Comments (0)Rebbe On Wheels
October 16, 2009Neil Rubin
Editor
So it’s a typical day of shooting through Brooklyn when you suddenly slam on the brakes, back up, rub your eyes and wonder if you took too many happy pills last night.
Yes, that actually is a huge Star of David made out of 50 rubber chickens peering down at your punim. And, reports the Israeli newspaper Ha’aretz, its Yiddish wording offers a free bike loan to area Satmar Hasidim.
Baruch Herzfeld, owner of a small bicycle repair shop (just below his cell phone company), is loaning out the 500 used bikes he just received from Japan.
It’s his effort to create peace in the ’hood as area hipsters and Hasidim battle over proposed bike lanes. Mr. Herzfeld, a modern Orthodox Jew, likes the idea, according to Ha’aretz; Hasidim do not.
He figures if more Hasidim could have fun popping a wheelie or peeling a skid mark, tensions would drop like a frozen matzah ball tossed from atop the Empire State building onto the Rev. Al Sharpton’s limo.
How could some Hasidim argue against the bike lanes? Well, Tevyeh, glad you asked. As one man said, “It’s uncommon here… That’s how it is. I don’t know how or why, but that’s how it became.”
Tradition! … Tradition!