While spending the last days of Pesach at a hotel by the Dead Sea, I had a very interesting experience:The hotel was packed, mostly with Israeli Jews. Consequently, the number of people keeping the second day of Yom Tov was quite small, considering many American Jews at the hotel were only keeping one day.
On leil Shmini shel Pesach, the diaspora Jews keeping the 8th day gathered with the hotel manager to discuss what time shacharis would be the following day. A number of heimishe Jews - full of righteous frumkeit, hats and the whole shibang - expressed a very strong desire to daven at a later hour - no earlier than 8:30! - but also wanted to be able to make it to the hotel's breakfast after davening, for kiddush.
The problem was, breakfast at the hotel was scheduled to officially end at 10am (since, for most guests, it was a regular weekday). When the manager told these guests that they would have to daven early if they wanted to make it to breakfast (or eat before davening), things got ugly. Some of the heimishe guests threatened to never return to the hotel. Others expressed horror at the thought of eating before davening. The hotel manager's conciliatory offer of a table of cake and coffee was summarily rejected. These Jews demanded a serious, kosher l'pesach hotel breakfast - nothing less!
In the end, we davened at 8:15am, and finished all of yom tov davening in under an hour and a half (!!!), so these yidden had no problem making it to breakfast. Baruch Hashem, everyone got their hot, chocolate covered macaroons.
And then something funny happened. At about 11am that morning, I saw this very same crew of Jews heading straight for the coed pool, in bathing suits.
3 comments:
And are you completely consistent? It's egoic madness that is amused by the inconsistencies of others.
Anyway, what's really important is how they looked.
do you really love the LH way so much?
not pashut times
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