“Whew! That was heavy!” Shimmy said, after he and Yitzy dumped the bulging trash bags into the garbage can and closed the lid.
Both boys’ ears perked up as they heard the sound of the ice cream truck coming down the street.
“Oooh I wonder if they have cholov yisroel ice cream?” Shimmy mused.
“Nah, look it’s not even a Jewish driver,” Yitzy said as the truck approached.
“It couldn’t hurt to ask,” suggested Shimmy, as the two boys walked towards the ice cream truck.
“Whooo! Ice cream!”
Shimmy and Yitzy jumped out of the way as their neighbor, Stevey Risnik, rushed past them, several dollar bills clenched tightly in his fist.
“Uh... is that kosher?” asked Shimmy as the driver handed Stevey a dripping triple-scoop cone with Swiss chocolate, English toffee, and French vanilla ice cream, topped with caramel sauce and chocolate sprinkles.
“Sure, why not?” Stevey shrugged, as he gave his cone a big slurping lick. “I asked the man what the ingredients were and he said it was probably just milk and sugar. Nothing treif about that, right?”
“Another triple-scoop deluxe for you boys?” the ice cream man said, offering a similar-looking cone to Shimmy and Yitzy.
“Uh no thanks,” Yitzy said. “But what about the packaged ice cream sandwiches? Can we take a look at them? I want to see if they have a kosher certification.
“Sure, but I’m pretty sure it’s just milk and sugar,” the man said, handing Yitzy an ice cream sandwich.
“Is it good?” asked Shimmy hopefully.
“No,” answered Yitzy, handing the treat back to the driver. “Thank you sir.”
Shimmy and Yitzy turned back to Stevey, who now had chocolate ice cream dripping from the tip of his nose as he tried to lick the bottom English toffee layer of his ice cream cone.
“I’m so glad I wasn’t born super-religious like you boys,” Stevey said. “Or as you guys would say: ‘Thank you Hashem for not making me so religious’. You guys must be so jealous of me.”
Shimmy and Yitzy looked horrified. “Jealous?” they both said together.
Just then a UPS truck pulled up.
“Oooh it’s here!” Stevey exclaimed.
“What’s here?” asked Shimmy.
“Well you know how you guys have a whole wall of Jewish books in your house? Well now we will too! My father ordered the brand new Seder Hakulot - it was written by my great-uncle Haskell. It’s bigger than the whole Gemara and Shulchan Aruch combined and it contains a heter for anything you can imagine! That’s why in my house we stopped buying food with a hechsher - because Uncle Haskell said if the ingredients look kosher it’s fine.”
“But Stevey,” Yitzy said. “I just saw on those ice cream sandwiches that one of the ingredients was glycerin. Glycerin could be made from animal fat - did you know that?”
“Well I’m sure Uncle Haskell wrote something about that in Seder Hakulot,” Stevey said dismissively. “He already found us a heter to read goyishe books and magazines if we don’t wear glasses.”
“But you never wear glasses,” Yitzy said.
Stevey just shrugged. “I’m Jewish in my heart. That’s what counts.”
“Is everything okay?” asked Totty as the boys walked back into their home looking disturbed.
Shimmy and Yitzy explained what had just happened with Stevey outside.
“And you’re upset that you couldn’t have the ice cream?” Totty asked.
“No!” said Shimmy. “We would never dream of eating something that didn’t have a good hechsher, the same way we would never want to eat dog food, no matter how delicious it looked!”
“It’s just we can’t believe a Yid would talk like that,” said Yitzy. “Always looking for kulos? Always trying to get out of living the way Hashem wants us to live? It almost sounds like he wishes he wasn’t a Yid!”
“That really is sad,” Totty said. “It’s unfortunate that some Yidden weren’t zoche to recognize how special it is to be a Torah Yid. This is what Yisro said to Moshe, 'teach them the path in which they should go, and the deeds they should do.' These are two things. The first is recognizing that everything about the way a Yid lives and thinks - the derech - is different, better. And the second is doing - the maaseh - it’s not enough to ‘feel’ Jewish, we need to BE Yidden by following what Hashem wants us to do in the way he wants us to do it.
“I daven that Hashem should show our neighbors, the Risniks, and all of our misguided brothers the right derech to true happiness through living and acting like Torah Yidden.”
“Amen,” Shimmy and Yitzy said. “Thank you Hashem for putting us in a home of Torah and Mitzvos!”
Have a Wonderful Shabbos!
Let’s review:
- How do you think like a Yid?
- How do you act like a Yid?
