Bump in the trunk! Jews rushing to get caffeine suppositories

By Andy Campbell

Last Updated: 3:25 PM, September 17, 2010

Posted: 3:25 PM, September 17, 2010

Not so fast!

Jews throughout Williamsburg snapped up caffeine suppositories today, hours before the start of the Yom Kippur fast that would deprive them of the jolt — and hunger suppression — that coffee typically provides.

The day-long fast is the centerpiece of the holiest day on the Jewish calendar — but some religious Jews see a Talmudic loophole that allows them to ingest their daily dose of caffeine, albeit through a different orafice.

"It helps — you know, it's hard to concentrate when you're fasting and also addicted to caffeine," said Baruch Herzfeld, an Orthodox Jew who owns a bike store in Williamsburg. "Some take it before sundown, but most take it throughout their fasting. These guys love a good loophole."

These huge, rectally inserted pills are popular. Pharmacists at Rafieh — one of many distributors in south Williamsburg on Lee Avenue — sold nearly 150 suppositories today.

"We have caffeine suppositories!" the store's handwritten sign heralded. "Be ready!"

But is it kosher?

There's some controversy over whether Jews observing the Biblical fast should be taking an easy out (or, more accurately, in).

Some Jewish leaders said that consuming anything — through the body's traditional entrance or its exit — is against the spirit of the ritualistic fast.

"We're supposed to do it the old fashioned way — I wouldn't advise [suppositories]," said Rabbi Simcha Weinstein, a Hasidic leader. "We wanna keep Jews in the synagogue and not in the bathroom."

acampbell@cnglocal.com

Being happy–is it good for the Jews? "Before Professor Dershowitz accused me of being an anti-Semite (news to me), I was a happy person. Since then, I'm still a happy person". –Michael Santomauro

An antisemite condemns people for being Jews, I am not an antisemite.--Michael Santomauro

Most of us are mentally trapped to think Jewish.

Actually, it is safe to say that virtually every mainstream publication or or other type of media organ is "nothing more than a screen to present chosen views." The great battle over the last century has been a battle for the mind of the Western peoples, i.e., non-Jewish Euros. The chosen won it by acquiring control over essentially the complete mainstream news, information, education and entertainment media of every type, and using that control to infuse and disseminate their message, agenda and worldview, their way of thinking, or rather the way they want us to think. Since at least the 1960s this campaign has been effectively complete. Since then they have shaped and controlled the minds of all but a seeming few of us in varying degree with almost no opposition or competition from any alternative worldview. So now most of us are mentally trapped in the box the chosen have made for us, which we have lived in all our lives. Only a few have managed to avoid it or escape it, or to even sometimes see outside of it, and so actually "think outside of the (Jewish) box." --Michael Santomauro

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