, and we inched up further, the driver’s door revealed the true nature of this provoking vehicular display. It wasn’t some freaky religious group after all. Rather, it was Aleph Heating & Air Conditioning Service. Ultra and I both plotzed. “It’s like that episode of Seinfeld with the janitor’s cult,” he noted. “Yes, we fix your air conditioning good. Take this red string!” It was then that I wished I had my camera so that I could share this odd curiosity with all of you. Fortune, however, was not on my side at this time.

Our story took on an additionally amusing yet almost eerie turn, when I flicked on my computer after Shabbos last night, and there, awaiting me in my inbox, was a photo of the very van itself, snapped by Jewschool’s own John Brown, and passed on to me with the same bungling “What the fuck?” sensation which had stricken Ultra and I.

Thus, ladies and gentlemen, behold The Kabbalah Van:

Fookin’ spectacular.