Who would have thought that some unknown signer from South Africa would have such an impact on our country - and maybe the entire civilization?

Thamsanqa Jantjie, the guy standing next to world leaders during the Nelson Mandela funeral and translating the speeches to sign language, had his cover blown when deaf people complained that he was not signing in any known language and was seemingly making it up - just gesticulating randomly. Jantje later admitted that he is schizophrenic and was hallucinating at the time.

Jantjie has since become the example of a prime insult..

Just a few days ago one MK, Yaakov Asher (UTJ), criticized PM Netanyahu's comments about the snowstorm and how reasonably well Israel dealt with it by referencing Jantjie. Asher had said that listening to Netanyahu's press conference about the snow was similar to the signer at the Mandela funeral - there was no connection between what was said and what was actually happening..

And now Minister Yuval Steinitz gave an interview in which he criticized Finance Minister Yair Lapid. He criticized Lapid for his stance on the idea of buying an airplane for the prime minister in which he opposes the opinion of Netanyahu, and he criticized Lapid for his dealing with the budget. Steinitz said that a new finance minister comes and deceives the entire country saying the deficit is going to be 5%, and it turns out the deficit is barely even approaching 3%. He must apologize for that. The behavior fo the finance minister reminds me of the expert sign language translator at Nelson Mandela's funeral - a lot of shtick, a lot of communication a lot of facebook....

I wonder if Thamsanqa Jantjie ever thought he would become such an icon! I think Israel should give him honorary citizenship!

A friend of mine just told me this brief anecdote.

He was by a party of a Hassidic Admor the other day. The party was in honor of the Admor having completed renovations on his beis midrash (this is an admor of a small group of hassidim). I guess it was a "Chanukkas Ha'Bayis".

Anyways, this guy notices three men who seemed out of place. Their were some Hassidim there, there were some people from the neighborhood, and there were three kind of scruffy looking men. They were sefardi and looked like they might belong to the underworld (Israeli mafia) - this is his description, and neither I nor he mean anything derogatory toward anybody sefardi, but these three happened to look like they might belong to the mafia.

Anyways, he goes and sits next to them and chats. he asks them what they are doing there. They tell him where they are from and it turns out they had donated a lot of the money for the renovations. he asked what their connection is to the rebbe. their response was "Achla Admor!".

"Achla" is a slang word in Hebrew that means "Cool". So they were saying they sponsored the renovations for the rebbe because they thought he was "cool".

Achla Admor!