Lo Taamod Al Dam Re'echa! Enough of this Purim madness.
I'm really angry. I've just seen something that makes my heart break and my blood boil.
Rabbis of the neighbourhood, Rabbis of the nation, you have to do something about this.
I was in the supermarket a few minutes ago. I was in the queue while a lady was passing her items through. She was very modestly dressed, both in the frum sense and also in the sense that suggested a truly humble lifestyle. When most of her items had been passed, she looked at the screen with the running total and asked the clerk to stop for a second as she'd already exceeded the amount of cash that she had with her for payment.
Although it's clearly none of my business, I couldn't help but notice that her basket was full of all types of snacks and things that are specially produced in bite sized amounts for the Purim season, for people to fill up their mishloach manos packages. There were also a number of household essentials.
She had a dilemma: What should she put back? What should she buy? She truly looked almost in a panic, and after a few moments of painful reflection she made her decision. She fished out a box of baby formula, a packet of minced chicken and a packet of fish something or other, and asked the clerk to put them aside and deduct their value from her bill!!!
Now, I imagine she's at home packing her mishloach manos in pretty baskets while her baby just cries, and the kids who have just come home from school whine about why they haven't got anything other than bread and margarine to eat for lunch.
I don't blame her for a second. She's trying to do her best to be good and do the mitzvos and she's just a victim of a society and it's leaders who have given her a perverted perspective on what really matters. She's also a victim of the fact that probably since she could speak and read, she's been gently encouraged to lay aside her sense of what's right and reasonable and simply follow the guidance that emanates from holier places than her feeble mind.
Rabbonim, Lo Taamod Al Dam Re'echa! A baby is going without formula for the sake of mitzvos. Please lead proactively now. Look around you and save your followers from madness. Outlaw the insane wastage of money on junk food mishloach manos that don't even fulfil the mitzvah, and you may well save families from going hungry.
Teach perspective, for God's sake. Purim Torah is one thing, but enough of the Purim madness...time to teach people to think rationally once again.
Post script: Just to be clear, I'm not usually an advocate of artificial interference with market forces - give me a free market any day over any of the other options that history has disposed of. But here, the market itself is created by an absurd perversion of a religious obligation, so I feel justified in calling upon those with influence to reset the priorities. I think there is even a powerful legal precedent that dates back to the Mishna and has been applied in more recent history. Click the link to read more.
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