With Hanukkah upon us, and working in a suburb of Melbourne with the highest concentration of Jewish people in our state, I have been delighted to watch the annual erection of large menorahs in gardens and shop fronts celebrating the festival.
Which also means its time for my annual rant about the festive practice of sticking, taping and or roping a gi-fucking-normous menorah to the roof of your car.
They’re bloody everywhere, and for some reason, in this local suburban group reknowned for their creative and less-than-conventional driving skills anyway , the menorah-drivers are the absolute worst of the worst. They double-park at whim, or on the footpath if the fancy takes them, they do U turns against oncoming traffic, zoom through red lights and let their little kids get out on the roadside. They behave as if the bloody great wooden thing on top of their car is the equivalent of waving a crucifix in front of the devils nose: in other words, they seem to believe that they are immune to any danger whatsoever.
I’ll give them their dues that they don’t take their cars out of the suburb (and make the rest of Melbourne suffer their recklessness), but for fuck’s sake!! If they WERE to be in an accident, the menorah would become like a lethal missile shooting through the air and seriously injuring or perhaps killing pedestrians or other drivers.
Please take those fucken things off your car. By all means, hang a little one off’ve your rear-view mirror if you please, but get the monsters off. They scare the shit out of me.
Well, we’ve got the Big Pineapple, the Big Banana, and the Bloody Big Woolly Thing, maybe the Jewish community are approaching the assimilation doctrine with a ‘if you can’t beat them, join them’ approach.
All jokes aside though, the things are a menace. Most of them are just tied down with a couple of elastic straps, so in the case of a collision, they’d likely break free and hurtle down Carlisle Street knocking folks for a sixer.
It’s actually AGAINST THE LAW to carry things on your car unless they are restrained in a roof-rack or other contraption designed to carry articles on the roof. But for some reason, the local coppers seem to turn a blind eye to such infringements: I’m guessing that because the area is predominantly Jewish, they would be accused of racial/ethnic discrimination if they were to start cracking down on the practice.
A plastic Menorah attached to a car that, when in an accident with another car, flies off to decapitate the other driver with Divine Might ™? Why am I thinking this would make a cool ‘Hotwheels’ action set (complete with small plastic parts to get stuck in the vacuum cleaner days later)?
My husband and son reported last night spotting a pick up truck with a ten foot menorah, lit, in the bed, driving down Western. I told them to quit drinking the nog.
Apparently, Chicago’s being invaded by Jewish Australians. :eek:
Okay, I give up. What IS that thing? It can’t be the “Peppin Merino Statue” because that’s evidently a bronze effigy (can’t find a picture of it, though) and if somebody somewhere managed to cast a bronze effigy the size of a house, I’ll have to pack up and move to Oz in deference to their obvious technical superiority in the making of humongous statues referring to obscure historical events.
I thought it was a Jewish “thing” at first, given the thread’s context, and was briefly fascinated that the Australian Jews had made themselves a gigantic fiberglass memorial to Abraham’s Ram. How wonderful, I thought, that they had decided that Abraham’s Ram must have been an Australian Merino.
Here’s a picture of a menorah parade in Sydney. Apparently they have similar things elsewhere, as well. I found pictures of car menorahs and menorah parades taken in Copenhagen, Paris, Hollywood, FL, and even Charlotte, NC. I’d never seen such a thing before, ever.
And I thought it was weird when I moved to the South and saw people who’d strapped a Christmas wreath to the front of their car.
Oh when, oh when will people learn that sticking ornamentations to your cars makes your bad driving more noticible? People remember seeing a car with a giant menorah or a Jesus Fish breaking traffic laws.
That’s why I don’t have any bumper stickers or other identifying marks on my vehicle. My bad driving just blends into people’s memory of other bad drivers.
Wow. That’s just… wow. Around here the Jews keep their heads down and act classy. The most display you see is a menorah in the window, maybe. One synagogue is on one of those streets with the lighted decorations on the telephone poles, and the ones on the three by the synagogue are stars of David. Classy. I can’t imagine ever in my life seeing a giant menorah strapped to somebody’s car. Unless they’d bagged it when it was in season and were carrying it home.
I thank the OP for a seriously well done pitting. I also thank him for the best laugh I’ve had all day. On behalf of my fellow co-religionists I’d like to apologise for some members who clearly ought to drummed out of the tribe.
, the menorah-drivers are the absolute worst of the worst. They double-park at whim, or on the footpath if the fancy takes them, they do U turns against oncoming traffic, zoom through red lights and let their little kids get out on the roadside. They behave as if the bloody great wooden thing on top of their car is the equivalent of waving a crucifix in front of the devils nose: in other words, they seem to believe that they are immune to any danger whatsoever.
