Frum Satire is in crisis.
Eleven months ago I wrote a post called The Fable of the Rabbi Who Finally Made It and I immediately got an email from Heshy asking me to take it down. A rabbi from Cleveland recognized that it was talking about a fellow rabbi or two from his community. He recognized it, obviously, because it described his fellow rabbi accurately, but rabbis don’t always like accuracy when it reveals problems that are supposed to remain hidden. So he wrote to Heshy reminding him of the cholent he’d fed him on a trip to Cleveland years ago and asked him to take down the post.
Instead of taking it down I wrote to the rabbi thanking him for his concern and asking him to help me have my grievances with his fellow rabbi addressed. He declined, saying he’s too busy for that.
I learned a whole new level of respect for rabbonim that day; even when they’re too busy to deal with issues they acknowledge in their communities they still take time out of their impossibly busy schedules to write to bloggers asking them to remove content they don’t like! Amazing! Mi k’amcha yisroel!
I didn’t remove that post, which prompted Heshy to put me in the dog house for two months. Plus all my posts are on the OTD spectrum and no one likes them; Heshy gets hate mail because of me on a weekly basis. Also there was that disastrous attempt at rebuilding the website, which was my responsibility. On top of all those problems Heshy’s been working too much and writing too little, OTDWANNAB is now defending Yosef Mizrachi, Telz Angel is now writing about kashrus conferences and DRosenbach isn’t writing at all!
Therefore Heshy and I decided to have the first ever annual Frum Satire Conference. Since we’re not into planning in advance it will take place this weekend. Heshy will host a tour of the Frum Satire headquarters; there will be inspirational speakers on all our favorite frum topics, to inspire us with material for new posts. Heshy will give lessons in mechitzah-peeking, but I will be bringing Mrs. Shragi along so that I don’t commit any aveirahs during that session. We will read as many ArtScroll and Feldheim books we can get our hands on. On second thought; are there any ArtScroll books in San Franciso?
I am worried though that Heshy will spontaneously go out on some crazy-ass mountain biking expedition and abandon us.
And that’s where you come in; what are the best aveiros to be had in San Francisco, that modern Sodom and Gomorrah? What should I and Mrs. Shragi do during our stay? We don’t plan on waiting at the bottom of the mountain like the yidden waited for Moshe rabbainu, or like Mrs. Heshy who sits and says tehilim when Heshy tries breaking his neck on his mountain bike.
Do you have any suggestions for us?