Tziganer Shprach on the Willy Bus

I needed to be in Williamsburg yesterday, don't ask me why, but I did. I felt like a tourist visiting Meah She'orim - out of place. I saw the good, the bad, and the ugly. I walked from one end of the Shechunah to the other and saw all the hustle-bustle that goes on there. The hurried walks and the talks on the street corners. I saw the distrust that they have for anybody that's not EXACTLY like them, although very little separates me from them. I come from their country (well, at least my parents do) and speak their language (dialect) very, very well. I waited with the hitchhikers by the BQE and ended up taking the bus anyway, simply because I'm too aydel to fight over seats in a stranger's car, and that may be necessary when vying for seat in in the car of a stranger nice enough to give you a ride. That's my nature; I'd rather go hungry than push in line to get food, and have been that way for my entire life. It must the Ungarishe Neshomoh.

Upon entering the bus I heard the now-familiar sound of Hebrew being spoken between a passenger and the driver. It felt weird, almost illegal, almost like something terribly wrong was happening and I was witness to this crime. Hebrew on a bus full of Satmarer Chassidim, isn't that sacrelige, the ultimate of insults? I have mixed feelings about Hebrew in general; I don't like when others speak it, especially at the expense of Yiddish, yet feel quite good about myself when I can carry on a conversation in Hebrew. I feel like it robbed generations of good, frum Jews of part of their heritage. In Bais Yaakov in Israel they were all Hebrew way back in the pre-state '40's, and nice Yerushalmi women have problems speaking their beautiful brand of Yiddish since then. Later on it robbed boys of Yeshivos and Chadorim simply because Yiddish became a hassle to teach in when all the kids were speaking Hebrew at home since their mothers spoke little Yiddish and spoke only Hebrew amongst friends. Later, the influx of Jews from the Middle East made Yiddish almost impossible in places like Lubavitcher Mosdos where they were welcomed with open arms.

So having that said that I felt like this man with the black hat and trimmed beard, with Peyos behind his ears, speaking Hebrew to the driver with a heavy Russian accent, was being extremely unthoughtful by doing it in a bus filled with Satmarer Chassidim. They've been taught, for better or for worse, that speaking Hebrew is tantamount to transgressing some of the greatest sins a hundred times over. That's no small feat. I compared it to a couple of Snags on the Crown Heights bus bashing a concept held in high esteem in Lubavitch, I surely would be offended by remarks made about it. Whether or not I'd speak up and tell the guy to "put a sock in it" is another question; that would depend on my mood more than anything else, I'm not always that brave, though I have been known to let people have it, even in public. Maybe it was his stupid Russian pride that made him do it......