Jan 18, 2011
Transportation Ministry Clerks Dressed Up
To give you an idea of how the pashkevil system works.. Here is how the story behind the pashkevil below:
The Transportation Ministry is conducting a survey nationwide ("nationwide" includes the city of Beit Shemesh) to track travelling patterns. This will enable them to make decisions about bus lines etc. The ministry chose 1 percent of the people in each city, and gave them GPS devices, which they are to carry for a week.
The kannoim got wind of this and decided that the Transportation Ministry was up to no good with nefarious motives.
There you have Transportation Ministry clerks dressed up as haredim. Maybe they should save the costumes for Purim.
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My wife and I carried the GPS around for a day and the kids tracked their commute to/from school by hand (pen and paper). The guy from the ministry was very nice and seemed eager to do his job. He was a Charedi from Bet Shemesh. After he came back to collect the GPS (and show us a map of our commute) he gave us 2 free tickets to the zoo in Yerushalayim. Not a bad deal, even though I have absolutely no confidence in this exercise accomplishing anything.
ReplyDeleteThis is almost as bad as the charedim who dress up as charedim.
ReplyDeleteMy wife and I also got the GPS devices, also for a day only. Afterward we could choose the gift (we took Tavei Kniya).
ReplyDeleteThe fellow who gave us the survey was dressed perfect Shas style, professed to be local, and was quite friendly and polite, but the photo on his ID did not really look the same as he appeared in person (no Kipa visible in the photo, the hairdo looked more like popular "shaved head" style) and his name ("Omer") didn't quite grab me as a standard Charedi, even Shas-Charedi, name. I actually wondered whether he was dressed for the part.
OTOH, his supervisor came along with him to collect the devices and give us the gift, and the supervisor and I immediately recognized one another as having been to the same yeshiva at the same time (I in Hesder, he in high school).
So it's not implausible that the DOT sent dressed-up surveyors.
I'm still not sure exactly how the survey could endanger Charedi interests - beefing up bus and train lines, and improving roads...? In fact, thinking about it seems to me that with no Kanoim taking part, the survey would be slanted in favor of the commuting public and against insulation of their neighborhoods.