Culture

Shalom Auslander on the Rabbanut

I don’t think I really need to add anything.

Suddenly there came a furious knocking at my front door. Outside stood an ultra-Orthodox rabbi, with a big black hat, a long black beard, and a red canister of gasoline in his hand. Two young yeshiva students were at his side, one holding a clipboard, the other holding a baseball bat. I opened the door.
“Shalom Auslander?” the rabbi asked.
“Yes?”
“Shalom Auslander, the Jew?”
“What an odd question,” I said.
“Yes or no,” he said.
“Yes.”
The yeshiva student with the clipboard checked something off on his sheet of paper, and the rabbi handed me a small wooden box.
“It is my duty to inform you,” he said, “that you are no longer Jewish.”

HT Dan Sieradski via FB.

2 thoughts on “Shalom Auslander on the Rabbanut

  1. This is a silly fear-mongering peace that reminds me of the stories that the the right wing in America told about death panels.

  2. Except that the political right in this country doesn’t know how to stick a tongue in its cheek. They either meant that stuff about death panels or they meant to scare us with it.
    It’s pretty clear from both this piece and his other work that Auslander, on the other hand, usually has his tongue in his cheek. This isn’t mean to be scary. It’s meant to be satirical.

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