guide to the jewplexed


Would Moses drive a subcompact?


Recently I was in a collision. Let me explain.

I thought a green light from the recently celebrated Jewish New year had me speeding along the Hebrew highway to Chanukah. That is until I screeched to a halt at a stop sign which read: You need to buy two new cars.

Two of my sons had just graduated from college and needed some help with transportation. We would need to heed the call of the car horn and the new model year.

As we walked the lots, I wondered: Is there a Jewish car? Not a vehicle whose navigation system argues with you about directions, but a car that the majority of Jews like to drive or own?
Was there one style or make that a Jew could prefer? Was there a car that exemplifies ideas inherent in Judaism like the Talmudic edict of bal taschit, "do not destroy," that is something that got good fuel mileage and was easier on the environment?
 Or a car that increased safety?
In the Talmud, it says that "Whosoever preserves a single soul it is as though he had preserved a complete world." We certainly wanted to get behind that wheel.
Which to choose?
In this capital of car culture, a slow cruise through my Temple's parking lot, where you are what you drive, not what you daven, revealed a good number of Priuses, Lexuses, SUV's and Volvos.

But what about cost? Wasn't there something in the Talmud too about saving a buck for grad school?

While driving around Los Angeles, I noted the cars with Jewish bumper stickers, or cars whose snood, kippah or black hat wearing drivers looked identifiably Jewish. Turned out, they drove every kind of car: Guzzlers and fuel efficient, electric, American, and foreign, even German.

Like much in Jewish life, the relationship is complex.moses

Jewish interaction with the automobile can be far more complicated than whether it is permissible to drive on Shabbat, or whether the size of your carbon footprint is smallish.

Much of Jewish life is car dependent. Post WWII expansion of denominational Judaism to America's suburbs would not have happened without the automobile. Who would have guessed that the mechanical descendant of the anti-Semitic Henry Ford's creation would become an engine of Jewish life.

We buy cars to take us to shul, to late-ending meetings and long swims at the center. We drive our kids to bar or bat mitzvah class, Tot Shabbat, or Men's Club wine tasting night.  

Cars can also provide a place to practice your aliyah, check out if your kippah is on straight, or take a nap on Yom Kippur. Not that I know.

Jews can also use cars to reach out.

Around Chanukah, Chabad mounts electric hanukiot on car roofs and parades them around town, revving the miracle.

The Talmud tells us not to separate ourselves from the community, and the car seems our favored vehicle for complying.  It takes us to rallies, award dinners, donation centers, to Jewish yoga.

So which model met our Jewish specs?

After shopping, we narrowed the choice down to a Honda Fit; it was fuel efficient, and safe, and relatively affordable. One of the available colors was even bluish.

But would Moses drive it?  The cargo space area was quite flexible; definitely long enough for his staff, and wide enough for at least a couple of stone tablets. Most importantly, it came with an audio system loud enough for a CD of his sister Miraim's tambourine playing to part a sea.

Edmon J. Rodman has written about making his own matzah for JTA, Jewish love music for the Jerusalem Post, yiddisheh legerdemain for the Los Angeles Jewish Journal, a Bernie Madoff Halloween mask for the Forward, and what really gets stuck in the La Brea Tar Pits for the Los Angeles Times. He has edited several Jewish population studies, and is one of the founders of the Movable Minyan, an over twenty-year-old chavura-size, independent congregation. He once designed a pop-up seder plate. In 2011 Rodman received a First Place Simon Rockower Award for "Excellence in Feature Writing" from the American Jewish Press Association."