THE NEW "YUTZ"!

I miss the "olden times"...where the YUTZ stood out so apparently! He'd do anything to get attention!

He would be the guy that would wait all year to daven Mussaf on Simchat Torah. (Looking forward to getting drenched...the recipient of flying objects to his head...carried out to the street...etc..)

He would be the guy bullying the kid doing Galilla (tying the Torah strap)...not high enough or tight enough. The loudest SHUSHER at krias haTorah...chastising the congregants to have respect for the Torah...and after shul, he'd go home to physically abuse his wife. The guy who would hold up his pinky finger the longest...at hagbaos haTorah.

The guy that stood closest to the baal koreh - to catch any mispronounced word at the speed of sound. Made sure everyone saw him putting the siddurim on the shelves...chastising the guys who wouldn't. Left his talis on the longest after Mussaf.... Ah...those were the days my friend.

NEW YUTZ

OLD YUTZ

Today, the NEW YUTZ is more subtle.

He cloaks  himself as some sort of self-descriptive ombudsman to nobody groups. He could be an adviser to a Jewish death museum to the stars (who isn't an anti-Semite?),...a spokesperson for a group United Jewish Mental Midgets of America,...another person who agrees with everyone that has a beard, even if these beards have conflicting opinions that are rooted in ignorance, he agrees with both sides of the issue as far apart as they may be. And these "new yutzes" ...get forums to present their rubbish, because anyone titled "rabbi" must know what they're talking about. 

These  NEW YUTZES even get credit for speaking to people who have differing opinions than theirs. Oh my! Historic!

I yearn for the good ol' days...a yutz's behavior was local and limited. His buffoonery was only an embarrassment to those that could physically see him.   

Over the weekend I read Think Like a Freak --- "Now, with Think Like a Freak, Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner have written their most revolutionary book yet. With their trademark blend of captivating storytelling and unconventional analysis, they take us inside their thought process and teach us all to think a bit more productively, more creatively, more rationally—to think, that is, like a Freak"

I enjoyed their story --- how they gave wine mavens the opportunity to identify the most expensive wines from the cheapest -  they got it wrong an astounding amount of time.

The NEW YUTZ  is the above wine maven. They could not tell right from wrong, truth from fiction, history from fable, if their entire self-created job description depended on it. 

Give me the old YUTZ!