I stepped onto the No. 18 bus from Emek Rafaim into town Saturday night. There was a shabby looking man standing in the front of the bus in between the first rows of seats so that everybody entering the bus had to squeeze past him. In his hand he was holding the largest, most obviously hametz hamburger I've ever seen. (Hametz refers to leavened food that Jews refrain from eating during the holiday of Pesach, which is underway until Monday sundown.) I took a seat, thinking "to each his own," but for the majority of the ride, the four adolescent girls were trying to explain to the meshugeneh that it's a hag and what he was eating was not kasher. He acted ignorant (just an act, I'm sure) and said, "What? You want some?" and would shove the burger in their faces. This went on for some time, and the girls asked if he was a Jew, to which he said, "I am a dirty Jew." (Read: Self-loathing Jew, we all know the type.) He was literally shoving the burger inches from the girls' faces and also trying to shake their hands and asking, "Do you want to kiss me?" They were essentailly cornered and were yelling, "You're not kasher!"
Finally, my adreneline pumping, I stood up, went over to the man and got in his face. "Listen," I bellowed with my index finger in his face, "what you're doing is very rude. Very rude! It's a Jewish holiday where we don't eat bread, so stop swinging your damn burger around." He looked shocked.
"But I am hungry," he protested.
"Fine, you have every right to eat your hametz but just do it somewhere else," I pointed to a seat behind me. "Go sit there and eat your burger. Sit down right there. Go!" He hesitated, and started inching toward the seat, and I went back to mine. ("Kol hakavod!" someone yelled.)
With his tail between his legs, but indignant nonetheless, he looked back at the girls and then at me, "What, is she your mother?"
"Yeah, that's right, I'm their mother," I mumbled, and got off at my stop.
