Hafganah!!!

Okay, we finally have some serious action to talk about. Not a snowstorm or another boring visit from George "Dubya" Bush, but something way more interesting, as measured in total number of dumpsters set on fire. I'm talking about the wave of hafganot that started last night, are continuing tonight, and may continue for the whole next week.

"Hafganah" is the Hebrew term for demonstration. But we're not talking about a simple demonstration by a few bored souls yelling "power to the people!" or some other mindless slogan; we're talking about serious stuff, the kind of demonstration where if Iran fired a missile at us, it would never hit us because it would be blocked by a dense protective layer of flaming garbage receptacles covering the streets of Jerusalem.

See, what happened was that some poor guy from Brazil was killed in a car accident on Kvish Shesh (Highway 6), Rachmana litzlan. Not content with letting the victim rest in peace, the police want to do an autopsy on the body. They want to investigate the "cause of death"; apparently they believe that being dead is not enough proof that something caused the victim to die.

Needless to say, autopsies are forbidden by halacha, so the anti-religious cops are all excited that they have an excuse to tick off the Chareidi community. However, the Chareidi community has no intention whatsoever of taking this sitting down, and so a wave of hafagnot has begun.

Your average protest around here consists of taking the huge green dumpsters that can be found all over Jerusalem, setting their contents ablaze, and pushing them into the street, thereby clogging the city's already delicate traffic system and causing massive jams. Ironically, while making the biggest "hefker velt" possible out of the city, the participants yell "Yerushalayim eino hefker!!!"

Thinking about this system, I decided to carefully analyze the cons and pros of such a protest.

CONS: Such protests are an inconvenience for innocent civilians such as myself, cause untold property damage in the form of destroyed dumpsters (which rumor has it the city will no longer be replacing, forcing the residents and merchants to figure out some other way of disposing of their garbage), cause a major chilul Hashem in the form of non-religious taxi drivers and cops cursing out all chareidim in general, and result major traffic delays and ridiculously altered bus routes (in one case, a number 2 bus headed for the Kosel ended up passing through Denver, Colorado).

PROS: On the other hand, they sure are fun to watch.

So we can be sure that there will be lots more action in the coming days. Last night alone I personally saw protests on Meah She'arim and Shivtei Yisroel, on Yecheskel near Kikar Shabbos, on Yoel near Hoshea, and on Shmuel Hanavi near Kikar Zvill. And those were only the small ones.

I wonder what tonight will bring...

Other news that I never got around to posting:
- Tutzy is dead. She died a few days into the zman; we have no idea what caused her to die, but we sure miss her. We buried her in a dirt lot near my yeshiva, and marked her grave with a small piece of Jerusalem stone
- My refrigerator is dead. Remember the little portable one that I paid a fortune for (specifically, 320 shekels)? Well, it currently keeps things "cold" at a comfortable 75 degrees Fahrenheit. So I'm guessing I got ripped off as usual.
- On the plus side, my dira finally got a full-size refrigerator/freezer combo. So I guess life isn't so bad after all, huh?
- Norman (the turtle) is not dead, although he does a great job of pretending he is.
- I never got around to finishing The Ukrainian Chronicles, and probably never will. Too bad on you. If you don't like it, sue me.
- The dollar hit an all-new low of 3.26 shekels, continuing its trend of declining in value against every major world currency, as well as several major brands of tissue paper.
- Am I forgetting anything else? Post a comment if you think so...