Monday, December 31, 2012

Moshe Aryeh Friedman's First Day of Seminary

BS"D

Bnois Soro d'Antverpen really was nothing more than a finishing school, a place where the most traditional of the Chassidic girls of Antwerpen enrolled while waiting for a shidduch. Rare was the girl who even bothered finishing the entire year's curriculum, and many were the lechaims and vorts to which its beloved principal, Rebbetzin Soro Goldman, was invited.

The school was not named for its principal, but it might as well have been, as the two were inseparable. Rebbetzin Goldman knew or remembered every girl who ever set foot in her seminary, going back over forty years to when she took over as principal after a career of teaching girls that began in a D.P. camp in Germany.

She most certainly did not remember having a Masha Esther Friedman who was supposed to enroll in the middle of the "academic" year, and she was shocked to see this name penciled into her list of students, and in an odd handwriting at that. She did not even have to ask her assistant or any of her teachers if they had altered the roster, as she was an expert at recognizing handwriting, and this scribbled name was completely alien to her in appearance.

Suddenly, a man with a squeaky voice piped up in broken Flemish: "Mrs. Goldman, I want to enroll in your seminary." She replied: Reb Yid, today is not Peerim, so unless you are here to enroll your daughter,  I can't help you. She then turned around, only to quickly recognize the very scourge of frime Antwerpen, the one and only Moshe Aryeh Friedman, dressed in a shpitzel and housecoat.

"Rabbi Friedman, I know who you are. I would welcome your daughter and give her another chance in life, so I don't know why you disguised yourself to see me. You could have sent your wife, or come as you are. I don't turn anyone away."

This was very true. She certainly never turned anyone away for inability to pay tuition, and while the school was for the most haimish of the haimish, she was not averse to accepting girls from broken homes, Russian and Israeli immigrant girls, or others who did not fit her school's mold. However, the principal was not prepared for what came next:

"No, I am wanting to enter your school, and the law says that I can. So, where is the first morning class held today?"

"Rabbi Friedman, this is a private school. The only place I can keep you is in the janitor's bathroom downstairs, if you need to rest for a few minutes."

"Thank you! Tell me, the janitor he has maybe a wrench, a pliers, whatever? I open the pipes, flood your school, you get a new campus!"

Meanwhile, Tamar Moshashvili was approaching the office. Tamar was one of those girls whom the Rebbetzin accepted out of sympathy. Her father was in prison for robbing jewelry stores, and her mother begged with the principal to accept her and teach her to live a better life.

She screamed in disgust: "FRIEDMAN! The little rat who went to Iran? My father's friends know all about you, what are you doing here?"

"Tamar, calm down! How do you recognize him anyway, I asked you not to talk about TV and video and newspapers here, and I know you don't daven at K'hal Chassidim, so you never saw him there!"

"Mrs. Goldman, everyone knows Friedman. He's a scum sewer rat and the sun off the beach. Do you need help from my uncle to take care of him? I'll call him right now!"

She pulled out her smartphone, which had resided in the window of a local electronics store until a week ago, when her brother disabled the store alarm, removed the phone and a few lesser model smartphones from their abode after breaking the display with a hammer, and gave it to her as a birthday gift.

"Tamar, that phone is NOT ALLOWED here! Please, I want to give you a chance, but we have rules here."

Before Tamar, who stood a good head taller than Moshe Aryeh Friedman, knew it, Friedman was trying in vain to pull the phone out of her hands.

"See," the diminutive man said, "I can be a good tznius patrol officer for your hylige school!"

"Rabbi Friedman, you are lucky Tamar doesn't take out a knife and cut you like an apple for my Shabbos kigel, and this time she'd be right!" Let me take you to the janitor's room, so you can cool down before you leave here. The wrenches and pliers are locked up...and she whispered to herself...you should be too!" "Tamar, you can leave that phone here. I don't know what it is or how to use it, but my daughter Rochele's husband Yankel Feldstein from the electronics store near the train station can teach me."

Tamar shivered with fright upon realizing that her principal knew where her brother had obtained the phone, and Friedman was about to shiver with cold as he was wearing nothing but a flimsy house coat as he was escorted to the frigid basement of the building by Rebbetzin Goldman.
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To be continued tomorrow, the first day of the new year of welfare distribution.

Fweeky Fweedy is back - and so is Creedmoor

BS"D

Newsflash:

Moshe Aryeh (Fweeky Fweedy) Friedman, the pesky, minuscule crawling insect who put the -twerp in Antwerp, is back in the news. He styles himself the Rosa Parks of the frimme velt, having successfully used civil courts to force a girls' school in Antwerp to register his sons. Rumors that he himself has donned a sheitel so he could enter seminary are now being investigated. (At present, we only know that the Bnois Sooreh Laundry and Cooking Academy reports the mysterious appearance of an extra student named Masha Friedman in its student records, with tuition fully paid.)

When Friedman is back, so is Creedmoor. We hope to have an entirely fictional interview with the one and only Fweeky Fweedy, as well as news from the Admou"r's luxurious new underground kever and residence, tomorrow.