PhotoBombs, Yellow Cars and Streaks of Red
PhotoBombs, Yellow Cars and Streaks of Red
Shabbat Hagadol 5777
It started back in 2015 when a tourist complained. It escalated this January with vandalism. Then this week 100 protectors took to the streets in support.
All over a yellow car.
The offender, a car painted an alluring yellow, was accused of ruining the photo-shoots of tourists who had travelled for miles to see the picturesque village of Bidbury, home to the 14th century Cotswold cottages on Arlington Row.
The problem was that the owner, Mr Maddox, lived in the cottage and had simply parked his car outside his own home.
The tourists complained, vandals keyed the car and smashed the windows writing it off!
In support and solidarity, 100 owners of yellow cars (in all shapes, sizes and shades, from a Mini to a Lamborghini) processed through the village and Vauxhall have renamed that shade of paint to ‘Maddox Yellow’!
(Unfortunately, the 84 year old widower, has since given in to the vandals and replaced his car with a non-descript grey one!)
Pesach gets its name because Hashem passed-over our houses during the plague of the first-born. To ensure our protection we were commanded to paint the doorposts of our houses in red! We ruined the picturesque beauty of ancient Egypt with our splash of incongruous colour. But that was something that we had been doing for quite some time; standing out from the crowd. The Talmud tells us that we refused to change our dress, names or language throughout the entire two centuries we were in Egypt – including during the century of servitude and oppression.
Chief Rabbi Sacks summed it up brilliantly when he said (I believe it was just after the terrorist attack on 7-7) “Jews have always learnt to integrate but not assimilate”.
If Pesach teaches us one thing it is that our freedom cannot be bought by fading into the background and ignoring our heritage and customs. It is the Chag that raises Minhagim (ancient and new, authentic and bizarre) to a whole new level, and teaches us that what has given us the strength to survive is by respecting our surroundings, but not being drowned and suffocated by them.
Wishing you all a Chag Kasher v’Sameach,
Rabbi Dovid