Are you an easy mark?

EMILY SINGER

In honor of this week’s elections, I am devoting this month’s column to the word friar – because a group of self-proclaimed friars were the surprise winners on Israel’s election day last month.

If you open the Isra-slang dictionary (which perhaps I’ll write one day) to the word friar, you will not find a photo of a religious man with a long robe and a large cross. In Hebrew slang, the term friar refers to someone of whom it is easy to take advantage. If you open the dictionary to that page, you are more likely to find a photo of my husband Ross waiting in his fifth line of the day, trying to collect all our worldly possessions at the port of Haifa. After waiting for months … because the port was on strike … we were given a few-day window in which we had to collect our stuff before they would start charging fines. Ross made it before the deadline, but this did not stop them from piling on fees at every stage in every office.

He arrived at the scheduled time and place and presented his documentation to claim our belongings. The woman behind the desk declared, “That will be 1,000 shekels.” Having been forewarned that the process could be pricey, Ross handed over the money and waited to be escorted to our lift. Instead, the woman directed him to an office on another floor, where he would have to take care of some other details.

Ross dutifully reported to the second office, where they gave him some papers to sign, and announced that he owed an additional 500 shekels. Still not suspecting these government offices of being anything but upright, he handed over the cash, eager to return home with our things. The man processed his payment and gave him the address of another office across town that required his presence.

In the third office, a woman took his papers, stamped them with some sort of official looking stamp, and said, “That will be 275 shekels.” Ross paid the money, sure this would be the last time. Then the woman added, “Now please proceed to the cashier.”

“Proceed to the cashier? What do I look like – some kind of friar?!” is what Ross would have said if he had read the aforementioned, not yet published, dictionary. Instead, he paid up and was directed to yet another office.

In the next and final office, Ross began to learn his lesson. He was handed yet another bill. This time, he studied the paper carefully before opening his wallet. He noticed there was a charge for “moving expenses” and another for “portering.” He asked, “What’s the difference between these two things?” The man looked at the paper and said, “Alright, here. I’ll take one off.” Ross eventually returned home with a truckload of belongings whose financial value nearly matched the money it cost to recover them.

The classic example of a friar in Israel is the guy who pays full price for souvenirs in the market. When a seller suggests that a certain Kiddush cup costs 500 shekels, what he is really saying is, “I wonder how much I can get this dork with the big-lens camera around his neck and the red Hebrew Coca Cola T-shirt to pay for this piece of junk.” In the words of Monty Python, “You have to haggle.”

Ross once visited a store in downtown Jerusalem. Not the open market, just a regular jewelry store. It was back when we were still dating, and he saw a pretty necklace in the window and thought of buying it for me. Unsolicited, the salesman announced that the necklace cost 600 shekels, but he would give it to Ross for 500. Ross suavely gulped the gulp of a poor university student, thanked the man and turned to walk out the door.

The man followed, saying, “For you – 400! I give you for 400 shekels only!”

Ross thanked the man but said he wasn’t interested. Ross wasn’t haggling, mind you. He was just trying to leave the store.

“Three fifty! Only 350! Only for very special customers do I make offer like this!”

Ross didn’t respond. He started walking faster.

“Two hundred! One fifty!” the man continued, running after him. “I give you for 50 ... no, 45 shekels! Is very special offer. I pay three times this to buy it. You running me out of business!”

At this point, it’s clear the necklace is not worth anything. Ross wonders what he might have paid if he had actually wanted it.

“Come back – please! I tell you what. I give you necklace for free and you marry my daughter!”

Ross is not the only friar in the family. About a year and a half ago, I was shopping in my favorite supermarket when I saw a water bar on sale: special offer for members only. Until then we had been drinking tap water, but the kids often complained about the hard, white sediment that comes out of the faucet. The water itself is very clean, from a local underground spring, but it brings with it a residue that is best described as rock powder (the Hebrew term is avnit, or little rock). There is a thick film of avnit at the bottom of all of our pitchers, and it regularly clogs up our dishwasher. The water bar cost 150 dollars, a quarter of the price of the competition. I decided to buy it.

After about a year, the machine stopped working. It seems the avnit clogged the pipes and caused an electrical short. It was just before the warranty expired. I called the company and asked them to come fix it.

As it turned out, we were supposed to have known about the problem, and we were meant to change the filter after six months, so they refused to fix it. However, if we wanted to pay a “small monthly insurance fee,” they would fix it, change the filter on a regular basis, and be responsible for future repairs. I did the math and figured out that this would bring the machine to the cost of the more expensive models. However, we were used to the filtered water and, at this point, we weren’t about to go out and buy another bar.

The phone technician/salesman added that the insurance comes with a free gift. What is the free gift? An additional filter that cleans the water five times better than the regular machine. I told him we were perfectly happy with the water as it tastes now. He assured me that, in fact, the filter we had wasn’t doing anything at all, and we may as well be grinding boulders into our drinks.

I asked if there is any cost at all to this “free gift.” The man assured me there’s not. I asked if there is any possibility that down the road we will find ourselves paying more money because we have it. Absolutely not. I persisted. “What would happen to the free gift if we decided to cancel our monthly payments on the insurance?”

“Oh, well then you would have to retroactively pay off the 2,000 shekels for the filter, of course.”

At this point, I really didn’t want to do any business with this guy, but I did want our water system back. I said, “We’ll take the service without the gift.”

The guy was distraught. He tried hard to impress upon me that this would be a highly unfortunate waste of money. He knew that without the extra filter, the price of the insurance alone is a total rip off. He asked if he could please give me some other sort of free gift. Would I like (I am not making this up) an eco-friendly washing machine ball instead?

“Um, no thanks,” I said, taken aback by the extreme randomness of his offer.

“Perhaps you’d like a suitcase?” he asked.

Ross, overhearing the conversation, yelled, “No free gift! If it’s bothering his conscience so much, let him lower the darn price!”

I told the man we would decline the gift. Reluctantly, he booked an appointment for a service technician to come.

I wasn’t home when the service guy arrived. Ross was in charge, which was good because I am definitely the bigger friar in the family.

The guy walked in and immediately started trying to sell. He still has the better filter in his car if we’ve changed our minds. No thanks. He can give us an extended warranty. No thanks. Would we like to purchase a cover for the machine so it will match the kitchen? Thanks, but no.

As the guy was tinkering with the machine, Ross looked over the paperwork. He did some math, and realized something I hadn’t thought of. I knew we were being overcharged for the service, but all the companies overcharge. What didn’t occur to me was that for what we would pay in insurance, we could go out and buy ourselves a whole new machine every six months! We would never do that, for reasons of both environmentalism and laziness, but that was the straw that broke the camel’s back. Ross told the guy we weren’t interested in his service. He said we’re going to buy a new machine instead.

The guy answered, “No problem! I have one in my car.”

Ross told him he would never buy anything from their company again.

“That’s OK,” he said. “Don’t tell my boss, but I have one in my truck that I can sell you from a different company.”

It’s comforting to know that we are not the only friars.

In fact, the country is full of them A year and a half ago, a group of reserve soldiers organized a strike they called the Friars Camp. They were protesting against a law that exempts yeshivah students from army service.

When the state was founded, prime minister David Ben-Gurion declared an exemption from army service for yeshivah students, in an effort to appease the religious camp and to preserve the few existing yeshivot. The law excused around 500 young ultra-Orthodox men from duty. Today, the exemption extends to nearly 60,000 people, with the number constantly growing. In practice, it does not apply only to true Torah scholars, but rather to all ultra-Orthodox boys who choose to use it. According to a recent report, 50 percent of children in kindergarten this year are either ultra-Orthodox or Arab, meaning that 13 years from now, half the country’s citizens will not be serving their country.

At the Friars Camp, soldiers and their supporters argued that this exemption isn’t fair. They made the point that they fight for their country, work for a living and pay taxes. Their tax dollars go to support these yeshivah students, whose schools are generously subsidized by the government, and many of whose families receive state welfare. The protesters held up signs declaring that they don’t want to be friarim, who serve and work so others don’t have to.

The Friars movement changed the face of politics just last month. A new party was formed with the singular mandate of requiring all citizens to serve the country. Yair Lapid, head of the new Yesh Atid party, believes this exemption is the country’s single most pressing issue. Lapid has argued that changing this law could be a solution to economic problems, as well as issues of equality and social justice. Apparently, more than half a million people agree. Yesh Atid took a sweeping 19 parliament mandates out of 120, almost 16 percent of the vote. Perhaps because it’s not fair that some are pulling their weight and others aren’t, and none of us wants to be a friar.

Emily Singer is a teacher, social worker and freelance writer. Singer and her husband, Ross, were rebbetzin and rabbi of Vancouver’s Shaarey Tefilah congregation until 2004. The Singers spent two years in Jerusalem and then moved to Baltimore, Md., where Ross was rabbi at Congregation Beth Tfiloh and Emily taught Judaic studies at Beth Tfiloh High School, until they moved to Israel in 2010. They have four children.

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