By Samuel Pilkinton
So, I’ve been officially engaged for 2 weeks now. Mazel tov to me right?!?! I could not possibly be happier. Our parents are ecstatic; we couldn’t have more support from friends. But next month is our first trip to my parent’s home in Mississippi. My cousin and his fiancé are coming up from Florida and the extended family is all showing up.
Now my cousin and I have never spent a Shabbos together. We have talked about it for years now, but just have never been in the same town at the same time. Next month we finally get our chance at a reform shul in north Mississippi. This shul is insanely small. I mean, on Yom Kippur 15-20 families MIGHT show up, and there MIGHT be a rabbi on loan from another community.
So I started wondering, since there is a community (albeit a tiny one) of Jews, and there is a need for direction, why not send a shaliach from Crown Heights down? If shalichim can go to Salt Lake City Utah or the tundra of Alaska, they can show up at the birthplace of Elvis right?
And that leads me to the meat of this post. What would the top ten list of questions for a Chabad Shaliach be in a small farming town in north Mississippi?
10. Which heksher is most reliable for chewing tobacco?
9. How do you hang your tzitzis out if you’re wearing bibbed overalls?
8. If a shochet kills a 10-point buck, can you still mount its head over your fireplace?
7. Where does one find John Deere and Caterpillar tractor kippas? Also, which is more frum?
6. Is a Confederate flag do-rag acceptable as a snood?
5. Can a Shabbos belt for your keys be altered to carry a can of Copenhagen?
4. Is it a ma’aras ayin if your Shabbos goy is African American?
3. Forget stacking vs. scraping; is “silverware or fingers at the Shabbos table?” an acceptable shidduch question?
2. Is it tznius for a woman to watch her husband in a pro-wresting cage match?
1. If Jews are not allowed to hit each other, how do brothers settle fights about who gets to marry their cousin?
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{ 35 comments… read them below or add one }
Funny!
But the Chabad in Alaska is nowhere near the tundra. It’s in our biggest city, which has a larger Jewish community than you describe in Mississippi. The caribou have to make their own minyanim if they want to daven. Gotta rep for my state.
# 4 is just classic. Great post.
i’m really starting to enjoy this guest posting business around here. thanks for the kudos guys!
and miriam,
i’m from southern louisiana and north mississippi. i now live in st louis.
to me, all of alaska is polar bears, eskimos, and tundra.
So Yes.
Question is, does moonshine need a hechshure?
Sam,
That’s very funny, the top ten you describe sound about right.
My wife’s family lived in Jackson when we were dating, I went down there for a couple weeks to meet them before we got engaged. As she was a BT, she was the only frum / shomer Shabbat Jew in the state (to my knowledge).
I remember the clerk in the liquor store asking me if my kippa was to hide my horns when I went to buy wine for kiddush, surprisingly enough, I found Manishewitz even in that farflung “hicktown” ya’ll call a capital.
My next choice would have been Mississippi Mud.
Uber Frum Response to #1:
What’s wrong with marrying your cousin?
I’ve never tried to use a Shabbos belt to carry dip, but my friends and I actually tried to figure out how to rig one to carry cans of beer. Is that redneck enough for you?
Manishewitz is hella popular with college kids and wineos in mississippi.
and why not? it’s not horrible tasting and it’s cheep.
As a frum redneck, although not Chabad, some of those questions really hit home. I remember when I first met with a shadchan in Baltimore (I had family there) and she wanted to know if I preferred a girl with open or closed toed shoes… My response was “wouldn’t their feet get muddy in open-toed shoes?”
If you really want, I know where to pick up a John Deere kippa. I have even seen them with the Stars and Bars on them (Confederate Battle flag for you Damnyankees… yes that is one word).
Oh, and my grandmother wanted to set me up with my first cousin… we still get a laugh out of that one =)
There is no right or wrong answers, for as you rednecks know :It’s all relative in Mississippi
STL Sam:
You should come to AK on your honeymoon and see what it’s really like! Mazel tov.
STL,
I’ve heard Peurto Ricans have a thing for Manishewitz as well. I wonder what all those baptsit wineos think every time they see the guy with the talis and beard on the bottle, maybe they think he’s the devil…
Visited a small town named McGee, my father in law ran a small lumber mill there for a while.
Also went down that highway on stilts that goes over the swampland when I drove to New Orleans during that visit.
To a Northerner, the people down there seemed way overfriendly.
Absolutely hilarious.
And send a “howdy” to the author – hyuck hyuck.
How about “10 dumb ass posts in a row”.
Yeah, as others here implied, I am sure amontg some of the Chassidish “dynasty” types out there, they have an answer to #1, since it very likely has come up.
dear parent,
if you think this was dumbass, just wait until you read my next post.
it’s garunteeed to mak yur eyeque drop eleventeen pointz. u beter stop reedeng naow!
abe the gun guy,
in regards to the kippot, hit me up at pilkinton.st@gmail.com
Abe…
1) You’re a country boy. You expect a girl who will be doing a certain kind of work. City girls have …. mmm … a different set of expectations.
2) Did your grandma want a family tree with no branches or just great grandchildren who could count to thirteen without taking off their shoes?
3) What do gunnies in your neck of the woods think of a Jew who shoots? The ones around here are pretty accepting. The “racialist” crowd looks a little nervous which is fine by me. The ones I have real problems with are my fellow Jews, at least the ones who haven’t been in the Army here or in Israel. They act like I sprouted an extra head.
4) That’s the “Rebel Rag” and the War of Southern Aggression to you, Son.
@Phil, love Mississippi Mud, esp. their lager. Haven’t had one in about 7 years now. Around NYC it’s a bit hard to come by, but I guess I gotta go lookin’ for some now.
Although I don’t fit the “legal” definition of frum, I am observant. AND I live in the South, so I can answer these questions…
10. Which heksher is most reliable for chewing tobacco? OU…when in doubt, always look for the OU.
9. How do you hang your tzitzis out if you’re wearing bibbed overalls? Hopefully your overalls are the kind that sag down so much that your tzitzis can just go up and over.
8. If a shochet kills a 10-point buck, can you still mount its head over your fireplace? Hey as long as he does it with the knife and not a gun, its kosh!
7. Where does one find John Deere and Caterpillar tractor kippas? Also, which is more frum? Caterpillar is more frum as EVERYONE has the John Deere hats. And as we all know, Frum is the process of completely alienating yourself from the rest of the world. And you can probably buy them through moderntribe.com or punktorah.com since we have everything on Earth
6. Is a Confederate flag do-rag acceptable as a snood? Not unless you’re the wife of Judah P Benjamin, who has the distinction of being the only Jew the Confederates liked, other than Jesus.
5. Can a Shabbos belt for your keys be altered to carry a can of Copenhagen? Oye, again with the spit! And yes, it can. You just glue the ends of the belt to either side of the can and leave the plastic wrap on the can.
4. Is it a ma’aras ayin if your Shabbos goy is African American? Since the first black female rabbi just took over a small southern congregation recently, im going to avoid this question
3. Forget stacking vs. scraping; is “silverware or fingers at the Shabbos table?” an acceptable shidduch question? No because we don’t have Shidduch dates…that’s what family reunions are for
2. Is it tznius for a woman to watch her husband in a pro-wresting cage match? As long as she’s not on her period, sitting next to some other guy
1. If Jews are not allowed to hit each other, how do brothers settle fights about who gets to marry their cousin? The same way Jews solve everything: in the court of law
Lets try this in the form of “You might be a Jewish Redneck if”
-the 82 Camero on blocks in the front yard has a mezuzah
-your hand washing set is an empty Penzoil can and a hard hat
-you can burp the hamotzi
-you dont have to carry a siddur for mincha, its all on your belt buckle
Patrick..
Frum Jews, Courts, really? Have you not seen that Frum Jews avoid courts, Ameican laws, and all that mishugas? A frum Jew taking another to a US court might mean that one or both will have to follow laws, or pasy taxes, and is ALWAYS a chillul Hashem and inviting Antisemetism.. All frum Jews are always innocent!….
Seriously, though.. good answers.
A. Nuran –
I did not grow up on a farm, but lets just say that not all the streets were as paved as in the bigger cities.
My Grandma just did not think it was that big of a deal. It was good enough in Europe, so why not here?
I have found that rednecks are pretty cool with Jews, so long as we are not the liberal, ACLU type crowd…. They can’t understand why “Hebrews” would vote for people who support their enemies or how they can turn their back on Judaism.
I believe it is the War of Northern Aggression. The Union fired the first shot, not the Confederacy, and the South will rise again! =P
Abe, like I said I have more problems with my fellow Jews on the whole gun thing.
And no, the North didn’t start the Civil War. The South was engaged in a years’-long campaign of terrorism and attacks against government facilities. Consider Pensacola as just one of the high points. As long as they got away with it it was all good. But they were awfully keen to play the victim when the United States stopped its policy of appeasement and actually punished sedition.
But enough of that.
Where can do you find John Deere kippahs? Seriously.
I never understood the Southern fascination with the Stars and Bars. I mean, it was used for about 4 years in a war. In a war that they lost.
Ghottystix,
I haven’t had one in 10 years, they don’t have them in Canada. Last time I did, I lived in Dallas and my neighbor was from Biloxi, so he had plenty of it along with Shiner Bock readily available.
Abe,
I very highly doubt the South will rise any time soon, too many black voters.
Phil,
Back when I drank, Shiner Bock was my favorite beer.
A. Nuran -
I have seen them for sale in Pittsburgh and in Atlanta, as well as Dallas. My family fought on both sides of the Civil War… so I try not to take sides =)
But the gun issue bothers me as well, I think it has to do with the ghetto mentality (or as Aaron Zelman of the JPFO said “Gas Chamber mentality”). We believe that prayer will stop the bad guys, that we don’t have to do our hishtadlus and that we can cut ourselves off from the world instead of living in it and doing our job.
Phil –
Even many of the Black voters in the South are right-wing… especially those that moved for jobs. But the South will not rise again, they too have given up on the issue of State’s Rights and the 9th and 10th amendments. For that we have to look toward the midwest =)
patrick.
i have been one upped.
thank you?
Abe, it’s like a lot of other ways we went wrong in the last century.
Even though they hated it the ghetto and the shtetl were Jewish life as far as a certain sort of Askenazi Romantic is concerned. So they built an idol out of it. Jews weren’t allowed to have two of my favorite things – dogs and guns (I really should have been from the South
So to their way of thinking Jews shouldn’t have dogs and guns.
I’ve talked to Aaron Zelman. He has one good point. There’s a hell of a lot of people who hate us and want us dead. If we don’t defend ourselves nobody will. Praying didn’t stop the Nazis, the Czars, the pogroms, the Inquisition, the Romans, the Greeks or anyone else who took a chunk out of us. Past that he sometimes lapses into bat-shit crazy.
It’s amazing how much the “88 HH! Rahowa!” crowd gets its attitude adjusted when they’re looking at the wrong end of a 1911 or even a pocket knife. You can probably guess how I figured that one out…
It was the ‘war of northern aggression’ and it was about states rights, and not slavery. We also know that the ‘rednecks’ did not have a problem with us ‘redneck jews’ as we held the same values as they did. it was the people who didn’t hold their values – regardless of race or religion- that they had issue with. what is funny is that our current administration is bringing us even closer together as we all see the danger of losing our liberty and perhaps, the South will be the only ones to stand tall and prevent our loss of freedom. I also love the old adage: city folk always sneer at the southern boy until their car breaks down, at midnight, on a deserted road.
hey sam i also live in stl where do you live
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