The most pressing issue facing the Jewish community in 2023

Participant

It’s a question that has haunted us for months now. Wherever one may go, the whispers echo; huddled discussions feverishly taking place in darkened, smoke filled dorm rooms. As the days roll past, the mood has become ever more frantic, panic filled, as the race to discover the answer continues, with no end in sight. Morale is low. Cases are made, with proponents of various issues viciously fighting to state their arguments, to convince the masses of the certain source of their impending doom. Bitter rivalries have sprung up between the various factions, and infighting is now a brutal fact of everyday life. The pundits roam the empty halls, struggling to make themselves heard over one another; the public has taken cover, barring themselves in the relative safety of their homes. Even there they are not safe: the magazines vie for attention, each colorful cover proclaiming their particular brand of ruin and salvation, often in the same breath. Communities have been ripped asunder. Families have been shattered. Mothers are afraid to send their children outside. It is a grim time in our collective history. And still, the question remains. There can be only one most pressing issue. Just one.

We here at ZeebleNews (Inc.), as part of our commitment to bringing the most useless bits of information we can find to an unsuspecting public, sent our very own in-house field reporter to interview some people on their view of the situation from the safety of his desk, because apparently we “don’t pay enough” for him to actually go out and earn his title. The following is a transcript of one such interview.

Ford Prefect: Thank you for agreeing to talk to us.
Mindel Feinberger: Please give me back my children.
FP: (Shiftily) Haha. Hem. I have no idea what you’re talking about.
MF: Sure, you monster. Let’s just get this over with.
FP: What are your views on the current situation?
MF: It’s definitely a scary time to be alive. With no one able to agree on what the most pressing issue is, none of the one hundred and forty two askanim on our block have any idea what to dedicate their time to. Obviously, no self respecting askan wants to be known as the guy who focused on the second most pressing issue, and so to get ahead of the problem, they simply aren’t doing anything until they can figure out what the most pressing issue is.
FP: Some would call that a good thing.
MF: You’d think so! But the downside is that now they all have way too much free time on their hands between overzealously responding to every single Chaveirim call on the radio. They’re even talking about unionizing.
FP: That is indeed terrifying. But how is the situation affecting you personally? Give us some insight into the mindset of the average balabusta at this time.
MF: Well it seems like this problem is really dividing people. Everyone seems to have a different idea of what the foremost issue is, and they all seem to be taking some peoples lack of agreement personally. Half my family isn’t talking to the other half. Our Chanukah party was split into the shidduch crisis and the internet camps, with the one cousin who keeps ranting about the MO theory just sitting in the corner by himself.
FP: Would you say that a sense of fear is present in your community? An overwhelming sensation of hopelessness? A cloud of trepidation? An aura of despair, perhaps? Would you, for instance, describe the current communal disposition as a roiling maelstrom of never ceasing melancholia and desperation as a result of the consistent hammering of vituperative rhetoric upon your collective consciousnesses?
MF:…What?
FP: Are people scared?
MF: How could they not be? Every day somebody new speaks out about some new major issue that we all must drop everything to immediately fix. Every time my husband goes to shul he sees ten new kol korahs decrying everything from Chabad to basketball. Every time my kids come home from school they tell me about eight new things that are now apparently banned, because of course it makes sense that having more than one type of herring at a kiddush is the reason that kids weren’t accepted to high school. I’m afraid to go outside.
FP: Ok, big talker. What do you think is the most pressing issue facing the Jewish community in 2023?
MF: Oh that’s easy! I mean obviously it’s the shidduch crisis. No wait, it’s YU. Actually, forget all of that. I don’t know what I was thinking. It’s got to be the OTD crisis. Or the high school acceptance crisis. Definitely one of the two.…or maybe the internet crisis? Yeah, that’s got to be it. Wow, so many crises! But its surely one of those. Those are definitely the most important. Except maybe the anti-semitism crisis? Or the Zionism crisis? No, no, wait I got it. It’s the secular studies crisis. Ooh, no, wait last one, it’s…
FP: Well, you certainly seem to have it all figured out. And that concludes our interview, live from this zoom call. Back to you, Z.

ZeebleNews (Inc.) would like to thank Mr. Prefect for that exemplary piece of journalism. We hope that this special segment has been both informative and helpful. Stay froody, folks.

NOTE: The views expressed in the above interview are those of the interviewee and do not necessarily represent or reflect the views of ZeebleNews (Inc.)