The Ordinary Potato
Purim 5758

"It Is Peram, Share in My Simka"

Knuckled fists have slammed into my jaw, tyrannous drug lords have imprisoned me, nazis have thrown me from tanks, terrorist have tried to torure me, Azaerbaijanis have hijacked me, first ladies have longed to kiss me, gallons of water have charged tow ard me, monkey brains have been digested within me, the holy grail has saved me . . .

but that was all in the movies. Nothing – absolutely nothing – can compare to my everyday life; I mean nothing can compare to living next to Dr. Lamm.

My name is Harrison Ford, and I live at 699 Park Ave. My next door neighbor is the expeemed Dr. Lamm, the author of Torah U’mitta, and How Not To Take A Stand on Any Significant Issue. A noted scholar, a polymath, a polyglot, a sesquipi dalian, a physician, a wrestler, an Aristotelian peripatetic, and most of all a rappi of well rebuke, Rabbi Lamm, to me, is comparable to the 19th century Renaissance philospher Maimonides.

I assure all of you at Yeshivu University that it is an honor to live next to this noteworhty gentleman, but like all good things, Dr. Lamm too has his faults. Today, on this high holiday of Peram, I write you so that you too can share in my simka . And in my tzurus.

I do not want to pisdarage him, he is a good man, an honorable man, my best man, but sometimes – and very often lately – the doorbell has rung at the very late hours in the night.

"Harrison, my bosom buddy," he says, "the Stern girls want to lane the megillah again!"

Or, he says, "Jeeepers! Harrison, there is a gay club at Cardozo! Now, Harrison, such proliferation of pedicatio, while augmenting callypigian pederasty, is unambiguously unhachik."

Or, he charges in to proclaim, "Orthodox women are having a conference on feminism. This is highly incongruous with the Torah U’mittah philosophy, yet the unsyntagmatic framework of the kakistocracy and gerontocracy currently ruling perhaps mi ght do better with a genicocracy."

Or, he says, "Harrison, is it time yet for me to grow a beard?"

Well, to be honest, there is actually no point to this letter. It is a pleasure to live next door to Dr. Lamm. I welcome his late-night intrusions into my apartment, and I have a better understanding of the Torah because of it. And boy do I love Rabbi Lamm’s vocabulary.

I write to The Ordinary Potatoe only because it is Peram. We should be happy; and Dr. Lamm has just drinken a pottle of shnapps wit me. And I am a bit woozy (he is a bit tipsy too). So, goodbye and watch my next film.

Love,

Harrison