Vizhnitzer Rebbe announces “Our long national nightmare is over”
By Rabbi Lamech Somayach Meshumad Meshubach
Mashgiach Ruchini, Yeshiva Aishes Eish HaTorah
Special to http://meshumadmeshubach.blogspot.com
Following the announcement of President Elect Barack Obama, on January second, Mordechai Hager, The Rebbe of Vizhnitz-Monsey has announced that “Our long national nightmare is over.” In echoing the words of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, he invoked the feeling that eight years of fear about losing a Federal subsidy to kollel members everywhere has ended.
“For eight years we have seen benefits rolled back by not keeping up with inflation,” the Rebbe announced. “For the entire time of the Bush regime we have lived in fear of losing our government subsidies. Yeshivas suffer from lack of food stamps while the Zionists get the military support we deserve here in the US. Now with the Schvartza in the Ovaltine Office, we have no more fear, our long national nightmare is over.”
Reactions from his followers were mixed, and confusing.
“Oy is mir! Misphachasom V’lednick deh hoor is mein oshvat’chem!” One man in the minyan factory said. However, nobody has been able to translate this statement.
Other responses were clearer in language but just as obtuse in their meaning.
“I know what he said, but what it means in common terms is indelible, quite incredible! This is not even a reversal, it is more like a connection. Wait until I tell my cousin Faige,” Said Feige Sromlowicz of Monsey.
There was considerable outcry against this statement from the Satmar shtible around the corner. Although the prayer hall is a small outpost from the main Satmar groups in Williamsburg and Monroe, the counter reaction of the rebbe expressed shock at their reaction.
“Those anti-Zionist people are nuts, but anyone who thinks the Bush White House was bad for the illegal occupiers of Palestinian Land are confused,” Said Rabbi Tzvi Greystone of Monsey. “Under the Bush we have been blessed to see a holy expansion of the illegal settlements and the oppression of the rightful Palestinian residents of the land has been divinely inspired.”
In the aftermath of hearing this barrage of criticism from his neighbor and arch-rival, the Vizhnitzer Rebbe said “You know, he has a point.”
“This is all the fault of our living in a current society obsessed with secular happiness and pornography. We are the leadership and our job is to cow the followers with continual reminders of the Holocaust and other feel-bad exhortations. Saying the nightmare is over is wrong. The nightmare is always just beginning for a newly religious person somewhere,” Said Rabbi Naftali Reich of Dark Light Yeshiva in Monsey.
Hugh Hefner was unavailable for comment.
